January 23, 2012

the tiger's face



Love this series of paintings from Nicholas Stevenson. "In these paintings I am attempting to recreate one of my favourite sensations. The unnamed feeling you get from spotting a distant object on a beach, looking more bewildering and terrifying as you stroll towards it. Old boat? Driftwood? Giant Squid? Body? Or maybe the sensation of looking in to an empty cage at the zoo; the sign with the latin name is present, so something must be in there somewhere, but where?"

January 9, 2012





design with the other 90%


Design with the Other 90% exhibition presented by Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum closes today at the United Nations. The exhibit features sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. It will continue online where visitors can interact with ideas and contribute their own through the Other 90% Network. Above: Floating Community Lifeboats in Bangladesh / Incremental Housing in Chile / Spaza-de-Move-on in South Africa

January 3, 2012

(for)war(d) together

I've had this postcard since a bookmaking class in college. The professor littered each table with old postcards and papers to collage into handmade books. I saved this one from the scissors: "Forward Together," Conservative party conference 1980. We saw The Iron Lady over the holiday weekend — Meryl Streep was brilliant.

December 31, 2011



Eva Zeisel, ceramic artist and designer died on Friday in New City, N.Y. She was 105. The New York Times notes: "Ms. Zeisel (pronounced ZY-sel), along with designers like Mary and Russel Wright and Charles and Ray Eames, brought the clean, casual shapes of modernist design into middle-class American homes with furnishings that encouraged a postwar desire for fresh, less formal styles of living." Photos from a 2007 New York Magazine article about Eva.

December 19, 2011

December 5, 2011

New site for L'Office Optimiste with studio work and store!

December 2, 2011

Milton Glaser's AIGA/NY talk last night was one of the best lectures I've seen in quite a few years. I only wish he had told some of his jokes!

November 9, 2011

"Just believe in the act of making."

October 26, 2011





This is a stunning example of tactile typography. Dominique Falla, the designer of the poster, details her process here.

October 20, 2011



It was a huge inspiration to see Karel Martens at the beginning of September. AIGA/NY has the video archive on Vimeo.

August 19, 2011





Back from a trip to Aroostook County, Maine where we visited family, picked wild blueberries and hazelnuts, took early morning drives, canoed on the lake and went to some killer bonfires.