I’ve never been good with a pencil/sketchpad but about 4-5 months ago something spurred me on to sketch out a couple of letters that were in my mind on a Post-it. I spent a few days staring at them stuck to my desk when I finally decided to create the entire alphabet in my notebook. There they sat for a long while. Tired of letting projects like this fall by the waste side, this past Sunday afternoon I scanned them in.
Illustrator users would punch me in the face for not using the live-trace tool but I actually traced each one by hand into vector shapes. One, because I’ve only used the live-trace a time or two before and I couldn’t quickly remember how, and the other, because I wanted to see exactly what it took to dive into a task like this all by (digital) hand. (more…)
If you haven’t already, I implore you to take a look at the fantastic new site, Lost World’s Fairs, by an all-star crew of dot-commers going by Friends of Mighty. My favorite right now is Atlantis by Frank Chimero but they’re all great in their own ways. The site itself is slightly nerd-eriffic in the fact that it’s mainly set up to show what can be done with text on the web as well as show that Microsoft is starting to come around with their browser situation as well. All nerd-ery aside, the designs themselves are beautiful.
Congrats to those involved that I know personally (Trent Walton & Dave Rupert) and to the others as well.
It was nice to see dot-comrade Chris Bowler launch his newest Internet venture last week: Idea Cafe
Like Chris, I have a notebook fetish and my to do lists often resort back to pen and paper so of course I am a fan of this one. I dig the fact that you can buy individual notebooks as well as bundles that are role-based. I’ve heard a rumor that there’s potential for coffee-related sales in the future as well.
It was fun to watch this come to life through sneak peeks on Dribbble. Great design, killer photography and even some quality branding help from another mutual buddy, Aaron Mahnke. Win-win-win.
Chris, one request: When we were getting ready for our SF trip, I spent more than enough time trying to find the SF Moleskine City Journal and still came up empty handed, niche market possibility for you?
Workspace coffee menu
Continuing the recent coffee-heavy related content, the menu at the (now defunct) Gastown, England-based Workspace is fantastic. You can mark it down as “borrowed” in much of my new artwork, I’m sure.
