how’s this for an awesome diy project, combining custom typography with [hopefully] a love of salvaged signs. hey, if you can’t find any, make them! check the whole how-to at design sponge.
packaging
image: imaginaria creative / thedieline.com
what a cool, fun, retro, stampy, hand-made looking label for broken trail sauces. check the whole profile at the dieline and be sure to read all the great copy in the details.
design industry
it may be a bit too late for this year, but if you found yourself battling your past of disorganized paperwork when preparing taxes [or you’re about to], take that frustration and do something about it for next year: biz ladies: taxes made easy
a wave of design award submission deadlines just passed, but the under consideration people just announced a new one the FPO awards, calling for entries now!
cicLAvia is this weekend! make sure your bikes are tuned up & ready to go, and hit the streets this sunday!
food
it’s the season of flowers, including those that eat like a meal. if you’re looking for endless great artichoke ideas, i’ve collected the best i could find for LAist: seasonal eats: have flowers for dinner with artichokes!
a reform school filled with avid food traders. image: gregory han
this past weekend, my friend, writer & sustainable food business strategist, emily ho organized the first LA food swap, calling for home-cooks, preservers and general diy-foodie-types to bring their artisanal wares to a small, informal food trading event. i have been wanting to do something like this for awhile, but never got to organizing, so i’m really glad she made it happen.
my offerings at the LA food swap: garlic confit, mixed citrus marmalade, dandelion vodka, blood orange / lemon verbena vodka
when i first heard about the event, i researched a few seasonal preparations and got to work on the ones that would need the most time, namely the vodka infusions. i took a long walk foraging hundreds of dandelions for a 3-week infusion that turned out quite nicely [though it was hard to tell along the way]. i had been curious about this slow-cooked marmalade, so i decided to modify it by using a mix of citrus: cara cara, navel and blood oranges, meyer lemons and pink grapefruit. finally, i made something i always have on standby, garlic confit.
emily made some deliciously deep red beet fettucini, an dried & ground mandarin zest seasoning, and foraged pink peppercorns. this is just one example of the great ideas you get at a food swap—of all the things i’ve been doing with citrus peels, drying & grinding them into powder hadn’t occurred to me [though i do stick the dried zest in a pepper mix and throw it in a mill]. wonderful!
marmalades, chocolates, lemonades, arancelli, and extracts!
just a sample of what some of the many table and benches looked like. i was lucky enough to entice 2 food traders into awarding me with a bottle of that arancello, the rosemary lemonade concentrate, and yonder at the end of the table, some lemons & grapefruit.
a group shot of all my new friends
so, here’s what it comes down to. i arrived with 11 jars of confit, 12 jars of marmalade, 2 jars of blood orange / verbena vodka & 3 jars of dandelion vodka. i traded them for [left to right] a bottle of arancello, garlic bread, a jar of pickled carrots & jalapeños, rangpur lime marmalade, pickled multicolored heirloom carrots, 2 lemons, strawberry-grapefruit marmalade, 3 avocados, peach marmalade, a grapefruit / fennel tincture, a jar of cherries, lemon curd, beet fettucini, spicy salsa, brown butter cookies, lavendar oatmeal scrub, 4 cheese & artichoke biscuits, rosemary lemonade concentrate, and 3 oro blanco grapefruits. not included in this photo are a few arugula plants, quince, lemon rosemary cupcakes and a bowl of foraged herbs, basically the leftovers of what we had that we traded in order not to take our own items home.
beyond all this food stuff, i got to meet some really nice people who value food traditions and want to connect over it, which has been wonderful. everyone repeatedly asked when we’d be doing it again, and the tweets following the event were full of excitement about using new food items. to see more photos and get the official word, visit LA food swap & sign up for emails on the next swap. let’s keep this event full of great people, energy and ideas! in the meantime, enjoy their official write-up: our first food swap, or my own recap at LAist: an old-fashioned good time: the 1st ever LA food swap.
[image: matt lehman]
i don’t have a bunch to say about design today, but what i will say is that this illustrated state motto project 50 and 50 is super cool! i can’t wait till they get to california! thanks designworklife.com for the link.
[image: twig & thistle]
these have been all over the internet this week, and i think they’re brilliant: naturally sweet diy valentines! pick a fruit, pair it with a fruity pun sticker and share a naturally sweet treat with your valentine!
sustainability
it seems like a preponderance of news items involving sustainability came out this week. first of all, these services have been around for awhile, but if you didn’t jump on them before, reduce your junk mail with a selection of mail reduction services. second, if you wondered what it’s like to live as close to zero waste as possible, the zero waste home answers your questions about it. third, i’m astounded to find out that ben & jerry’s has figured out a way to run their ice cream factory on ice cream!
i love these videos that animate the text being sung or spoken, but this one takes it to another level by including all the typos and having the narrator read every one of them.
