New Babies

As you may already know, Jenna and I brought home a new baby into our home recently. Finnegan is a Bichon/Sheltie cross, and we love him, even when he's being crazy. He starts puppy school tonight, and he can already sit, fetch, and shake a paw, so I've got high hopes for being able to teach him even more.
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At work, my new baby is the aforementioned Art, Design & Architecture series. I've been wanting to put together something like this for awhile, and after the success of the Draplin talk I organized, John finally caved to it. I can't wait for it, 'cause it's all documentaries I'm dying to see. Lets hope other people are too, and it all turns out alright.

Most exciting to me of all is the film I'm presenting myself, Just Like Being There. As a gigposter designer myself, it was a natural fit for me to take it on. So, if you only make it out to one of the screenings, go to that one. But if you can, make it out to all of them, and buy a series pass, so your tickets are cheaper, 'cause all seats are $10 for these, whether you're a member or not.
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In the world of BRFC, I'm working on moving into paper goods. First up are these Hello Dolly postcards. Thanks to my good friend Celene, who asked me to do some sort of Dolly art for her, these postcards are now on sale at Dots & Loops in Lunenburg, and White Elephant in Hamilton. And, of course, from me at the next Stitch 'n' Kitsch.

The plan is for this to just be a start. Greeting cards should be coming soon. But it turns out a puppy eats up a lot of time, so there may be some delays...
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There also some new freelance babies that I should be able to share soon. Not sure what the clients' plans are, so I'll hold them back until I know what's up. I've been doing some work that I'm pretty happy with and proud of.

Somehow I'm always busy at Christmas-time. We recently streamlined film guide production at the Princess, so theoretically I should be less busy than other years at this time. But then BRFC had a really great day at Stitch 'n' Kitsch, and at the same time Bon Mot opened in Uptown Waterloo and started selling our stuff. So suddenly we were out of stock on pretty much everything (a good problem, I know), and I've been relegated back to the basement in my free time, printing up more stuff.

I can't really complain though, I'm still loving doing it, and the response we're getting is pretty amazing. For going from not doing this at all a few months ago, to knowing that something I've printed is in someone's house, or is being given to a friend or parent as a gift, or is even on someone's Christmas tree, this is all pretty cool. BRFC has even been mentioned on two blogs recently, which you can see here and here. It's so cool to see the stuff in other peoples' homes!

Long story short, I haven't been posting because I've been busy. But I'm so happy being busy because everything going on right now is awesome. If you've bought something from BRFC, I really have to thank you, because you've helped to make this an amazing year.

Enough blathering. Here's some links...
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From Andre in Jenna's office: Flamingo's gather in the shape of a flamingo. Seriously!?
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In case of holiday emergencies: Altoids tin martini kit. I don't drink martini's, or mixed/shaken drinks much at all, but this is a great idea.
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1987 Nissan Pao concept car. LOVE it.
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R2D2 headphones. Pretty awesome. Not for me though. I'm kinda thinking of buying a pair of these though. What I find annoying is that I like the look, but I don't know if I want noise canceling. I use my headphones mostly at work, and kind of need to hear other people around me at the same time.
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It's kind of lame that this is done by Buick, and the conversation is pretty awkward, but this video makes me pretty excited about the idea of visiting Chicago. Good thing that two people I love are moving there soon!
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I LOVE this Arcade Fire poster. This one too. The problem? I'm not a huge Arcade Fire fan, so the idea of having a poster of theirs up feels a little weird to me. This actually happens to me a lot. Particularly with Andrew Bird posters. So many nice ones out there, but I've never even really listened to him! Conflicted!
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And now I've eaten up too much of your time. I keep meaning to post more, shorter posts. And then I don't.

It's hard, in all good conscience, to call the above picture 'the saddest picture ever,' considering all the  pictures out there of war, and genocide, and whatnot, but damn if it isn't one of the saddest pictures ever, for me at least. Been feeling the desire to watch Big Bird sing "It's Not Easy Being Green" again, but I don't know if I'm up for that kind of crying, yet.

