Busy times = no blog posts, but I wanted to update to say hi to anyone coming by from The Wall: Inside the Poster Studio's Facebook page. I couldn't be more honoured that Tom asked to feature me in both of the books he has put out recently. To look at the list of poster artists appearing in each one, and to see Bearface in there? It's a crazy feeling.

If you're interested in the work I've been doing lately, I've been keeping my Flickr account decently updated, and I've been updating my Dribbble too.

Some logo projects in the works right now, and an Art, Design & Architecture film series at the Original Princess is in the works too.

Birthday Tacos.

The Tuesday closest to your birthday is, by default, your birthday tacos. I've missed a number of taco nights recently, but I certainly won't be missing tonight's!
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By the way, yes, that is a taco on our Christmas tree. I am so happy with our first Christmas tree here, and we both have been getting sad that its going to have to go. The shape is perfect (for us), and there are so many little things that I love on it! I'm uploading pictures right now to my flickr account, so check it out later to see more.
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I haven't been posting much, because we've either been busy working, or busy relaxing. We just finished Dexter season 4, which was amazing. So stressful at times! So good! We're almost finished the kitchen. We put up the backsplash over last week, and grouted this weekend. I"ve always wanted to try grouting, and definitely enjoyed it.

I've been asked why I haven't put more pictures of the house up here. I should be doing that soon. I haven't to this point because I don't want to ruin the final impact of the finished project. I want that punchy before and after, you know? So give it a week or two.
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I've also been neglecting my google reader, so there's not much to share, but here's a few things:

Mini chair jewelery. Awesome. Reminds me of the mini replicas of famous chairs you can buy (and that my friend Jen G. has some of, making me jealous of her).

Record covers re-done with super heroes. Have I ever mentioned that I owned a sleeveless Purple Rain sweatshirt when I was a kid? Sleeveless. Sweatshirt. There's a picture I'll have to find...

Vans Spring Classics. All in light grey. Nice. Damn I'd love those Sk8-Hi's.

This kid is so stylish! Seriously!

That right there is the front of our house. I love the flower box Jenna's dad built for us, and the plants Jenna's mom picked out to go in it. As soon as it went up, our house got a lot cuter.

This weekend I finally got around to painting the eaves around the porch, so we took some pictures of the front of our house. I uploaded them, as well as the pictures that were up on the realtor's website, to flickr so I could show them off. Two sets: Before & After

The kitchen has been pushed back to "earliest October," ie. as soon in October as they can have the cabinets built, and I can't wait for that. Obviously there will be more pictures to come then.
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At one point on our mini road trip, Jenna made a comment about a Holiday Inn Express sign. I believe it was about the colouring (H.I.Express being blue, vs. the typical H.I. green), and how the new logo just doesn't feel right. The whole Holiday Inn overhaul came at least a year ago, and it's still bothersome to me too. The old one wasn't perfect, but when you get to see it on this classic sign here, how could you ever want anything else? (via the DDC)
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The other day I looked at my feet and imagined what it would be like to have a pair of Jack Purcell's that were made of grey wool. I decided it would be awesome. Simple and classy, it would suit the shoe. These, shoes have confirmed that for me. Now if I just knew who to talk to at converse to get this done...
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I've often enjoyed the different ways Google plays with their logo for special events, achievements, birthdays and whatnot, and I've often wondered if they have archived copies of all of the different things they have done sitting around somewhere. If they haven't been archiving them, someone has, and you can see a bunch of them here. It's aways nice to see people taking the time to add that extra little touch. Even when by "people" you mean "giant company". What can I say though, I do love Google.
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While I am not much of a baseball fan at all, these here are some clever/witty infographics.
This one, in particular, is great. Something important for the kids to learn, for sure. (via the DDC)
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I really want to try these chips! I've been keeping an eye out for them, but have not stumbled across any yet, sadly...

Another busy feeling week. I'm trying to sleep more so that every week doesn't feel busy. I can't help but think that that's the reason for that. But then aside from making the above poster for Shane's pre family day night at Starlight, another poster, my ads, and regular work, I was also violently ill all night long after I got home from tacos on Tuesday. So you can see how my time kind of disappeared.

