just around the corner, design week comes to los angeles, celebrating our great industry for one week, highlighting any & all design-related events. the lists for each day’s events are growing rapidly, with all kinds of art shows, workshops and meetups. check out designweekla.org and put your favorites on your calendar today!
Sometimes a Brand isn’t Worth Saving: Here’s How to Tell by jump associates for fastcodesign.com
i’m really looking forward to following this series by jump associates. in this first piece, they present 5 important questions to ask in order to determine whether a brand can breathe new life through revitalization, with great examples of how brands that may have seemed stagnant reexamined their options and told new stories.
this past weekend, i headed down to the LA printer’s fair at the international print museum in carson to get my annual dose of awesome letterpress projects and enjoy the demos of the old linotype machine. i feel like i’m inching my way ever-closer to doing more printing after attending last year and then doing a workshop with the night shift [a group that meets at the museum and makes prints using the wood and metal type in the archives].
this year was another great selection of design and print, hand-bound books, and specialty printing tools. one of my favorites, fugu fugu press, was back again this year with a really cute selection of cards and prints.
another printer had this really cute idea of giving away make-ready scraps in little bags. some of the shapes make great book marks, but mostly i chose some nice, deeply-impressed pieces to stave off my letterpress lust until i can make my own.
what’s this? it’s a paper pulper! what i couldn’t capture all in one frame is that this pulp mechanism was hooked up to a stationary bike [maybe we can finally call it a ‘stationery bike’] where riders could power the whole contraption by simply pedaling their feet.
…but this paper isn’t made from wood. this demo showed how to make paper from army fatigues! it looked pretty cool, and takes the pounding from a typewriter like a pro.
these books were some of the more unique hand-made crafts i saw, with beautifully sanded wood and intricate bindings. in addition to the sales tables, there were printing demos where attendees could run off their own pre-set posters, and typesetting, where guests could typeset their names, hand it to a printer who would lock it into a frame, and print you a personalized souvenir as a visitor to the museum. fantastic!
to help keep hot metal type alive, the museum has started the ludlow project, with the goal of rescuing a collection of typefaces and antique ludlow typecasting equipment to share with letterpress printers, museum visitors and use in teaching classes. watch the video below, and give what you can to this awesome project!
i love this 2-color, natural paper, downright stampy look for yes taco, profiled recently on art of the menu.
i’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, especially since people keep doing it: i love maps, and i love typography, and i REALLY love it when designers make typographic maps. thanks to designworklife.com for profiling theo inglis’ new york postcard project.
you may not recognize these right away if you don’t already have a tree growing in your yard, but feijoas are a delicious late summer guava that can add a lovely balance of sweetness and tartness to your life. check out seasonal eats: feijoas are falling from the trees!
if you’re not reading this right now today, maybe you didn’t know it’s raining. only today. very soon it will be back to sunny weather. but if you want to have some rainy day funtimes, pick one of these soups to warm your kitchen tonight: 10 simple soups for the start of the fall season
how do you grab attention in a competitive job market? if you’re in one of the performing arts, compiling your best clips into a promotional reel as part of a mailing makes it easy for any prospects to see exactly what you do as soon as they receive it. as an addendum to his web site and youtube channel, conductor robert boardman contacted me to create a dvd in the same style as part of his intro kit mailing, for maximum exposure to music department decision makers. i was happy to help showcase his energy and personality to get him one step closer to connecting with his dream jobs.
indeed!
this week i’m getting ahead at working on some fun surprises for holiday stuff. if it seems early to you, take a look at this oldie-but-goodie, how to plan your holiday mailing so you have time for everything.
How Starbucks Turns Coffee from Commodity to Splurge: Brand Thinking by Debbie Millman.
debbie millman interviews stanley hainsworth, who has worked with starbucks, nike and gatorade, about the essence of branding, how it works, and what happens when it doesn’t. if you think branding itself is a pretty obvious concept and want to leave it at that, this interview can give you some insight as to why we keep coming back to the core values and stories, and never stop striving to connect you with your clients.
back when we finally got our first big bounty of loquats from our rehabilitated trees, i researched loquats and found that one traditional use for the leaves was in tea for treating sore throats. at the time, i chose some nice, young, unblemished leaves and hung them to dry in the kitchen, eventually folding them into a jar for storage.
i have been feeling a sore throat coming on, and i’m all out of slippery elm bark [another sore throat remedy] so i thought i’d try it out. since i’m not sure what the flavor of these leaves is like, i figured i’d mix it up with some other under-the-weather tea herbs. i’m surprised how much of these were not bought. we have lemon verbena growing in a pot, but i did go out foraging for fresh, clean eucalyptus leaves in the park, and i’ve been chopping up all my orange peels and drying them in the oven.
loquat leaf tea: a sore throat remedy
3 large dried loquat leaves, crumbled
3 large dried eucalyptus leaves, crumbled
1 tb chopped ginger
1 tb dried orange peel
1 tb dried lemon verbena leaves
1 tb dried mint leaves
4 tsp raw honey
zest and juice of 1 lemon
place in a teapot and pour about a quart of hot water over all the dried herbs, ginger and lemon zest [a tea press works well for this]. let steep about 5 minutes. pour into a mug and stir in 1 tsp raw honey for each cup. slice the lemon crosswise in half, and then lengthwise into quarters. squeeze 1/4 lemon into each cup.
a beautifully simple design and execution of a promo video for a very important cause. excellent work!
this brand & identity for yeah! burger by tad carpenter is really fun! bold type and tantalizing colors in a strong, simple format, paired with really fun illustrations. see the full profile at designworklife.com
while it goes without saying that i’m a huge fan of cats, i’m seeing a pattern in that i seem to be drawn to daily projects as well. paper bicycle creative is showcasing a different pattern design every day, and they’re really outstanding!
what’s new in the neighborhood? well, we’re on our way to becoming a beer mecca [yeah!] after mohawk bend‘s opening last month, now we’ve got sunset beer company for even more of your beer tasting & shopping needs! and even though they’re in atwater, golden road brewing just mohawk customers in echo park their first taste of point the way ipa and golden road hefeweizen. it’s a good time to love craft beer!
parlato design studio 