Photo from jennataylr

2012 has been a big year around here. The last half got so busy, it's hard to even remember what happened in the first half, but I'll give a shot at some highlights.

January saw BRFC products going on sale at Dots & Loops in Lunenburg, NS. It's an amazing looking shop, and I couldn't be happier to be selling there. My relationship with Dots & Loops also ultimately resulted in BRFC getting the attention of and then going on sale at Scout in Toronto. I'd been thinking of trying to get into a store in Toronto for awhile, and think it's funny that my Nova Scotia connection helped bring that around. Jenna and I got to visit Scout very briefly recently and I am dying to go back.

In April, I brought Aaron Draplin to town to give a talk. I've been following him for years, and was super excited to get to meet him and hear him talk. The fact that I made it happen myself made it even better.

In July we got our puppy, Finnegan. And everything kind of changed in various ways. It kind of became hard to figure out how to work everything in, but things are smoothing out.

In August, two of my favourite people got married to each other. I got to design and print their wedding invitations. I really enjoyed working on the project for them, and was very happy with how they turned out. And the wedding itself was amazing, of course.

In September and October, the Princess ran the design film series I've always wanted to book, which was really exciting to see.

 

Eventually we buckled down and got to work on new Christmas BRFC products for the winter Stitch n Kitsch sale. With new pillows, and banners, and lots of help from Jenna's mom, we ended up having our best sale yet, which felt really good.

And through all of that I was still working on posters and other stuff for all kinds of different people. The last part of this year became my busiest one yet, design-wise. A big part of that was that I received a number of requests for logo design work. Some of it just started coming out recently, so I'm really excited to get to share them...

The Grad House at UW renovated over the summer, and I was asked to work on a new logo for them. I have some fond memories of going to see bands play at the Grad House, so I was honoured to be asked to do this work for them. After a couple different ideas based on things we'd talked about, Henry from the Grad House asked me to do just one more, whatever I wanted, and this is what I came up with. Glad it ended up being the one.

While working on that, another of different projects came up. One of them was this design for local architect, Graham Whiting. It was a little scary to work on a redesign for a very personal business like this, but I had a good feeling that we had similar tastes, and was pretty optimistic about how it would all turn out. The circle is the primary mark we came up with, and in the end I put together the smaller, secondary mark to compliment it, as it can be handy to have the option for different applications.

As soon as there was talk of food trucks in Waterloo, I knew I wanted to design for one. That chance came up when my friend Brad decided to start Schmuck'n Gourmet/The Schmuck Truck. I designed the original Schmuck'n Gourmet knife/tomato logo, and it has since morphed into what you see on the truck. It just started making appearances around town, and it's pretty cool to see it out there. The food I've eaten off of it is great too!

Last but not least is the Taco Farm logo. I think it's still a little while before this guy really gets out there, but I am super excited about it. The people involved are awesome, and it's bringing tacos to Uptown. More to come on this one in the future, but I definitely had to mention it here.

I'm sure there's a tonne of stuff I've missed here, but it's an overview. A big year for sure.

Coming up in 2013, I should have more time away from my day job to focus on my own stuff. Look for bearface.ca to finally become a real site, BRFC products to finally return to etsy, possibly a whole new project, and whatever else gets thrown at me. Looking forward to all of it.

It's Valentine's day, so it's time for a semi-romantic blog post I've been meaning to post for awhile...

I have been a fan of Field Notes ever since Draplin first asked if anyone wanted to be on his "Sheet Team." He sent out a 3 pack, and I don't think I've used another notebook since. Jenna gets the aesthetic, but has been mildly critical of my notebook budget since the colours editions started coming out (bigger than some peoples', much smaller than others'). But that didn't stop her from claiming my copy of the adorable blue cover version when the "Just Below Zero" series came out.

Sadly, that notebook sat mostly unused, until we started wedding planning. Then she had it everywhere, and I couldn't have been happier.

On the day of our wedding Jenna and I had our 'first look' together in her parents backyard. Just us, and our two photographers. She looked amazing. Then I stood back and noticed that her dress had pockets! I knew they were cute on bridesmaid's dresses, but they're even cuter on a bride!

And then she pulled her hands out of her pockets to proudly show me her little blue Field Notes.

That's my girl.

Honeymoon update 1.

Stats:

- weeks married - 1

- states travelled through - 5

- kilometers travelled - 1063

- calories eaten - too many

We left KW yesterday afternoon, with our new bumper 'sticker' (thanks for making it a magnet Celene!! Also, thanks for making it!) proudly displayed on the back of our car. 600km's and more time than it probably should have taken (mostly bad Ontario traffic), we stopped near Scranton, PA. This morning we got up and continued on to Philadelphia for the afternoon.

Pennsylvania, and most of New York state, have been surprisingly treed and pretty. I'm actually sad that we passed through most of NY in the dark, as there seemed to be endless tree covered hills, and every small town downtown we passed through looked like it was post-card perfect (I love a good small-town downtown).

