unsolicited opinions on random things
I saw this link on SwissMiss’s blog. 4-year-old Hawkeye Huey (first picture, above) is a photographer with his own Instagram account. He shoots analog (using a Fujifilm Instax 210 camera) and his dad, a National Geographic photographer himself, uploads the photos to Instagram. His pictures are amazing. See them yourself here.
Do you know about Creative Mornings? It’s a FREE lecture series that happens one morning a month in cities around the world. Creative Mornings was started in NYC by my web hero swissmiss, and while the talks are aimed at the creative community, I think they really appeal to anyone.
Creative Mornings recently celebrated their 5-year birthday, and at their party, a number of people took the stage and gave short talks with advice. Check them out – they’re pretty great (and short). The advice from Oliver Jeffers is sweet, with his adorable Irish accent. And Maria Popova’s 7 Things I Learned talk ties in to her blog post of the same topic, which I absolutely loved.
And, speaking of Creative Mornings, we have a chapter right here in Toronto. I try to attend each month – the talks are great, there’s free coffee, and it’s at 401 Richmond, right next to my favourite design bookstore Swipe. What’s not to love?
This month the Toronto chapter is celebrating their 2nd birthday, and will be presenting a special Creative Morning on Friday November 21. Toronto Poet Laureate George Elliott Clark will be speaking on the topic of Bravery. Tickets are available at 9am this morning (yep, today – Monday), and will probably go fast. See you there!
[photo of Ilana Ben-Ari from last month’s Creative Mornings Toronto talk. You can see more pictures from Creative Mornings Toronto here on their Flickr page]
The awesome team at 4ormat has put together a PDF guide for Toronto newbies who are here to make, design, or shoot (aka creative and nerdy types). Of course, I can think of more stuff that isn’t included, but overall, I think they’ve done a great job with the guide.
4ormat also makes an online magazine for the creative community called Explore Create Repeat. I subscribe by email, and look forward to a new article every Monday.
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates what would have been Maurice Sendak’s 85th birthday. It’s lovely – take a few minutes to watch the animation. It immediately reminded me of this. And now I’m crying at my desk on a Monday morning. So lovely.
Do you know Covet Garden, the monthly online magazine showcasing cool people in their homes (that aren’t done up by decorators – these are real people in their real environments)? My company Camp Tech regularly advertises in the magazine, and they’ve featured my amazing RMT Michelle in an issue. I really do love Covet Garden!
So of course I was super excited to hear they’re going to do a special print edition, called Covet Garden Home, which will be available this winter.
To make sure you get your copy, contribute to their IndieGoGo campaign. A $30 contribution gets you a copy of Covet Garden Home, delivered to your door. I’ve already contributed, and really think you should too.
THIS IS WATER – By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.
You’ve probably seen this shared already – it’s been around social media and blogs a lot of in the last 2 days. I really do think you should watch it though; all 9 minutes.
“Education has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with awareness.” Yes.
PS – I’ve never read anything by David Foster Wallace. I think that should change.
Here’s a gorgeous font that’s free for personal and commercial use – Aleo. It’s a modern slab serif and comes in 6 styles. Download here.
Christoph Niemann illustrates Maurice Sendak’s last interview, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. So simple, beautiful and moving.
[thanks Kinnon for sharing]
The amazing letterer and illustrator Jessica Hische is getting hitched to her longtime boyfriend, interaction designer Russ Maschmeyer, later this summer. As a way to chronicle their love story, they of course collaborated (with a bunch of super talented friends) on a gorgeous website. Give yourself a good 15-20 minutes to read through this, clicking on all the links. It’s so lovely.
Designer/Illustrator Mikey Burton made these awesome “inspector stamps” for his business. Now you can too, courtesy of Cranky Pressman. I would love to have one of these, and go around stamping random things. Napkins, receipts, whatever.