The Design Monkey Compendium

Title Design: They Live

2012-01-16T07:49:00.001-05:00

The first few titles of John Carpenter's "They Live" are very straightforward: white serif type on black. However, the presentation of the title instantly disrupts any false sense of normalcy by being much larger and hand-written. The scrawl of the lettering makes it feel like a message or warning, an excellent sentiment given the plot of the film.

What I particularly like is this lovely treatment for the title once it appears on screen:

2012-01-13T05:22:00.000-05:00

Someone at work called me the "logo cop" recently. Of course, that's not what I heard. I heard "LOGOCOP" which instantly made me think of this:

And let's be honest – I wish I had robotically-enhanced strength so I could punch through poor branding and terminate brand violators with extreme justice. Then someone else commented that they think of me as the Judge Dredd of design and branding. Awesome.

Rangefinder beauty

2012-01-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

Absolutely beautiful: the Fujifilm X-Pro 1, a small rangefinder-style digital camera with a 16-megapixel sensor. It allows for interchangeable lenses (currently three:18mm, 35mm, and 60mm) and has a hotshoe mount.

The extremely careful, retro styling (crisp blacks and whites, carefully lit on a slightly reflective, mottled surface) of the product shot makes it look like it came straight out of a 1980s camera brochure – something that instantly resonates with me. It's a welcome contrast to the "white box", perfectly retouched product shots that are common right now.

Super 8: Sign Painter in Use

2011-12-02T17:21:00.000-05:00

Nice to see House Industries' Sign Painter Ad Art getting some time on the big screen.

Some days

2011-10-24T10:44:00.001-04:00

Camera Strap

2011-08-29T09:17:00.007-04:00

The Handy Dandy Hand Strap from Photojojo
Absolutely beautiful. Typically, I wind my neck strap around my hand when I'm travelling. I've tried a couple of nylon hand straps, but they're typically ugly and ungainly. This seems to be an exception.

Canadian Pacific Airlines

2011-08-14T11:30:00.003-04:00

An amazing logo from a bygone era. After all, how many international brands sport beavers these days?

Recent Monkeys

2011-08-13T15:48:00.001-04:00

Professional Guitar and Amp Repairers

2011-07-26T15:53:00.000-04:00

Beautiful window typography shot on Lower Marsh street near Waterloo Station.

SEO: Blackhat and Blackletter

2011-07-22T15:51:00.001-04:00

On Accommodating Users

2011-07-16T15:14:00.002-04:00

My frustration with a poor user experience prompted L to declare me an "edge case for life". Then my friend Matt thought it should be on a shirt. And now it is.

Title Design: Quicksilver

2011-06-18T17:29:00.001-04:00

Today, I watched the 1986 film Quicksilver which stars Kevin Bacon and Lawrence Fishburne. Critically panned, the film is only really notable for one scene involving some pretty excellent bike tricks.

There's one other fantastic part to the film though and it's the motion design for the title of the film. It's a fantastic execution that embodies so much of the emerging styles of the 1980s. In fact, I'd go so far as to call the treatment iconic in that when viewed today, you'd be forgiven for calling it cliché.

I've posted the animation here:

How many developers can you fit in a shower?

2011-06-03T15:33:00.002-04:00

Six, apparently. Taken at Reevoo's Dev:On hack week in May.

From the Sketchbook

2011-05-10T16:25:00.002-04:00

I'm nearing the end of yet another sketchbook. As the stack of remaining pages gets slimmer and slimmer, it's always interesting to flip back through it and see what I was working on or what was occupying my mind. Of course, as is the case with all my sketchbooks, it's filled with monkeys making comments or judgments about the work.

Traps: a common theme

Awww, he's having fun!

"Blerg" is another repeating motif

One of countless other examples

USB Film Rolls

2011-05-05T11:03:00.002-04:00

Photojojo, purveyors of all kinds of camera awesomeness, are selling USB drives housed in recycled film canisters – absolutely gorgeous. I particularly like the Fujichrome version as I have fond memories of shooting roll after roll of Sensia II 100.

