Honeymoon update 2. We're back home.

Some updated stats:
- weeks married - a few
- states travelled through - a bunch
- kilometers travelled - a lot (5000+ I think...)
- calories eaten - a disgusting amount
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I had good intentions to keep people updated on here as we went along, however driving for a number of hours each day can be really tiring, and by the end of each day I really didn't want to do much except plan the next day and then go to bed.

Now I'm already back to work, and everything already seems far gone. Once I go through all the photos and get them up online, I'll re-cap it all for you. Suffice to say, it was an amazing trip. We made it all the way down to Savannah (which is an amazingly beautiful city and which I'm already itching to return to) and back. We went zip-lining, and rode roller-coasters (which I've long had a fear of); we swam in the ocean, and we hiked up a mountain; we looked at old houses, and stayed in a modern cabin (Lost River Modern, it's amazing); we spent time around thousands of tourists, and we spent time completely by ourselves. It was all over the map, literally and figuratively, and I'm so happy we went and did it.
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Speaking of work, I forgot to share some more work I've done for Marc at the Princess Cafe recently.

While we were gone Marc had a crazy busy weekend. One part of it was having the 2nd Princess Cafe Comedy Night. I worked the poster into my busy pre-pre-wedding schedule, and am pretty pleased with it. I think Jenna suggested the vaudeville hook when I was working on the last Comedy Night poster, and I'm happy I decided to try it out for this one. Now I have to figure out what the microphone is going to do for the next one!

That same night, Marc also launched his new late-night grilled cheese stand called Cheeses Murphy. I crammed this work into my even busier pre-wedding schedule, and worked on edits on the road because I wanted to work on this project with him so badly. I'm mostly happy with how it turned out, but am glad he wants to make some changes to what's on the menu, because it gives me some more time to make a few changes to how the menu looks.

Since I don't really do illustrations Branko Vranic drew up Cheeses himself for Marc, and I set to work trying to put some things together that did the image justice. Luckily, Lost Type just released Oil Can not that long ago, and as soon as I saw where Branko had gone, I knew it would work perfectly (and I had been dying to use it!). Actually, every typeface used on the Cheeses work is from Lost Type. They are releasing some pretty great stuff over there.

Cheeses Murphy basically redresses the Princess Twin lobby for Marc to sell sandwiches out of, so he had me design up some big posters, as well as standard smaller menus, to give the place its look. After Jenna and I got home on Saturday night, we popped over there to check it out and I was really excited to see everything printed and up.

Oh, and the food is good too! Marc was working on his bacon jam recipe while we were gone, and it's pretty awesome. The Lumberjack is a great one too, hearty. Looks like there'll be some late-night snacking in my future, as I still have to try the rest of them!

Hard at work on the Jan/Feb film guide. It prints Wednesday and still lots to do! I stopped by one of my secret spots for grabbing high res. movie images and spotted the poster above. I can't decide if this poster nailed the concept it was going for, or totally failed. I think the perspective on the key vs. the perspective of the door lock just keeps knocking my brain a little. I think the idea was kind of doomed from the start if they really wanted to feature that much of the key, you know? Perspective. I think the motif works a little better without the pictures mucking it up.

The thing is, I still really quite like the picture version though.

Okay, okay, this poster is even better! Why is Shirley MacClaine's head so BIG?

Wow, and things get even weirder here.

11.5 hours at work today. Film guide almost done. More finishing up going on in the house. Pictures maybe to come soon. Tiring times. Looking forward to Christmas for sure.
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Speaking of work, the back side of this coin makes me think of 'work'. Not bad, tiring, annoying modern work, but solid, honest, work, good strong handshakes, that kind of work, you know? Anyway, I keep going back to look at that coin. It's a fine piece of work. Proud, Canadian work.
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Regardless of my own beliefs, any story about a church being defaced or destroyed always gets to me. Just the thought of doing that is repulsive to me. The destruction of something with such age, history, and meaning is just terrible in so many ways. I was listening to an interview with the minister at that church on my way home from work tonight, and I just keep thinking about it, and how that whole community must feel right now. Appalling to think that someone may have done that. What a shame.

