Perhaps I'm missing those warm summer days in the mountains, but hiking up a mountain pass on a sunny day, then jumping into a cold alpine lake sounds pretty great right now—mosquitos be damned!
There's a simple beauty to the fact that sometimes all you need to be creative is a pencil and some paper. So with that in mind, I designed and handprinted these using linocut printing on some 5.5"x3.5" Moleskin notebooks.
The massive WSU 125 we created for Washington State University to commemorate all of their incredible academic achievements over the past 125 years looks as good in print as it does in real life. A big thanks to goes out to Communication Arts and the judges for selecting the WSU 125 into the Typography Annual 6. It's an honor to be listed along many other amazing pieces of typographic beauty. Be sure to pick up a copy and see for yourself.
And if you'd like to check out more on the project for Washington State University's 125th anniversary, you can see the project here.
A huge congrats to King Felix Hernandez on reaching 2000 strikeouts today, becoming the fourth youngest pitcher ever to do so in MLB history. And he did it on Mother's Day, in front of a hot pink clad King’s Court, just to make it that much more interesting during a 4-3 win over the Oakland A's.
Anyway, this was a little thing I made for the @copacino IG and Twitter feed to announce Felix's new milestone.
Growing up in Minnesota you’re around a lot of water. Even more so when you live in a town called White Bear Lake. And one of the formative people in all of this is my friend Lucas Will. Together we encouraged each other to get kayaks while we were High School, and would regularly go paddle after class. We’d also just sit out on the water, hang out and enjoy the the outdoors.
This is where we started to form our love for paddling. Except Luke just took it a little further than I did. He’s since been an Alaskan kayak guide, paddled around the worlds largest body of freshwater, Lake Superior, and now he’s paddling down one of the worlds most iconic rivers, the Mississippi. The whole thing. From the headwaters of Lake Itasca, to the Gulf of Mexico. 2530 miles in all.
So to mark this enormous three month long journey, I helped Luke with a logo for his newly formed “adventure brand” (if you will), apply named Paddle In Hand. Along with a few other variations and icons. And hopefully this is just the start of things to come for Luke and Paddle In Hand. So keep an eye on this stuff because it’s only going to grow.
Also, be sure to follow Luke and his dog Tisher on their epic journey. He’s giving daily updates on the PiH Facebook page. And if you live along The Mighty Mississippi, swing by and wave at them as they float past.
Recently I picked up a Dremel electric engraver to, you guessed it, engrave some stuff. So for a little practice I took an old soup can and made a new receptical to hold our X-Acto knives around the office. After sprucing it up a little, of course. And the engraving went easier than I thought, too. So hopefully this is just the start to many projects like this.
Back in November, we got to help Ford promote and run an awesome event they were doing in conjunction with the Seattle Auto Show. The plan was to let people test drive the new Ford Focus around the warning track of Safeco Field (which is across the street from the Auto Show) that uses all these fancy cameras and sensors to track you as you drive the course. Then after people do the drive, they get a video sent to them showing the whole experience as if it’s a video game. It’s very cool. So cool in fact, that’s it’s almost one of those “build it and they will come” situations. So our job was fairly easy.
It should be added that getting to walk and drive around one of the most beautiful stadiums in the country is a pretty awesome feeling. It’s sort of magical with a side of, “I’m not supposed to be here.” Which makes it all the more impressive that Ford was willing to do such a thing, and do it for free. You can even check out my drive around the bases right here:
Have you ever worked with leather before? A little over a year ago I got my first chance to do so while making some brand books for Redhook Ale. If you haven’t done any leather work before you should, because it’s pretty cool. And slightly weird. Especially when you think about the fact you’re using the skin of a formally alive animal for something other than it was originally intended.
The best thing about making these was being able to get away from the computer and having a chance to work with your hands. Tangible stuff. Stuff you can feel. Every cover piece was cut out by hand, as was every bit of the type. That’s a heck of a lot more rewarding than just printing everything off and binding it with a piece of plastic.
For the past two and a half months I’ve been working with the great folks at Hey, one of the newest agencies to spring up in the Pacific Northwest. They’ve been around for about a year now, and since they’re still in the process of laying their foundation, it’s a fantastic experience to help them with that process. I love that sorta stuff.
Probably the best thing about Hey, is that they’re quite aware of the normal ad agency pitfalls, and are doing their best to avoid them. Luckily, they have a few things going for them. First of all, they have two good guys behind the steering wheel, Eric Gutierrez and Chris Lloyd, both former DDB Seattle guys. Another thing working in their favor is they’re small, and taking time to grow. They’re not chasing money from bad clients, and are actually pretty selective with the projects they take on. They also have zero interest in just being another soul sucking ad factory that churns out the same crap that makes people hate advertising (you know who you are).
So anyway, this concludes my ass kissing for the day. I do feel pretty lucky to be working there with good people and on fun stuff and I really think they represent a positive movement in advertising. Same goes for a lot of the cool, small shops that have been popping up over the past few years. We need more of it.
Be sure to keep those eyes peeled at all times. You never know when you might spot some good looking type staring right back at you.
There comes a time in life when you’re old and gray, and your legacy is all you have left. Death is coming fast and all you can think is, “how will I be remembered?” Well, luckily for you there’s a great new site that could help with that very problem, without forcing you to have children. It’s called FontStruct and it allows anyone to build their own working typeface, through the magic of the internet.
All you have to do is make an awesome typeface, name it after yourself, then watch as future generations of designers talk about how you’re a genius. It worked for Frederic W. Goudy, Claude Garamond, Harry “Helvetica” Helverson and it can work for you. So please, do your future-self a favor and check it out.