At $20 for a 4 GB capacity, these USB drives are a bit expensive but they're sure to make you the envy of camera hipsters everywhere.

Fujichrome Sensia reborn.

Vintage cameras and USB drives.

Royal Flyover

2011-04-29T12:59:00.002-04:00

L and I live right under the flight path taken by the RAF for the Queen's birthday, and in this case the Royal Wedding. Pretty cool.

Spitfire fighter, Lancaster Bomber and Hurricane fighter

Typhoon and Tornadoe fighter planes

Automotive Type

2011-01-16T14:52:00.002-05:00

Digging through my photo archives, I discovered these shots from Paris. In 2007, Citroën opened a temporary showroom for its latest model and part of it was dedicated to past models.

The cars were beautiful and the exhibition design was beyond reproach but I was really taken by the typography.

Exhibit design

Fantastic lettering and lovely brush work

Simple, clean, elegant lines for a logo

Fractured roof of reflection reflects

Detail – dig those illustrations!

No Contingency

2011-01-13T08:30:00.005-05:00

This may or may not be a meta-comic. Hard to tell, really.

Recent work: the Hype Machine 2010

2011-01-11T10:47:00.004-05:00

Following up on last year's illustration for the Hype Machine is this installment representing Canadian supergroup, The New Pornographers. There were a couple of concepts that I considered for this piece: London tart cards (the postcards left by escorts in London phone booths), 1970s Times Square pornography, and cheap ads found in the back of men's magazines.

While sketching out possible layouts, it struck me that all of those concepts and any variation on them were far too obvious. As such, I quickly wrote out a list of adjectives corresponding to my concepts and then tried to think of antonyms.

Brainstorming antonyms

With a new direction in mind, I quickly settled on an aesthetic that paid homage to the Rat Pack, the Vegas of days gone by, cocktail lounges and luxury, if not class and elegance. It ended up being diametrically opposite to what I'd be developing previously. I'm pretty pleased with the resulting lettering and layout – my only regret being that I didn't have time to work in some ligatures.

Click to enlarge

Teaser: The Hype Machine

2010-12-20T19:27:00.000-05:00

Just a quick teaser of my illustration for the Hype Machine's Zeitgeist of 2010. You can see last year's here.

Fall, 2

2010-11-25T14:35:00.001-05:00

Click to enlarge

A second shot from the series with Alex Martin.

Fall

2010-10-22T16:30:00.003-04:00

Click to enlarge

Part of a photographic series I shot with performing artist Alex Martin.

Art Wall: New acquisition!

2010-10-02T10:29:00.000-04:00

From the very talented illustrator, toy maker and animator Brian Taylor comes this new print to commemorate his 5th anniversary.

Work in Progress: Screenprints

2010-08-15T14:11:00.003-04:00

Deep in the back alleys of Dalston, these little prints are drying on a rack. This sneak peek might look familiar to some of you.

Want one? Leave me a comment (with your e-mail address) or drop me an e-mail directly.

Recent Work: More Intelligent Life

2010-08-06T16:43:00.003-04:00

About this time last year, my friend Julia Belluz and I collaborated on a story about a unicycle hockey league. I even posted a work in progress snippet to this blog.

I'm pleased to say that More Intelligent Life, the Economist's quarterly magazine, has just published the story on their website. Go and read "Puck, Stick and Unicycle". And then check out the full series of photos on my photo website.

Recent Work: Fire & Knives

2010-07-30T17:16:00.006-04:00

I'm thrilled to say that some of my photographs were published in the latest issue of Fire & Knives. The brief for the shoot was highly unique: take a photograph of a restaurant's signature dish … with models. This gave L and I the opportunity to try St. John, famous for their Roast Bone Marrow & Parsley Salad.

As for the models? They behaved themselves nicely for the most part, though there was a bit of lying down on the job.