Just finished that poster above earlier tonight. Not sure if it's printing as is, but I felt like sharing. Definitely a show to look forward to as well. I've been itching to see Angus and Brad's new project and Ace Kinkaid is always enjoyable.
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Back on my very Canadian day, when I was at the NFB I was looking around, really hoping they'd have a shirt with the classic NFB logo on it. They didn't then, but it turns out that now they do! Wish it wasn't on white, but I might need one...
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Bunny garbage bin. Cute.
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Speaking of cute, at work today I was looking up stuff on upcoming movies and found Paper Heart. SO CUTE. Seriously. There's some other stuff I'm looking forward to coming up (Brothers Bloom, 500 Days of Summer [could be crap, but Zooey Deschanel is a big draw for me. Actually Joey Gordon Levitt is a pretty good draw too...], and of course Away We Go [though Jenna says I just am excited for this because I think John Krasinski looks like me in it]), but none of those trailers have made me smile nearly as much as this one did. Adorable.
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I have come to realize that sometimes the images on the front are old patterns are amazing. This is one of those cases. I have an even better one saved up for potential future use that maybe you'll get to see. Mini Magnum is all I have to say...
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I never knew that they made Chuck mids, but now I really want a pair. Nice.
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I'm sadly pretty excited to buy my Miracle Whip in this new packaging. Really hope that this part of the write up about it becomes more and more true as time goes by: "Apparently all the thrift shopping of vintage stuff by the 18- and 34-year-olds has finally paid off and that oldish look can feel new again." Seriously, all a company really needs to do is just reintroduce their classic packaging and will be so looking forward to buying it. Sad but true.
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Big things to come next Friday. Can't wait.

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

That there's a poster I just did for my newest "client." It's for their winter sale, but as far as I know it hasn't been printed yet, so consider this a sneak peek. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I hope they ask me to do more in the future.
Overall I've been pretty happy with some of the stuff I've completed recently. I'll have to up it sometime so you all can see it.
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In the category of things I would like to own:
Something little. Every bathroom could use a robot! Actually, every room could use a robot...
Something big. Just beautiful. I can't decide which I like the most... Either the Twin, with its vintage british styling, or the MP, 'cause I've always loved vintage military gear (gotta be the green variation though, badass).
So, if you need a gift for me, big or small, there you go.
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The Neon Boneyard is a place I'd love to visit one day. It's pretty much the only thing I've heard of in Vegas that I would really like to go to. I mean, I'd like to see Vegas in some ways, but I think in the end I'd hate it. Except this place.
This place gets blogged about it alot (death by kerning, h&fj, for two, recently) but I've found myself talking about recently and realized that the people I know don't seem to have heard of it, and need to see its beauty.
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A great concept. I always find 2 litre bottles of soda taste flat like the day after you open them. If this bottle can fix that, I'd be awful happy!
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I guess you can file all of this section under 'Obama'. I wasn't planning on talking about him, but there's some pretty great stuff to share right now (not that there wasn't during the campaign, in fact, there was some amazing stuff, but you know...)
Loving this shirt. And, of course, the truth that it will soon come to represent. The 'new' lettering is pretty great if you ask me.
Newspaper front pages from the day after, from all over. Loving this contribution from Ottawa. The Toronto Sun ran the same tag line, but not as good of a picture.
So glad somebody did this! I was loving every piece of design that I saw come out of that campaign, and this compilation just proves that I was right in doing so. SO GOOD. Clean, concise, bold, confident, pretty as heck. Awesome.
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Another thing that's been making the blog rounds: Photoshop in real life. Pretty great.
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And now, for a touch of cute. Probably played out on the blogs by now too, but you know, I could use a nice peaceful touch of cute right now.

So it's been awhile, but I still feel like I'm recovering from being away. In my real life there's been lots of work to do at work, plus ads to do for Starlight, and a few posters, and I'm doing some ad work for my sister. And, I became an "uncle" as Marc and Celene's kid got born (it's a girl! and her name is Clover! and she's adorable!) And then there was thanksgiving too! Oh, and I did the above to our car. First accident. Not fun. Still waiting on an estimate and whatnot. I didn't pay for the rental car coverage on my insurance, so now we're shelling out a bit of cash for a car during the week too.

In my internet life, visiting my google reader feels like a chore, somehow, even though I'm caught up to where I was. There also hasn't really been a lot that I've seen that I've been really excited about. Actually, the whole internet has felt kind of chore-y. I hate it when that happens.

So that's why I haven't posted in awhile. I just grabbed all of the pics off of the camera, and will start uploading a bunch to Flickr soon, so's y'all can see 'em. Hopefully things will mellow out soon and I'll feel like I actually have time to do that stuff.
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Two things I have liked around the internet:
The new identity and products for 826 Valencia
The new macbook. (well, mostly the screen. I want that screen on my black macbook!)