Some have asked whether said violently ill-ness will put me off tacos for a bit, to which I have resoundingly responded "No Way." Seriously, how many nights have I been there? And how many times have I been sick afterwards (without it being my own fault)? Answers: too many to count and one, respectively. I don't even know if it was the tacos that made me sick!

A couple extra projects lately, which are great to be getting 'cause they make a fella feel loved. A No Fest poster, which is getting good reviews, a logo for the "Sludge King" that's still in progress, and a likely t-shirt design to come.

Anyway, too much about me, not enough links, 'cause I've been building them up in my Google Reader to share, and now I guess I should...

Oh, one more personal thing: this Saturday is the first night of "Come Go With Me: Doo-Wop Hits with DJ Bearface!" First Saturday of the month for the next few months. Should be a good time.
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This is pretty much my favourite thing that I have seen on the internet in a long time. SO GOOD. It also turned me on to Herb Lubalin as a whole, who, aside from having an awesome name, was also an amazing designer.
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This Flickr set has been making the rounds as of late. Pretty awesome set as a whole, but the "I Can Read Movies" stuff is the best. Someone posted "Close Encounters..." in one of the blogs I read a couple weeks ago and I have not been able to stop looking at it, like, every day. SO GOOD. I'm pretty into the amazingness of lines lately (sounds ridiculous, I know...), and this one kills it.
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So I thought I had more stuff to post, and I do, but I just realized that it all comes from one place. So this may cut this shorter, or it may not, but really, it should only tell you one thing, if you don't already, you should read Grain Edit. While some blogs may have minimal but awesome posts (like So Much Pileup), and some blogs may have a million posts with some hits here and there (like Design*Sponge), no blog has as many consistently awesome as Grain Edit.

Some recent highlights:

Puff - An amazing looking classic kids book. Grain Edit is also good for vintage kids stuff, and this one looks pretty amazing.

Max Dalton - Haven't had the time to get into any more of his work, but the picture in that post is so adorably awesome! Cancel that, after a quick visit to his site, it's all awesome!

Shining print - So simple, so good. Really boils it all down.

Eli, No! - Once again, I've only had the time to browse, and not read the text, but still, this is one of the prettiest looking kids books I've ever seen. Now I guess it just needs to get made into a physical stuff.

So there you go, read Grain Edit, see great stuff like that. Best internet advice I can give you.
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The dark haired girl who sings in this this video was on Scrubs recently, singing this song with Ted, the awkward lawyer, and I loved it. This video, and the others by "Garfunkel and Oates" kind of (really) makes me want to learn to play the ukulele. It will be a short lived want, I know, but still, wouldn't it be great? I mean, just for how ridiculous I would look with a tiny little ukulele. Looks like they're pretty cheap too!
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Well, it was past my (new) bedtime when I started this, and now my episode of Being Erica (5 eps. in and I can't decide if it's actually good or not) is almost done, so I guess it's really bedtime

Keepin' on.

The above picture comes from Vintagraph, a site (created by the same people as the seriously awesome Shorpy) that compiles old WPA posters. I love this one because the image at first struck me as incongruous to the message, yet at the same time, it does evoke the local through the image of the home, and the state through the image of the factory and tall buildings. Where syphilis comes in exactly I do not know, but the local and state, they're definitely there.
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I am loving this modular storage system. The colours not necessarily so much, it would be nice if they were more in line with those typical to the shipping containers they are based on, but still, they are pretty awesome. I don't know how much they cost, but you can be pretty sure that I would not be able to afford them.
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This here is a beautiful set of transistor radios on Flickr. This guy's collection must be amazing. I've only looked at a small fraction and am in awe. (from the DDC)