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It occurs to me that I don't think I mentioned it on here, so hopefully you heard me blather about it elsewhere, but this weekend we had a table in a craft show for the first time ever. I've been screenprinting handkerchiefs, coasters and trivets in our basement for awhile now, and we're starting selling them under the name BRFC (BeaRFaCe). The sale this weekend I was viewing as sort of a test run, and it went really well. So I'm projecting an Etsy site launch of Oct 16, and am writing up my application (and then printing my arms off if I get in) for the winter Stitch n Kitsch show. I uploaded some pictures of the BRFC table to flickr, that you can see here. Super proud of it right now, and thankful for everyone who bought something this weekend and said nice things, and especially for Jenna, who is a BIG part of BRFC, and has pretty much all the best ideas related to it, which helps me get down to the business of printing.

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In other stuff I'm involved in news, my good friend Marc just took over the Princess Cafe from my boss at the Princess Cinemas. Though many things are staying the same, Marc's doing some redesigning this weekend, including new menus and other paper goods that I got to throw together for him. Really just an update on the old stuff, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks! Long story short, go to the Princess Cafe this week and support Marc!!

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Maybe things will slow down soon, and I'll get back to sharing links with you. I was excited last night to get my Google Reader below 300 unread items, so you can see I'm a little out of the loop right now...

 Even more excited for disc golf now after I spent a good chunk of time yesterday working on the colours for the image above to go on the front of the shirt, and the design for the back. Pretty happy with how it is turning out. I hope other people like it! I love seeing people wearing last year's. I can't decide if July 12th is now "only 2 weeks away" or "still 2 weeks away." I guess I also can't decide between being an optimist and a pessimist (or realist as Jenna might say...).
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Time to clean out the collection of things Coudal has posted recently that I've kept unread for one reason or another...

Original Pac-Man sketches. Neat!

The Evolution of the Hipster 2000-2009. I have the star tattoo's to prove my connection to the 2000-2001 Emo and Emo Redux eras, and apparently am now stuck in 2006 with the mountain man. Glad I never fell for the Ashton...

Movie poster font quiz on Mental Floss. I got 100%. This one is way easier than others as it lists all the titles that will come up. I didn't realize that until title 3... (I went back & changed one after I realized it...)

USB Typewriter. Great concept.

Subway slide. Awesome.

Alt/1977. Clever fake ads. Extremely well designed. Extremely. I want that pocket hi-fi.

Thomas Allen pulp paperbacks. I have seen these before, but don't think I've shared them on here. They are amazing.

George Lucas 1983 & 2005. Or, why the second Star Wars trilogy sucked.

A history of musicians who have demanded that Republican's stop playing their songs. David Byrne, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN? Why did the republicans ever think these people would be on board?

Lego Printer. Neat!

Went back to 365 Bears the other day. I almost forgot about it until Jenna mentioned it. Love that one above. Gotta love Rosie.
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Every weekend should have 4 days. So productive! Today was 5 hours of yard work, plus basketball with Shane and Ian, plus finally starting Couch to 5K. Feeling a little worn out, but pretty awesome. Week 1 day 1 of C25K was easier than I expected. The end seemed like it came too soon, and the end of the first 60 second run period was the biggest shock of all. I really hope that I manage to stay on this...

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I've been making my way through old posts on Clients From Hell. Some of it is very familiar. Some of it I'm sure I will encounter at some point.

A recent post on it led to what is perhaps the worst website ever.
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Speaking of design work, check out this video. It's pretty impressive to say the least. Really makes me want the new photoshop. I actually laughed out loud when they did the desert image.
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Jenna sent me a link to this awesome Strum-Fun Guitar. I have no idea how it works, but it looks great, and in great condition. If it weren't $85, I'd definitely want it.
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Oh, and by the way, if I haven't posted on here in a bit, and you're wondering what I've been up to lately, I've also taken to using Twitter a bit. If you look to the right of this page, there should be a feed of what I've said there. You should be able to click them to see more.