Amsterdam

2010-07-28T17:15:00.001-04:00

Back in March, L and I visited Amsterdam for a weekend. What followed was a lovely time of bikes, coffee, delicious food (Indonesian!) and relaxation.

The most awesome bookcase ever

Bridge Signage

Power boxes have cool typography

Budapest!

2010-07-26T15:26:00.000-04:00

A selection of photos from a fantastic weekend. I've uploaded these with Blogger, so for some reason they're being cropped. Click through for larger, uncropped versions.

Art Wall

2010-07-22T12:17:00.002-04:00

In every city and apartment that I've lived, I've always had a vision of one wall dedicated entirely to art – picture upon picture hung much like the Paris Salon.

Here in London, L and I are still working on that goal but we're pretty close. Photos were snapped on my phone, so there are some odd angles and exposure. Sorry about that.

Our main wall as it stands right now

On the far left hand side is this print by the awesomely talented Brian Taylor. It lives on clips inside of a frame I found by the garbage cans.

A limited edition print by Sanjay Patel, who is all kinds of awesome. You may have seen his "Little Book of Hindu Deities".

Heh. A Wodehousian take on a very, very popular (really, it's everywhere and I'm tired of it) British print.

A detail of a print we picked up from the Lyrics and Type show. See the full print.

More once it's all done! I'm expecting another couple of prints soon…

Party Invitation

2010-07-20T14:49:00.001-04:00

The final version:

Click to enlarge

Work in Progress: Party Invite

2010-07-12T19:21:00.004-04:00

Some hand-drawn lettering I'm working on at the moment. In case you're wondering, that says "Sissy Drink Drunk Night". You know.

Whoops.

2010-07-05T09:31:00.005-04:00

I totally just killed my blog template. It's going to have to look like this for a little while.

Update 1: Looking better. Sorry about the birds and the banner image but those will have to wait until I'm at home with my Photoshop files.

Update 2: Banner's back. Stupid birds.

Update 3: Birds are gone, replaced with an ink splot. Trying to remove them entirely (as oppose to replacing them) completely broke everything.

The Reevoo Magazine

2010-06-17T06:27:00.002-04:00

I've been posting a lot of screenshots of work in progress. Well, I'm pleased to say that the project is finally done and (relatively) polished.

Over the course of a weekend, we sat down and thought about content. There's some great content out there about consumer electronics: digital cameras, headphones, televisions, etc. Sadly, most of it is locked away in boring blog templates with poor accompanying photos. Magazines actually do a great job of presenting this content in a lively, vivid manner.

Previously, you couldn't present blog content like a print magazine – bandwidth, load times and browser compatibility all made this extremely difficult. But the web has evolved so much since then. And with the new HTML5 specification, it's getting easier and easier to do beautiful, attractive layouts. So why hasn't anyone ever presented blog content like that?

Here's what we did about it. We took content from our own blog (which is terribly designed) and put it into a lovely, HTML5 container that will work on modern browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome) and mobile devices like iPads, iPhones, etc. It uses real web fonts (thanks to the Google Font API) and a bunch of neat CSS and Javascript tricks.

And it's a lot nicer and it wasn't hard to do – like I said, we accomplished 90% of the work in a weekend. Compositing digital cameras with water splashes is really quite easy if you know what you're doing.

Check it out:

Launch Reevoo Magazine
(modern browser required)

Work in Progress: Geometry

2010-06-14T13:14:00.004-04:00

Last one! I'll have a link on the 17th of June.

Work in Progress: Splash

2010-05-31T13:12:00.005-04:00

Another work in progress screen cap. I should be able to debut the project in a few weeks time.

Blogger

2010-05-18T04:37:00.009-04:00

Seems to have made some changes and I've had to take down a couple of posts until I can get the images sorted out.

Back in a flash. Or at least, back once I've found my server information, set up my permissions and start uploading images to my server again.