sustainability
[image: thedieline.com]
the design museum made this awesome young designers kit—but they took it further than simply inspiring young people to get into design, arming them with tools—they did it sustainably with recycled and low-impact materials. bravo! see the whole profile on the dieline.
got a minute to take the first in a multi-part series of steps in learning to go sustainable beyond ink and paper? i’m writing a piece on revisiting all the milestones in a print production process and encouraging we make more sustainable choices over on neenah’s against the grain blog. Eco-Friendly 2011: Think Forward…Then Backwards.
i’m loving this LemonAid project on good.is: a german company mixed up the perfect batch of lemon aid [to their taste, anyway], then figured out how to produce it using all fair trade resources, and then they donate a portion of their profits to fund grass-roots organizations in the countries where they source the ingredients. now that’s cooking with lemons!
one of the unexpected turnouts of the katrina disaster is that some areas are being rebuilt using much more sustainable materials, read up on utne.com: thanks katrina for greener building materials.
design industry
the first of the reviews are in from AIGA LA: Speakeasy, our fellows celebration for the 2010 AIGA fellows. check out michael dooley’s 2-part follow up interviewing john coy: influence and inspiration, part 1: john coy.
with all the talk of annual planning, i think it’s important to remember not to plan so hard you miss unexpected opportunities. justin ahrens shares his perspective on the parse blog: rain or shine: embrace the unplanned.
food
i’m on a bender about using more of the food we buy, and this week i get on everyone’s case about wasting orange peels [among other things] over at LAist. because i’m a curmudgeon who thinks you should dry them and eat them. but look—this other girl at serious eats is also nutty for citrus seasoning with her deliciously italian lemon salt with fennel and chili!
and speaking of going grassroots on the food industry, what about an old-fashioned food swap!? i joined my friend emily’s LAX swappers group here in LA, you should too!
not that you’ve forgotten how the economy got into a mess, but information is beautiful made a really clean animated infographic that drives the point home.
branding
[image: astronautdesign.com]
truly stunning branding system created by astronaut design [the whole portfolio is well-worth a spin], described simply: Antarctic Voice is a project that aims to express the voice, the silence and the magic of the unattainable continent, Antarctica. view the complete project profile at identitydesigned.com.
[image: re-nest.com]
i don’t use traditional calendars for date tracking so much anymore [because i’m so dependent on ical], but i still think they’re a thing of beauty and can be some great rotational art for your home. re-nest.com has a great round-up of cute 2011 calendars.
it’s a new year, and everyone’s talking about how to start it off right. let me put down my breakfast pizza to suggest maybe we learn to give better design feedback. thanks, mule design, for bringing humorous honesty to this admittedly difficult process. here’s an excerpt in case you haven’t clicked yet: First rule of design feedback: what you’re looking at is not art. It’s not even close. It’s a business tool in the making and should be looked at objectively like any other business tool you work with. The right question is not, “Do I like it?” but “Does this meet our goals?” If it’s blue, don’t ask yourself whether you like blue. Ask yourself if blue is going to help you sell sprockets. Better yet: ask your design team. You just wrote your first feedback question. bam!
AIGA
[image: AIGA LA]
the time has come to celebrate designers who have made outstanding contributions to the legacy of los angeles. this year, AIGA LA honors 2010 fellows john coy and jeri heiden, and invites you to meet, mix & mingle with past AIGA fellows and AIGA medalists in a truly wonderful evening january 20 at the palihouse in west hollywood. i should know, i’m producing it, and we’re planning a fantastic speakeasy event. the tickets are a steal, register today before they go up the day of the event!
los angeles
so what’s new in my hood? i’ve been wondering what to do with the preponderance of elderly towels i’ve accumulated. like, they’re not falling apart, but they’re not pretty and they don’t match. i got a nice set of matching towels, but since i’m not into wasting things, i kept the old towels too. maybe for cat baths or spills or making into rags? thanks blue collar dog supplies for solving this for me! i can give them to dogs in need! so can you!
kelly over at echoparknow.com has a great list of echo parky things to do in 2011. come to think of it, i should probably read the madonnas of echo park, and i love climbing stairs, and i am sure going to miss the lake on its 2-year hiatus.
what a cool internet collaboration on a christmas song!
packaging
[image: the dieline]
a really unique illustration on oncoated stock to showcase burn cottage, a biodynamic winery. by mash.
typography
[image: thedielinewine]
beautiful, simple type treatment and illustration for bathe wines by fuller. so clean and classic! check the complete profile on the dieline.
some outstanding tv quotes from mad men, the wire and battlestar galactica, in custom typeset.
loving LA got a lot easier with this awesome tumblr: 10>110>101, an eclectic collection of all kinds of LA ephemera. thanks to @theroyalacademy for sharing it!
food
i’m not going to add to your holiday overwhelm more than i already have, but consider these cookies. they’re made with salt and pepper. if you like salty cookies that really bring out the flavor, try these out: salt n pepper sandwich cookies. yum!
parlato design studio 