Philadelphia itself seemed pretty cool. Obviously we went to Love park, and then found some oversized game pieces that made me pretty happy.

We did a pretty rush job of the whole thing. I ate a cheesesteak at Pat's King of Steaks, we hit up some local crafter stores (Art Star and Nice Things... Handmade), then Honey's Sit 'n' Eat, where Jenna had an amazing quesadilla, and I had what basically amounted to another cheesesteak. Thanks to Design*Sponge and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives respectively for highlighting those spots. Glad we made it to them.

After dinner made a quick stop by the liberty bell (felt we shouldn't miss it, not unlike the cheesesteak) then we powered on past Baltimore and into Arlington, Virginia. We're real close to all the big stuff in Washington DC right now. That's what's on tap for tomorrow. The main monuments, the Smithsonian, and I guess the White House too.

So far I am loving our new GPS. I still doubt it takes us on the smartest routes sometimes, but it's tonnes better than our old one. Also loving our new car stereo deck. Plugging the ipod in is so much better than trying to tune new FM stations to play it through all the time.

Up to this point I've been 'live tweeting' our honeymoon (much to Jenna's displeasure), so if you want to know what we're up to each day, check out @bearfacejohnson.

Can't wait to share photos of the wedding, and the process of getting everything ready for it. Look for that sometime after the honeymoon. And then maybe after Stitch 'n' Kitsch even...

More new posters. Those in the know may notice that my posters of late are very Lost Type heavy. Loving their fonts. LOVING. A tip for you, if you're doing anything design-wise lately, check out Lost Type. Pay What You Can for awesome fonts. 

This Les Breastfeeders poster is possibly my raciest poster ever. Says a lot about my design preferences I think... 

------

In life news, Jenna just had her gall bladder out on Monday. Bit of a wrench in the gears of wedding prep, but she should be pretty good to go by the end of the month. That, the wedding, and some other factors are making this a wicked stressful time, but we'll get through it. And then we get to leave for 2 weeks, so that will be nice. I just have to plan the trip now!!

Getting a bit more work done. Some yoga posters, some ads, and that poster up above. Tomorrow I finally get down to work on wedding invitations for some friends. Looking forward to that, at the same time that it's a little scary to do work for friends. Not as scary as doing my own invitations will be, but still scary.
------
The National Post shows some of the cover design process of Seth. Pretty cool to see. I can never say enough how much I love Seth's lettering and style. So nice. (from Drawn)
------
Just in Time, Or A Short History of Production. Amazing looking art installation. I'd love to see footage of it running.
------
Blerg. I was supposed to get more done today, but so far I have not. Fridays off always disappear way too quickly.

Apparently these have found their way out to invitees now, so I feel okay posting them here now. This is a wedding invitation that I put together recently for a friend of Celene's. Pretty happy with it. It's taking place at a family cottage/boathouse, so I thought it might be good to highlight the location. The picture is one the bride sent me of the location that I tweaked a little. The bird in the chair/bird image is based on the bird in the picture, and I gave the image a distressed look so it has a more personal/diy feel to it, like the bride and groom stamped each one themselves. It's not the invitation that I would make for my own wedding, but I think it suits the location well, and the bride seems very happy with it, so I'm happy.

The rsvp echoes the back of the invite:

I haven't done much of it, but I've really liked doing wedding related design, so if you know someone who's looking to get some invitations created for them, I would likely be interested! As long as they're looking for something at least a little different from normal that is...

Apparently blogging fell apart on me last week as we found ourselves shopping for house stuff every evening.

This weekend, as the image above indicates (which was an awesome project to get to do, by the way), was Marc & Celene's wedding, which was a great time. Good people to hang out with all over the place. And now that it's over I can finally wear my groomsman shoes out and about. Got 'em on right now.

Hopefully I'll get back to posting more now, but we'll see, it's film guide time at the Princess right now...
------
Jenna sent me this one and my only response was 'DAMN.' Nice stuff.
------
Sometimes I just don't know what to make of Richard Linklater. I really want to love him. He made one of my favourite movies, employed some great sounding practices while doing so, and has also made a number of other interesting films. But then he's also made some crap.

I guess I didn't realize that Me and Orson Welles is one of his, but when I saw this poster for it, it just made me think that he's out to make some money, you know? I do think that the movie could be good, but the marketing is just so lacklustre and pandering feeling, you know? Citing School of Rock (mainstream, fun movie) and Before Sunset (romance!) is obviously toeing the mainstream line, versus the possible tag of 'From the Director of Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly,' which would definitely get ME to watch the movie. It's just hard to know what to make of such fluctuations.
------
Speaking of artists fluctuating back and forth from mainstream to underground, Shepard Fairey designed the program for the Grammy's? Seriously? It's like, the worst award show.
------
Somewhat entertaining, definitely tragic: Tacos exploding in slow motion