Friday, December 12, 2008

On hold.

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I really can't say, right now. If or when it happens, it'll just happen. Good things come to those who wait, relatively speaking.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Today's the day



All over America thousands of men and women are banding together in a radical form of protest. What started out as a call to action against the passing of Prop 8 (aka: Prop H8, Prop "Hate") by removing ourselves from the work world (similar to the work stoppage of 2006's "A Day Without A Mexican") has gone one better. Rather that dropping off the face of the earth for a day by not working or contributing to the economy as originally suggested, today DWAG supporters of all orientations will be volunteering their time and giving back to the community. In other words, today we're fighting H8 with love. And in a nice bit of coincidence, today is also International Human Rights Day.

Today I will be joining at least one of my coworkers at the SF Food Bank to help sort and package food, and whatever else they need help with to ensure that no one in SF goes hungry this winter. I'm looking forward to being able to help there again. There seems to be quite a bit of news coverage about today, from the looks of a quick Google search. Let's hope that it doesn't get cast in the wrong light, and that no one goes out and does anything negative in the name of the day.

OK, gotta run…I don't want to be late!

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Cut it out



I've been going through a bit of a creative dry spell recently. Photography isn't doing the trick. Graphic design felt forced and unnatural. And as for writing, well, the absence of a post here for days should speak for itself.

But sometimes inspiration can strike in the most unexpected of places and reasons. This time it struck when I was font shopping at Veer.com and while browsing the merch section stumbled across this scarf created from uppercase letters in Helvetica. Not sure how warm it would keep a neck, but at least it'd be the most literate neck around. The laser cut letterforms really made an impression on me. It's such a striking look, and one I thought might be fun to recreate and make into a project.

I had reason to send someone a thank you card and it seemed to me like a great opportunity to make the card rather than buy a commercial one. So after finding the right weight of Helvetica for the job, the layout began. And while it took longer to design the layout of the card than I'd like to admit, the actual production of the card was a bit trickier than I had expected. It's been many many years since I had to wield an x-acto blade for artwork and am woefully out of practice. All the straight lines were pretty easy, but that curvy "s" took as long as the rest of the card did. If I do this again, better paper will be needed as the paper I used didn't fold crisply, the grain of the paper was not working to my advantage. Plus it might be nice to have a laser cutter do the trimming…maybe Santa will bring me a table top laser cutting machine.

Overall I think the results are satisfactory. Not as clean and accurate as I would have liked, but I don't think the recipient will notice or even care. Which now makes me question why even do it. Well, at the very least the strike of creative inspiration, while not igniting a full-on fire, has started a smoldering that, hopefully, if fed the right fuel will turn into a burning passion again.