Work in Progress: All Kinds of Clever

2010-05-06T05:30:00.003-04:00

Being busy means lots of work in progress posts. Here's another execution of that graphic elements system I mentioned earlier.

Recent Work: TV

2010-04-30T04:28:00.003-04:00

The last post showed some of my work in progress for a system of graphic elements that I've been developing. Here's how those colourful, stripey lines turned out.

And in case you're wondering, yes, that television can indeed be all yours, for free, through the Reevoo Plus Competition.

Work in Progress: Test

2010-04-25T14:59:00.005-04:00

Just a little something on which I'm working. More soon.

Mike Wood: the Height of Funny

2010-03-22T17:40:00.003-04:00

Comedian Mike Wood, on stage for the first heat of the Laughing Horse New Act of the Year.

click for larger

click for larger

Octopus

2010-03-07T15:27:00.000-05:00

L made octopus last night. Gorgeous.

The Annoying Gourmand

2010-02-06T14:51:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure we've all met this person at one time or another.

Recent Work: Chris Govias Photography

2010-02-01T08:53:00.001-05:00

My brand new photo portfolio is online. Go, look, commission!

Type on the Street

2010-01-30T16:02:00.000-05:00

Happened across this over the weekend. Turns out it's right in my neighbourhood! Sadly, it's not filled with printers, letterpresses and woodtype.

Recent Work: Last.fm's Best of 2009

2010-01-17T17:54:00.005-05:00

Just before Christmas, I put together a custom newspaper for Last.fm's Best of 2009. Despite a very, very tough print deadline (the entire project was completed in four and a half days!), I'm really pleased with the results. Much thanks to the crew at Last.fm for the opportunity to work with them and their truly awesome data.

Check it out below. Especially that wicked infographic that makes up the centre spread!

Recent Work: Camera Obscura

2010-01-05T13:11:00.004-05:00

I was thrilled to be invited to contribute an illustration for the Hype Machine's 2009 Zeitgeist. With Camera Obscura as my chosen artist, I sketched out a couple of different ideas and ended up creating some custom type that played off of the Pulp/Horror sound of their name.

I'm really pleased with it, particularly because I had a great time drawing the hashmark letters for the word "revealed", even if they're a little small in the illustration.

Behind the Scenes: Mike Wood's Helmet

2009-12-20T07:38:00.004-05:00

As promised, here's a look behind the scenes of the photoshoot for that promo piece I created recently.

The helmet Mike uses for his act is an awesome, 1970s vintage Canadian motorcycle helmet that he's modified heavily. And by modified heavily, I mean he's put a bunch of spikes on top.

Knowing that I wanted a 3/4 view of the helmet, I set up a softbox camera left, pointed slightly down. This provided the majority of the illumination and also gave the helmet a bit of shadow around the edges to provide depth. A second light bounced off a reflector to the right of the helmet ensured the shadows weren't too harsh.

Not a bad shot, but hardly slick enough for my purposes. Only having two lights means that I often have to plan my post-production pretty carefully – what I could accomplish with three lights, I do with two and Photoshop. So for the next shot, I put the second light with a slave trigger inside the helmet, taped to the top. You can see how this gave the inside of the helmet a great glow:

Here's the a quick back and forth of the two images showing the difference:

With the shoot done, I then proceeded to process and edit the shots. A little bit of masking and editing in Photoshop resulted in this next image. I composited the glowing interior with the exterior shot, brought in a new chin-strap and did some cosmetic retouching.

And now the final result. I removed the background, brought out some highlights and tweaked the Levels on the spikes.

Recent Work: Mike Wood!

2009-12-05T07:20:00.004-05:00

Mike Wood is an internationally acclaimed street performer, best known for catapulting a cabbage through the air which he catches on a spiked helmet. No, seriously. He's great. Funny, too.

Mike approached me to create a promo piece which he could send to the World Busker Fest 2010 organizers, one of whom is an avid philatelist. As such, the solution was to create a stamp commemorating Mike's appearance.

