merry and bright!

this is the christmas card i designed that I mentioned in yesterday's post ... i could hardly sleep last night because i wanted to share it with you! i know it's no award-winning minted design, but considering i used microsoft publisher (no adobe photoshop in this house!), free fonts, and got them printed on moo, i'm pretty pleased. We took the picuture last week when it snowed (in mississippi! in early december!) and the bayou looked really pretty. these light trees decorate the bayou and downtown, so we thought it'd be fun to take a picture around them. unfortunately, the snow and damp air got the best of my hair, but maybe no one will notice... ;)

anyway, merry merry!

ava wrestles the alligator.

I'm in a few book clubs these days...one helps me make sure that I connect with some girls i LOVE at least once a month and talking about books and also life (although we have to meet using google+ and conference calls), and the other ensures that I'm reading books I wouldn't have otherwise read. case in point from bookclub #1: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. it was beautiful, poignant, and so, so suspenseful (although it is certainly NOT a thriller). Imagine a story about Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird set in the 1990s Florida Everglades written by someone who thinks like Salman Rushdie. awesome, right?

I won't give you the gory details here or share my own review, BUT here are some places to go to read more... and some really lovely visual representations of the subject and characters. pick it up if you want something to read on the plane home or while sitting around the fire this holiday season.

from the NYT

 found here.

found here

the actual cover of swamplandia!

design and schools (two great loves of mine)

what schools can look like....

see more here!

let's do the numbers....

wouldn't this be an amazing centerpiece for a book club? i know.

 

images from the brilliant paul octavious.

ink idea...

lots of uber cool tatoos have been floating around the interweb lately... but i'd hadn't seen this one before.

i used to want a line from an anne sexton poem in a fabulous, delicate font, but now...

who's got the button?

aren't these mixed media collages from marie o'connor just so lovely?





i love it when artists use tiny everyday objects and minimal color palates, don't you? check out more fun illustrations and design at the peepshow collective.

book covers worth drooling over...

saw these new book cover designs from fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo on penguin's website... then found images of the back and front from book covers anonymous (which is an awesome blog, btw). wuthering heights and the scarlet letter aren't my favs, but with covers like these, i'd WANT them on my shelves and would probably read them again.

did i ever show y'all my one and only paying gig as a graphic designer? no? well, it was the first cover of a small community magazine in the Mississippi Delta.

the hardest part was that i did it the old fashioned way... but one day i'll have creative suite.
one day.

until then it's just me and my little canon camera and whatever knicknacks that I can find. with or without serious equipment, i'm pretty excited because i'll be doing something similar to this for the student life office at school. we may use it, we may not. but either way it'll be fun!

got any ideas for things to use in the photo besides a Bible, a pencil, a map of ATL? i'd love your thoughts!

TA life, live!

went last night to see our favorite radio program (This American Life) broadcast LIVE in a movie theatre and it was FABULOUS. i rolled laughing at the beginning and was in tears at one point.
fyi: now i know what my hero starlee kine looks like and my ira glass crush is even bigger than it was yesterday.

here's the special edition poster that they had designed for the show... isn't it great? if you missed the show or want to see it again you can see the encore screening on May 7th.

lettering & logo love...

The only thing i think i like better than paper and making mix cds as far as "being creative" goes is messing around and playing with fonts. ran across Klim's website and i am JEALOUS. i mean, how fun would it be to design logos and letters for a living?
i know, right?

why's paper so fun?

i just meandered into the paper source in my 'hood yesterday (just for a minute!!! i promise!!!) but I was there for waaaay too long. here are a few reasons why:

and then there was the lovely decorative paper section... (i'll spare you the gorey details..or save them for another post) i could have been there rubbing and looking and wishing all day!
and then, i saw these! a-dash mazing.


how many times have i needed one of these and never even KNOWN it?!? i especially wish they made them for conversations. if i wasn't the most frugal, least-likely-to-make-an-impulse-purchase person in the entire world, i would have gotten one of each, just in case...

my new banner!

hooray, I have a new banner! it might still need a little tweaking, because it looks a little like I drew it on sandpaper...
either way, i had fun sketching out all the possibilities and think it's a major improvement.

also, i may or may not have been inspired by this lovely font from this discontinued GEM of a magazine...


feedback anybody?

malice and charity

I am always moved by Lincoln's letters and speeches and i tend to doodle when i'm engaged in and/or nervous about something.

maybe today more than most days... I only wish that after electing Barack Obama as the first black president of the united states, we could also have lived up to our ideals of justice and equality for ALL of our citizens.



where is our charity, for all america?
why have we singled out the GLBTQ community for our malice today?

proposition 8 in california and other similar measures banning gay marriage make my heart hurt for my friends and those around the country who feel deeply and powerfully about their partner, (like i do) and yet are kept from making life long commitments to those they love.



to assume that injustice is only one group's problem (for instance, when mccain said that Obama's election was an historic event for African Americans) is simply misguided. We all suffer when one suffers... and we rejoice when one rejoices. today i did both.

dangerous atlanta?

wow! Mcsweeney's does Atlanta.... how could I not get excited about Mcsweeney's (the wonderful, hilarious, graphically astute publishing co. of author Dave Eggers) Internet Tendency posting about my town? that's right, y'all... obviously i am excited. anyway, have a little read...it's pretty darn funny.

D A N G E R O U S A T L A N T A .

BY NEAL POLLACK

and while you're at it, peruse their innovative packaging for their quarterly literary journal and hilariously quirky t-shirts....it's all pretty fab
.

judging books by covers...

i'm always enthralled by a book's cover... I know, it's a bad idea to buy a book simply because it LOOKS like a work of art, but pengiun's Great Idea series are BOTH. thanks to David Pearson for penguin, these books are beautiful in their simplicity.


and take a look at the way these pocket penguins would look on a shelf together... wow. i only wish i didn't feel compelled to buy all of my copies at thrift stores.