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!
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!
last week, my friend seth and i took a day trip to oak glen above yucaipa for some apple & raspberry picking. i highly recommend this area for some good-time harvest season fun [but fair warning: the whole area is packed on weekends]. we were hoping to avoid the weekend crowds, but alas, there is no self-picking on weekdays save for raspberry picking at snow-line orchards. i had been looking forward to berry picking anyway, so we split a mini-pack of fresh cider donuts, bought our cartons [12 bucks will get you an empty 3-pack to fill yourself] and got to work.
there’s a lot more than raspberries going on in the raspberry patch though. it’s an entire microcosm of activity with grasshoppers jumping around, bright green leaf beetles going about their business, little brown frogs croaking from somewhere in the bramble, and not least of all, BEES! they’re everywhere! i thought they might be pollinating flowers, but upon inspection it seems that bees are little vampires when it comes to raspberries, gently puncturing each individual drupelet and drinking the juice. if you’re allergic to bee stings, you might want to steer clear of raspberry picking, but seth and i never got stung. the good old rule of don’t bother them & they won’t bother you still stands.
it took us about an hour to make our way through a few of the rows and fill our flats. picking raspberries is a pretty simple technique of searching out those of the deepest color, gently pinching the berry and pulling it away from the stem. if it doesn’t come off easily, chances are it’s not ripe. unlike stone fruits, raspberries do not continue to ripen once picked, so it’s best to only pick the ripest fruit. you can save time by searching out clusters of ripe fruit, cupping your hand and picking several berries one after the other, letting them drop into your palm as you go, rather than placing each one individually into your basket.
despite all the delicious-sounding baked goods i found starring raspberries, i have opted to eat most of them fresh, to get the most of the raw nutrients. i made up this raspberry parfait that uses more fruit than i’d ever normally use if i’d bought them locally [this recipe would easily use a whole small carton]. what a luxury to have this much fruit!
raspberry pepita parfaits
1 cup fresh raspberries
1 cup whole plain yogurt
2 tbs pepitas
1 tb vanilla extract
1 tb honey
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp cinnamon
a splash of rosewater
place everything except the raspberries & pepitas in a small mixing bowl and mix until you reach a uniform consistency. taste and adjust flavors if necessary.
depending on the glass you use, you can choose how to layer your berries and yogurt. i chose these martini glasses, so i put a heaping tablespoon of yogurt on the bottom, then a layer of berries, then split the remaining yogurt, and sprinkled the remaining pepitas and berries on top.
i’ll be co-working at kleverdog in chinatown all week. eating lots of raspberries we picked last week on our excursion up to yucaipa! and this saturday is the LA printer’s fair at the international printing museum in carson. come down & get your annual fix of wood and letterpress type!
Just My Type from Pentagram on Vimeo.
take a high-speed spin through the new book just my type, video by pentagram! see more of a profile on fastcodesign.com.
i already think undertaking a logo a day is a pretty big deal, but branding 10,000 lakes is going to brand one minnesota lake every day for longer than most of your parents’ marriages … or try to at least! take a spin, they’re really sweet.
so, look, it’s not like i’m trying to tell you what to do or anything, but there’s a reason i spend so much time getting to know you and doing research before whipping out your next logo or web site. embrace design strategy is written from one designer to another, but it’s also a great look for clients into why we do research, why we interview you with lots of questions, and why we might sometimes seem like we’re spending too much time getting to know you. it’s all in the strategy!
awesome innovations in echo park include a very recently-unveiled solar-powered trash & recycling can at sunset & echo park avenue. get the full story from echoparknow.com.
some fun summer foods have been profiled for Seasonal Eats on LAist lately, here are the most recent:
Seasonal Eats: Capture the Spice of Summer with Jalapeños!
Seasonal Eats: She’s a Peach
Seasonal Eats: Crunch into Sweet Corn!
Seasonal Eats: Melon-Tastic!
Seasonal Eats: Summer Plums!
i don’t know what you were doing two months ago, but i was checking out my friend, colleen wainwright’s, bold venture to raise $50k in the 50 days leading up to her 50th birthday. it seemed like a tall order, indeed, but i do remember thinking that if anyone could do it, colleen could. once the fundraising efforts got underway, it was off to a great start, which was my first indication that maybe, despite the obvious hurdles of time constraints and recession, this could really happen. we refreshed the page early and often. even though it lagged at times, she always stayed at least at her $1000/day average amount, if not ahead of it. but then, a great surge happened, and the $50k marker was reached 10 days early. this gave colleen even more fuel to continue to $60k and start talking matching funds with bigger organizations. at last count she was up to $130k and i don’t think she’s stopping there!
at day 50, we found ourselves at the much-awaited head-shaving party ready to celebrate. colleen has this great way of pulling a string of events together into a powerful story. she talked about this journey and all the amazing energy that crawled out of the woodwork to make it possible, and how its main lesson was that you really have to ask yourself if your crazy ideas and big plans are really impossible. they may seem that way, but you’ll never know if you don’t give them the life they deserve, shout them from the rooftops and tell everyone you know how much you believe in them. she did so much more than achieve this goal, it’s like the original idea of raising $50k was the starting fuel needed to really go big with it. i’m very proud of her and very interested to see what’s next in this ever-evolving work with writegirl.org.
i watched the pitch video after the party was over, and it’s amazing to me how much it’s changed now that we know how this part of the story ends. there is this exuberance for the unknown, this little engine that could, and she says “we will do this great thing!” with very little attachment to the done part and much more to the doing. reaching goals, milestones and markers are really brief moments in time, but we give them so much more weight than where we spend most of our lives, in the doing of things on the way there. it’s a great reminder to mind what you’re doing, every day on the way to wherever you’re going.
if you’re free tomorrow and want to learn more about this whole crazy process, colleen will be at the apple store on 3rd street promenade talking about fundraising on the mac with indiegogo!
my friend and colleague, josh ross, set up this awesome photo booth at the party, and shot many fantastic photos of colleen and friends. he does really wonderful work, if you are looking for a photographery, i highly recommend him.
this is a cat that lives on the barlow respiratory hospital grounds in elysian park. i see her around when i’m walking through the park to chinatown. she is super-friendly, very healthy, talkative, and has 7 toes on her front paws just like my cat, motor. i’ve never been able to ask about her name, so i nicknamed her thumby. i was told that some of motor’s siblings had this coloring, so i think of her as a distant cousin. for awhile i didn’t see her around and feared the worst, but i was really happy to have a little thumby visit last week.
i’m jumping back into co-working with a jelly meetup at kleverdog. so far it’s just a few people, but the space is fantastic and very comfy–and so close to my house, right in chinatown. sign up for one of the meetups through jelly to try it out. now if i could only figure out how to walk here with my laptop, my lunch and my bag o’ tricks.
parlato design studio 