After a couple of concepts, it became clear that the solution was to take the iconic image from Mike's act and present it in a clean, contemporary design.

Next up – behind the scenes of the photoshoot!

The New York Public Library, again

2009-11-14T08:12:00.000-05:00

Going through my archives, I found this from a couple of years ago.

Chris Ware in the New Yorker

2009-10-28T06:19:00.003-04:00

link to the New Yorker
Every time I come across Chris Ware's work, I fall in love with it all over again. If you don't know his work, Ware is a brilliant comic artist whose ability to render even the most complicated things simply gives his work a rare elegance. His cover for the New Yorker, pictured above, is evidence of this. Ware is also an incredibly talented hand-letterer and his work is heart-breakingly beautiful in its writing and execution.

Ware's piece for the New Yorker is particularly timely for me. I was rooting through a sketchbook recently, and came across a page where I'd obviously been having a Bad Drawing Day and had written a note to myself:

Behind the Scenes: Anatomy of an Image

2009-10-16T14:47:00.006-04:00

I did a shoot recently that ended up having a really interesting post-production component. I was taking a photography of my old, beaten up, hard shell suitcase and wanted it to look like it was a classic studio product shot.

Now, I only have two strobe lights but the lighting design I had in mind required four. As such, I ended up taking four different shot, moving my highlight strobe to a different position for each one, and then compositing them.

Here's my base image, lit with a silver umbrella to the camera right:

And here are three more images, each with its own highlight:

click for larger

I composited the three highlight images in this manner:

With the highlights composited, I then had the task of removing the wear and tear (retouching my suitcase at 600% in Photoshop made me realize just how much it's been through), address label and red tape from the case. Once I'd completed that, I removed the case from its background and dropped it into a studio background.

The final product:

Work in the Wild!

2009-10-05T14:27:00.000-04:00

Some recent work of mine is up in St. Pancras International station.

Saturday Morning …

2009-09-12T06:27:00.004-04:00

… and I'm busy. My desk is a huge mess, I've just finished taking some photos, and I've got a brochure on the go. Sounds like it's time to go to Broadway Market.

More Type Outside My House

2009-09-02T06:32:00.000-04:00

These may become part of a continuing series (previous post here). Left the house the other day and found this great hand-painted logo on the side of a truck bed.

Work in Progress: Unicycles

2009-08-10T10:25:00.001-04:00

Busy, busy, busy! Here's a teaser from a recent photoshoot. More soon.

Sweet Wheels

2009-07-24T06:57:00.001-04:00

Came home the other day and found this awesome type parked outside my place.

Street Art

2009-07-12T06:56:00.001-04:00

The British seem to put fences around everything. And they don't just put up cute little picket fences to divide property – they put up 10' tall iron fences/walls with razor wire/spikes at the top. As a Canadian used to wide open spaces, public parks and people's lawns butting up against each other, this strikes me as unnecessary and odd.

As I was walking home the other day, I realized I'm not the only one when I noticed this piece of street art. It made me laugh out loud.

Almond Tart

2009-06-28T18:34:00.004-04:00

New photography at Curiosity and the Cupcake.

50 Rock

2009-06-18T14:56:00.003-04:00

Recently, I've been loving Tina Fey's new television series "30 Rock". Hilarious, witty, great writing and there seems to be a Star Wars reference in every episode. Anyway, it reminded me of this shot I took while there in November of 2007.

click for larger

Word to Live By

2009-05-21T12:26:00.002-04:00

Just some hand-rendered type, nice and large on A2.

Blaxletter

2009-05-10T14:19:00.001-04:00

This one's part of an ongoing series that translates the voice-over from the trailers of classic Blaxploitation films into typographic posters. Soon to be limited-edition prints!

You can check out the series in full on Flickr.

Canadian Funny

2009-04-10T14:36:00.006-04:00

click for series
The hilarious Mike Wood took the stage at the Hackney Empire the other night, and I took photos.