That was a tempting purchase I left behind this weekend. A glass from the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair, with the Sunsphere likely represented by that red ball in the top left? Nice. Thank you Simpsons for making me care about things I never would have cared about otherwise.

P.S. The Simpsons episode I'm talking about? Gotta be one of my top 5. For sure.

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If you didn't already know this, sometimes my girl Jenna send me some cool stuff. Here's a selection of items she sent me recently:

Michelangelo Nintendo Remix. Impressive. Tragic. Cute.

Larger paper mache animal and human heads. Weird stuff. Check out more crazy stuff from the whole catalog.

Shoes that make everyone the same height. I would not need those shoes, as I am 2 meters tall with regular shoes on. My license says 198cm, which always makes me sad. Why didn't I just say I was 200cm!? It sounds so much cooler.
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Here's a shoe that is definitely on my 'to get' list. Some day. Still kicking myself for a pair I found on sale in my size about 2 years ago and didn't pick up.

Such a classic. Love it. Gotta love A Time To Get for featuring it. Great taste over on that blog.
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Arial, it's a little bit bullshit. Well said.

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This is a great response to the presence of the Westboro Baptist Church.

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President Obama looks at awesome things. Well done! I gotta go with the Tardis as my favourite, just because the Tardis is awesome, but they're pretty much all great.

New Things

Kitchen pictures are up on flickr. I finally got around to it. The set has the pics from the original real estate listing, then ones we took after we had gutted the place, then what it looks like now. I wish I had a wide angle lens, so that I could get more in and have it not look so cramped, but what can you do? Don't ever hire me to be your real estate photographer...

Very happy with the outcome. It feels way too nice to be my kitchen. I'm so glad that we pulled the fridge and stove back into the room and put that new bathroom back there. Love it. Couldn't have done it without the help of Jenna's parents, very thankful for that. I've got pictures of Ron and I doing some of the tiling that I'll post later (Jenna was tiling too, but taking the pictures, so she's not in them).
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Jenna bought me a WD TV unit for my birthday and, if you ask me, it's one of the best things ever. Since we bought our new tv on boxing day, we'd been watching a lot of downloaded videos by hooking my computer up to the tv. It was nice to watch things on the tv, but it was really annoying me that I couldn't use my computer while watching things. With the WD TV, we download stuff, put it on my USB drive, plug it into the tiny little WD TV box, and blam, it's on the tv. We've watched so much stuff! Lots of tv, a few movies. Good times. Highly recommended if you enjoy watching downloaded videos.
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For Christmas, Jenna's mom bought Jenna Bananagrams, and I highly recommend it as well, if you like word games at all. It's like Scrabble, but there's no board, and you play off your own words trying to use up all your letters before your opponent(s). Love it.
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Also new, I finally have my full G driver's license. Got it Friday.

So it's my birthday. I wasn't really going to say much about it, but I was working on a poster that involved fireworks, so I thought I'd throw a piece of that up there.
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Thinking about it this morning, I think that this last year has been pretty great for me. I don't think I've really thought about it much because some people I care about have had pretty off years, but it may even be one of my best. At times I've been more tired and stressed than other years, but the house, being a part of the wedding of two people whom I think are awesome, all of the things I've learned, all of the people I know, and many other things, have all contributed and made 28 a pretty solid year for me. Lets hope 29 does not disappoint.
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This is a little late in coming, due to it's Christmas-ness, but Jenna showed me this last night, and I just had to share: Jimmy Fallon x The Roots x The Muppets - Twelve Days of Christmas. Gotta love them. Little Robin is just so cute!

Here's another clip: Jimmy and the Muppets impromptu rendition of 'One'.

How much do I want to just hang out with The Muppets?