On a similar note, I just remembered that a friend told me this weekend that he picked up a part that should complete his repair of my vintage tube amplified suitcase record player. Looking forward to seeing that one again. He's been real awesome in fixing it for me.
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Some pretty great buildings pictured in here. I particularly like numbers 5, 6, 21 (which is actually a part of a complex that I've seen some pretty amazing pictures of), 22, 29 (shipping containers again! I love shipping container housing solutions), 30, 35 (yes, I fell in love like many others did I'm sure at the Olympics), 43, and 50 (Robot building!). That's a lot that I like, I know... There's a second page too, but I won't put you through a list of what I like of that one...
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Jenna tipped me off to this one out of an old issue of Jane yesterday. A couple of years ago, this would have been my ideal website, and I would have loved to be a writer for it. Now I'm trying to cut back on the snacks. I do have some pretty strong opinions about chips though. They even mention many of the same things that I evaluate my snacks for. Another one I've barely touched but would like to get deeper into.
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I'm loving the signs in this small flickr set. The impressive detail on the hot dog, the overload of flash and colour on the cleaners, the impressiveness of the city sign. Good stuff all of it. You really can't go wrong with anthropomorphic cannabalism in your signage, you know? (I think this is via the DDC as well...)
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A nice little vintage find on etsy. A beaufiful example of branding and sports if I've ever seen one. The style is just beautiful too.
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I've been seeing a lot of images created out of typography lately (there's a term for it, but I can't for the life of me think of it right now, maybe because I'm distracted by my need to pee...). Some are good, some not so much, but this book looks pretty great. Both the snail and the girl just look so cute, you know?

Speaking of books, we gotta get on ordering some Christmas stuff from amazon so's it gets here on time! It's almost December!
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Oh, and by the way, Seth and Chris Ware were pretty great. Chris was pretty hilarious, in his demure, self-depricating way. Seth was funny too, but a little more pretentious feeling to Chris' constant fear of sounding pretentious. I feel like the ways they said they thought about certain things are quite similar to the ways I do, which is nice to know. Chris had a presentation of a video he creatted with Ira Glass, so you know I was loving that.

TIMBER!

Our mail has been particularly boring lately, but now I've got something to look forward to! I just noticed the above design by my favourite t-shirt maker, and I absolutely had to have it! Of course, I grabbed one of his other shirts in the process as well, you know, just for good measure.

During an etsy conversation, I also sent him this little pic from our trip to Funspot, where I happened to wearing one of his shirts and spot a pretty special arcade machine:
(not the best picture of me, but you know...)
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Some beautiful work on here. (via Draplin, I think...)
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I am in love with this Philly post office via 1900. Amazing. I've said it before, but this is definitely one of those pictures that makes me wish I could travel through time. (thanks Shorpy!)
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This is a really cool little application that lets you search through millions of flickr images by colour, and combinations of colour. Select up to 10 colours on the side, and it will return images that use those colours. Pretty great to play around with. (via Jeff)
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Awesome early Star Wars storyboards. Pretty cool flickr set to flick through, if you ask me.
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"Wasted" a good chunk of time flipping through the images on Letter Cult last night. All hand drawn lettering. Great stuff to check out. Here're two favourites:


Time to get up and go to work! And then tacos!

Another Day...

Nardwuar and former PM Jean Chretien by the awesome Mitch Clem. Mitch rose to fame with "the world's first online punk comic," but also illustrates album covers, show posters, magazine articles, probably some other things, and My Stupid Life, which is his current (awesome) webcomic about his life. Been a fan for awhile. Highly recommended. Definitely going to have to buy this one when it comes out.
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Something you may know about me, or will come to know about me if you continue to read this, is that there are MANY things out there that I would like to own, and I will not hesitate to tell everyone and anyone who will listen that I would like to own it.
Like this shirt, that is apparently going to stop being made. Been wanting it for awhile. Might need to buy it.
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No need to buy this one, but it is awesome. So is the whole blog that posted it. Focusing on faux bois = creating pretty much one of the best blogs ever. So much good stuff.
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This here is a pretty sweet flickr set of old ephemera. It comes via Draplin, who I'm sure I'll mention a lot around here, as I've been a big fan of his work and blog for a long time now. I go so far as to buy magazines about a sport I've never participated in, just because he does the layout. Gross, no?
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Made a BIG purchase today, but you'll find out more about that later...