Work in Progress: Mr. Christopher

2009-04-04T15:44:00.000-04:00

Been quiet around here recently. It's because I'm busy WORKING ON SECRET THINGS.

The Girl in the Orange Coat

2009-03-24T15:41:00.002-04:00

click for full image

The Joy of Information

2009-02-22T18:20:00.004-05:00

My copies of Nicholas Felton's annual reports arrived recently. Felton is one of the minds behind Daytum and his reports present the minutiae of daily life in brilliant, beautiful ways.

SVA has an interview with him.

Introducing: Soul-Glu!

2009-02-19T10:47:00.009-05:00

Working a Terrible Soul-less Job for THE MAN?
Crippled by Fear of the Recession and UNEMPLOYMENT?
You need BRAND NEW and harmless SOUL-GLU!

This one started as a quick sketch just to keep myself from forgetting the concept. Then it got a little more detailed. Then it got scanned. Then the composition got tweaked in Photoshop. Then it got coloured. And now, here we are. One of these days, I'll take a screenprinting course, and make editions available. You know. As art. Very depressing art about losing one's soul to corporate drudgery.

click for big

New work: Hand-drawn Type Book Cover

2009-02-04T06:30:00.004-05:00

I'm a huge fan of Penguin Books, in no small part because of their fantastic design heritage. In fact, I own more than a few books about the Penguin's design process and their covers. Understandably, I was quite thrilled to discover that Penguin is now offering editions of classic books with blank covers, a promotion called My Penguin.

This past Christmas, for one of L's gifts, I drew up a cover for one of her favourite books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Given that I've always known/ called the book "Alice in Wonderland" (doesn't everybody?), I designed the typography to reflect the more commonly known title.

The Plight of a Designer

2009-01-30T11:55:00.003-05:00

I've been really busy recently, partially because of situations like the one illustrated below.

Type Compositions: Livin' Large

2009-01-06T11:51:00.005-05:00

This type piece was done early upon my arrival in London. Inspiration? Def Leppard's Let's Get Rocked and an empty bank account.

More Aloysius Skellington

2009-01-05T10:58:00.008-05:00

Poor Aloysius Skellington. His rather ghoulish appearance seems to lead to the oddest misunderstandings on a regular basis. In this case, it would seem a rather impertinent monkey, despite a lack of demonstrable skill, has challenged him to a battle of fiddle-playing*.

click for full image
*Silly Monkey. That's the devil.

On Skeletons

2008-12-10T10:50:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, you forget that you were going to reveal something.

London Fog

2008-11-23T13:27:00.007-05:00

Woke up early to a city of fog and mystery the other day.

click for full image

They're Not That Great, Actually

2008-11-11T12:28:00.000-05:00

Collect Them in a Jar!

2008-11-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

*In other news, the Design Monkey Compendium now has access to a scanner. Huzzah!

No Scanner

2008-10-20T04:19:00.001-04:00

Updates to the Design Monkey Compendium are being impeded by a lack of hardware. This should be resolved soon.

Smithfield Type

2008-10-04T18:23:00.000-04:00

Some awesome engraved type from Smithfield Market.

Reminder

2008-09-18T15:16:00.000-04:00

Have We Met?

2008-09-10T12:32:00.004-04:00

What? You don't know Messrs Caltrop and Petard? Oh, you will. You most certainly will.

Battle Royale in My Brain

2008-09-01T19:07:00.001-04:00

I definitely feel this way sometimes. The calculus doesn't always jive with the design thing. Though it has proven useful when I've needed to integrate the type with the photography. Heh.

Success!!

2008-08-28T18:05:00.004-04:00

I'm thrilled to say that, after many months in secret, that I can finally reveal a major project. Below is an interactive version of the 2008 - 2009 Orchestra London Canada brochure (click to view larger).

Still Quiet!

2008-08-15T18:01:00.000-04:00

But here's some more hand-rendered type.