They don't have a clip of just the end of the show, where all The Muppets (minus Sam the Eagle, who is clearly embarrassed) throw down dancing to The Roots, which is too bad, because it was probably the best part.

I keep going back to this Audi image. Stark and simple, but stunning. The confidence it exudes is amazing. So much different from so many car ads. (Thanks to Grain Edit for linking to that one)
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Film guide is done. We're never done this early in the month, and it's going to make this Christmas a lot more relaxed. It was a stressful time to lock it down so early, but totally worth it.

Our living room is finally painted, and the Christmas tree is up. It feels so much more like home now in there. And it only took like 6 months! Dining room is painted, but will be painted again this weekend. The colour we picked was just not quite right...
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Here are some tabs I've had open for awhile, either to look at again (and again), or to share:

Ampersandwich tee - Pretty funny. Not quite totally doing it for me, but enjoyable.

French Paper Company and Charles S. Anderson Design - Nice promotions!

Cabin and Cub desk calendar - I love the idea and look of calendars, but I've never been big on using them. This one almost got me to buy it. It's pretty great, and bears!

Swingline staple gun & box - Jenna sent me this one, and I would LOVE to own it. Once you add in shipping though, that cost is just totally impractical. The label on the side in picture 3 is pretty great.

Baby Kermit Glass - Another one from Jenna. SO CUTE.

Lotta Nieminen Birds - Love so much about this image. Grain Edit featured a couple of her pieces. All are good. This one's the best though.
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Few, my Firefox is way slimmer now! Hope you enjoy some of that stuff.

Put the finishing touches on this one last night. Excited to see it up, especially if it gets printed on the paper Jenna suggested.
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Speaking of Jenna, her and I tend to send each other a lot of links. Lately she's been killing it, sending me some great stuff that I just have to share.

When Polar Bears Attack - Extremely adorable. The first picture just kills me. Have I ever mentioned to you that I wish the technology existed to keep a baby bear a baby so that I could own one? I know the moral implications of that would be iffy, but how great would that be?

Wood Meets Metal - Faux Bois and Real Bois together! This buckle is awesome! Way out of my price range though, well, more even than I would spend on a buckle ever (probably). Still, nice.

Brass Boxing Bear - THIS IS AMAZING. I got so excited when I opened this link. Also, note that it appears to be a bookend, so there has to be at least one more of them out there. How great would that be to own?
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Cowches? Cowches. The picture they use in the first link is great and makes me want one (not that I would ever get one, but you know...). Some of the pictures on the actual site make them look a little less awesome. Cute idea though, and the name is obviously genius.
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One more Muppet video...
This one is a real tear jerker. I've always thought about looking for it , but never have until now, because I knew it would make me cry. Big Bird at Jim Henson's memorial service. So sad. The way his voice breaks slightly at times and the ending just kill me.

Have I mentioned that I quite like Halloween? I do! I meant to post on Halloween, but then I kind of took the weekend off from the computer, so this is my Halloween post.
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Those are my pumpkins up above. I was pretty pleased with them in the end. My detail work on sustaining thin lines is not so good, so Ms. Pac-Man's bow doesn't look quite right, and I lost the line that was supposed to go between the two cherries. I got some great comments from some parents

Here's a Ms. Pac-Man screen shot for reference. I went round Ms. Pac-Man, pixellated ghost because we decided it would look better.

You can see more shots (and Jenna's pumpkin) on my flickr page.
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Speaking of Ms. Pac-Man, this tattoo is ridiculous, but these rings are kind of cute.
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More pumpkin stuff:
CBC pumpkin! Nerdy/awesome!
Deathstar pumpkin! Nerdy/badass! (Also seen there are someone else's pacman pumpkins.
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Centaur skeleton. Wow. Creepy and gross and awesome. It's made out of real skeletons! What!? Impressed, and scared, by these people. Too bad their website doesn't seem to work for me.
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I guess that's it for Halloween this year. The first at our new house. We only had 27 kids, which was kind of disappointing; I thought we'd get more. I went with the last second costume of Scrabble tile, which was Jenna's suggestion. Luckily my initial is worth 8 points, otherwise it would be a much more disappointing costume. A lot of drunk people didn't understand it. Racoon Wedding didn't play, but I did get to see BA Johnston, which is always a pleasure. Overall, a pretty good night. How was yours?

