he good folks at Greenstreet Cycles asked me to design their shop and cycling club jerseys this spring. And, unsurprisingly, it was a blast. They wanted a classic look, so I borrowed from old Eddy Merckx photographs and drew up something simple and clean. In my newspaper days, I always liked spotting people reading the pages I worked on. Now it’s a thrill to spot riders wearing my design. If you like what you see, stop by the shop and pick one up. And before long, they’ll be stocking matching bib shorts. Check ‘em out.
(I realize things have been pretty quiet around here recently. But if all goes well, in the coming weeks some very exciting news will be coming to this space. Check back soon for more.)
And, just for kicks, because it’s summer(y) and this song makes me smile every time I hear it: New Order’s version of “Ceremony“.
hortly after graduating from college, I started subscribing to The New Yorker. It is certainly a writer’s magazine. But when it use images, they’re usually awesome. So it didn’t take long for me to start tearing into the pages and collages with the pictures used to illustrate stories and ads. A good number of these can be found here.
Now that I own a fancy-ass new iPad, and subscribe to the fancy-ass New Yorker on it, I can use the fancy-ass app Mixel to continue my collaging habit.
I always liked collaging by hand with clips from the magazine because it’s lo-fi and impressionistic. Unlike digital design, my options were limited to only a single copy of the images used in the print edition, glued down at the size they appeared. Mixel allows me to resize and flip and copy images, but it’s limited to crude cutouts (which prevents me from making the most of my masterful X-acto skills) and web resolutions, which gives it a nice, hand-done feel.
These aren’t exactly meant to be gorgeous, they’re just visual doodles and puns. But it’s been fun playing with them in much end same way I did as couple years ago, but in an entirely new medium.
he good people at HearNebraska.org asked me to help with an exciting fundraising project for their awesome organization. They’ve lined up a small show with Simon Joyner at HN headquarters, which it shares with DP Muller Photo Studio in Benson. And it’s being catered by Post Punk Kitchen’s chef, Isa Chandra Moskowitz. To add to the intimacy of the experience, HN asked me to design and print tickets to the event, and I had a blast doing it.
I designed the seal for the flap on the back of the envelope with a hammer and microphone as a nod to my favorite song of Jonyer’s, ‘Blue Hammer,’ and his reputation as the hardest-working man in the Omaha music scene.
Happily for HN (though sadly for you), the show sold out. You can hear what you’ll be missing below.
It might be March. And I may have sent out only a handful of them because I ran out of time. But I printed up some valentine cards a few weeks ago and gave the good people of Maché a rundown of how I made them. They’re always doing good work, and I’m happy when I get to contribute in some small way. Now, forget that you’ve seen these cards and act surprised when one arrives in your mail box in eleven months or so.