It's That Time

2008-07-24T08:13:00.005-04:00

The blog's been quiet due to some crazy deadlines. Thankfully, I'm now in the final phases, so expect more soon!

Ampersand!

2008-07-08T05:28:00.002-04:00

Serious hotness from House Industries.

More recently.

2008-06-27T09:00:00.001-04:00

More sardines. See the series at Curiosity and the Cupcake.

Recently.

2008-06-18T05:16:00.001-04:00

It's been quiet over at the headquarters of the Design Monkey Compendium. The design monkeys have been off traipsing about the globe, quickly using up their alloted vacation days, personal days and sick days. Meanwhile, the photo monkeys have been busy at work, taking frame upon frame of delicious food stuffs.

Here's a rather unconventional photo of sardines.

click for full image

On Grid Design

2008-05-30T10:26:00.001-04:00

Type Compositions: Two Days

2008-05-20T03:03:00.001-04:00

Although I love the Moleskine Cahier series, I have a special place in my heart for the Letter-sized, classic, black sketchbooks. I have a number of these, and aside from the usual monkeys and robots, they have almost all of my project-based work and sketches in them. Of course, they've got warm-up pages of type in them as well.

Type Compositions: Warm Up

2008-05-12T04:52:00.001-04:00

The pages of my sketchbook are occasionally... lacking, something that is usually due to a lack of coffee, or not having warmed my hands up as yet. Here's an older type composition - dig that crazy typographer's "hand", to say nothing of the "unfortunately". Yikes.

Unemployed in London

2008-05-09T08:07:00.000-04:00

Guitar Zero

2008-04-29T09:28:00.005-04:00

I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but this comic is based on an actual conversation. Which also implies that we were listening to Extreme.

The State of Being

2008-04-05T19:47:00.002-04:00

I haven't had a haircut since before I travelled to Peru, which was in October 2007. As such, this is a pretty decent approximation of what I look like on any given day. And, although I don't own a shirt like the one pictured, I fully agree with its sentiments.

Type Compositions: End of 4C

2008-04-03T15:56:00.005-04:00

I recently finished up a three-pack of the Moleskine cahiers. As my regular sketchbook is appropriately named "4" (it being the fourth in a line of identical, 8x10, black sketchbooks), I lettered the Moleskines as 4A, 4B and 4C. Here's the last page of the last one.

Photoshop Now Online

2008-03-26T09:27:00.001-04:00

I mentioned this a while back when it was still in the works. Today, Adobe has released a version of Photoshop Express as an online web-app. I poked around with it quickly and was impressed – it's got a significant number of key features that will improve the average person's photos. Things like red-eye reduction are to be expected, but the white balancing feature is really impressive.

Also a nice touch is integration with Picasa, Photobucket, and Facebook. Strange there's no Flickr support, but that could be forthcoming.

Check it out here.

Type Commission: Top Guys

2008-03-19T19:50:00.003-04:00

Some hand-rendered type that I recently completed for a client.

Type Compositions: The Jazz Trap

2008-03-16T08:50:00.001-04:00

You're probably familiar with this scenario. It's Sunday. The sun is streaming through the windows, warming you as you write in your sketchbook. You put on some jazz and Coltrane quietly segues into Oscar Peterson and then again into Etta James. Before you know, it's four hours later and you'd really meant to go to "_____" but now it's closed.

The Long-Lost, Endangered...

2008-03-14T11:01:00.002-04:00

* Not actually Jackalopes. Still, giant, strange, rabbity-things darting about in the mists of Machu Picchu? It's an honest mistake.

A Freelancer's Dream

2008-03-05T16:28:00.001-05:00

Found on the side of a jeweler's store near Holborn.

Le Cafe

2008-02-24T10:58:00.005-05:00

Heh. Certain French Canadian words get lost in translation in Paris.

The New York Public Library

2008-02-22T16:31:00.002-05:00

click for larger

Sunset in the Andes

2008-02-17T12:14:00.002-05:00

Sunset while hiking in the Andes, October 2007.