We finally went out and bought pumpkins yesterday. 6 of them. Yes, 6. I have plans for 4 of them; one big themed pumpkin set. Let's hope it works out. The thing I'm not looking forward to? Cleaning them all out. Definitely the worst part of pumpkin carving.

Gotta do some costume shopping tonight. I do love me some Halloween.
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Spotted the new version of the Youth in Revolt poster today. Blah.
Original version.
New version.
On the surface, they don't really look that much different, I know, but they really are. With it's more painterly style, the original version had so much more character. The new version is clearly a little more mainstream. The painting style is pretty much totally gone, in favour of just a softening of the image, and the girl, of course, highlights the love story aspect. Small changes, but big. You know?
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Jenna showed me these salt & paper shakers, and they are awesome. If they weren't so dang expensive, I would totally buy them. I've see a couple shaker sets lately that stick together to form a larger whole. Smart thinking for sure.
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Jessica Hagy hit 'good design' right on the nose with this one. Her blog, Indexed is frequently clever and entertaining (and sometimes confusing if you don't always understand graphs...).
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Here's another one Jenna sent me today. I saw the video on MTV this morning, but am very glad to know the woman got charged. Bad driving really bugs me. I get irritated if someone in front of me turns without signaling. Ever since my accident last year, I am also very aware of when people's headlights aren't on, which really bothers me too. Particularly if it is grey out at all. If your car doesn't have daytime running lights, you should be aware of that, and turn your lights on!

Safety people!

(Now, I'm not saying I'm a perfect driver, but I like to think I'm better than some people.)

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.

EXCITED.

Jenna sent me this article from the Record today, and I only got as far as "Cambridge Galleries complements the Seth exhibitions at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery" when I got really excited. It turned out to be even more exciting than I thought.

So yes, the amazing comic artist/illustrator/designer/letterer Seth does have work on exhibit at the KWAG (which I really should have known from their ad in the film guide). But then I found he also has work on exhibit at Render at UW (love the tagline "In the dull grey building on the other side of the tracks." Perfect for a gallery in that setting), and it sounds even better than what's at the KWAG. Awesome, right?

BUT THEN, things got even better when I saw this: Seth in Conversation with Chris Ware, in Cambridge! Chris Ware is pretty much the shit, and since, as far as I know, they're actually friends, it should be pretty great to see.

Jenna's timing on sending me that article was pretty much perfect, since it turns out that conversation is this Saturday. This is totally the kind of thing I only hear about afterward, but this time I'm actually going to get to see it (as long as I get there in time to get a seat!)!

Combine that with visiting the exhibit at the Cambridge gallery that the Record article was actually about which sounds pretty awesome, hopefully visiting the new Hespeler library in Cambridge that I'm itching to check out, catching Woodhands at the Starlight later, and then Marc & Kyle's music video DJ night at the bond after that, and Saturday is fixin' to be a pretty amazing day.

Another one from Jenna. My number one source of neat internet things outside of blogs. She always hunts for things on her own, while I spend all my time looking at things other people tell me to.

By the way, she's getting wayyy too good at Circus Atari. I can't even come near her scores.
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Here's one that's been making the blog rounds that I thought I'd kick in in case you missed it: Hotel Door Hangers
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A little late on this one, but I keep meaning to mention it: for once "America" got something right and voted Iliza Shlesinger the winner of Last Comic Standing. Funny and hot.
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If you've got nothing to do tomorrow night, I'll be dj'ing by myself again tomorrow night at the Jane Bond, 'cause Shane's been "called up to the majors" to fill in for DJ Charless.