Summer Road Trips

All this hot weather we’ve been enjoying lately has me thinking about our summer plans.  While Ian and I don’t like to take big trips in the summer (we prefer to travel in the off-season to avoid crowds), we do like to fill our summer weekends with fun activities.  A friend put this up on Facebook yesterday:  the Top 10 One-Day Road Trips from Toronto.

How cool are some of these?  Despite the obvious choices (Collingwood, Muskoka), there are some other, closer alternatives.  I went to Belfountain when I was a teenager – I remember getting an ice cream and playing in a stream.  And I’ve always wanted to go to Picton – I hear it’s foodie heaven out there in Prince Edward County.  The only thing I see missing from this list is Creemore – it’s a great day’s drive from the city, and you can visit the brewery and poke around in the small town.  The Mad River Tea House isn’t there anymore though – they moved to Collingwood.

Above photo of the suspension bridge at Belfountain Conservation Area by Flickr user Snuffy

Designers I Admire: Jessica Hische


T aken directly from her website,  “Jessica Hische’s work combines equal parts design, typography, illustration, brown sugar, and heavy cream.”

I like her illustrations and her design work, but what really blows me away is Jessica Hische’s hand lettering. Hand lettering is a big trend right now, but this girl seriously does it the best. Just look at her ribbon type.  Or check out her Daily Drop Cap project, where she does a new illustration of a letter every day. That probably sounded like a good idea at first, but keeping that up every day, after 6 months? That takes serious skill. (those are her letters up there, and the “T” over there at the left came from Daily Drop Cap)

Her blog is great (especially this post about why you shouldn’t hire non-web designers to design websites, and also this guide to twitter that’s gone viral).   I really like Jessica Hische’s irreverent writing style on her blog and website. She’s not too stuffy with her professional writing – her personality shines through. Obviously it’s working for her – she’s only 25 years old and has a portfolio and client list that much older designers would kill for.

Funny on Friday: Stuart Anderson

A while ago, my friend Jenny and I were bored one night, so we started watching videos on Everything Is Terrible (a video blog devoted to weird and hilarious old video clips – usually found on VHS tapes).

We came across this gem – a small child named Stuart Anderson, singing traditional Scottish folk songs.  We both laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe.  Just look at his facial expressions!  And what is he doing with those hands? I hope you enjoy this as much as we did:

Favourite Things: Ian

Okay folks, watch your gag reflex, it’s gonna get a bit mushy here.

Today’s post is for my husband, Ian, on his 32nd birthday.  Back when I didn’t have a blog, and I just had a “favourite things” page on my website, Ian would ask “how come I’m not on your favourite things page?”  I told him it was because I was trying to keep my personal and professional lives a little bit separated.  But that’s just BS.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have almost no distinction between my personal and professional lives, and I like it that way.

So Ian, here you are, out in the open, as one of my Favourite Things.  We’ve been together over 5 years (cue the Colin James), and I’m still crazy about you.  I love your intellect, your sensitivity and understanding, your cooking (Ian is the chef in our house), your shared love of our dog, and I especially love your sense of curiosity and wonder (like how you were willing to drive 6 hours just to see some architecture, and you always go with me to art galleries and museums, just to learn something new).

And you look ridiculously good in your MacNaughtan tartan scarf.  Happy Birthday.

How Cool Is This? IdeaPaint

I came across the IdeaPaint website because it was featured in a roundup of good-looking minimalist web designs.  So I checked out the site for the design, but then I read more about the actual product.  Maybe you’ve heard of chalkboard paint – it was all the rage a few years ago.  Paint any surface, wall, etc. and you can write on it with chalk, and then erase it.  Too bad it usually ends up looking messy and chalky.  Enter IdeaPaint – a paint that turns any surface into a dry erase board.  No mess like with you get with chalk.  How cool is that?

I am seriously considering ordering some of this stuff and turning an entire wall in my office into an IdeaPaint dry erase wall.  I am an avid list-maker and an occasional doodler, so it would be cool have all that up on the wall instead of all the post-its and scraps of paper I have all over my desk.

National Stationery Show

[image above: wooden animal figurines by enormous champion, courtesy of Design*Sponge]

[image above: animal stamps from ink & wit, courtesy of Design*Sponge]

Over in New York, the National Stationery Show is in full swing.  Every year during the Show, my favourite design blogs write posts and put up amazing photos of what they’re seeing.  I don’t work in the stationery industry (not directly at least), but I’ve always wanted to go to the National Stationery Show just to see all the pretty paper.  I think it would be quite inspiring.

But, I already took one trip to New York this year, so for now I have to read the blogs and get inspired from a distance.  Over at Design*Sponge, they noticed a big trend at the Show for animals, floral, nautical, food/homesteading, and calendars.  So every day this week, they’re posting pictures and descriptions from each of those trends.  Today was animals – check it out.

The folks from UPPERCASE mag are down at the National Stationery Show too.  Check out their picks here.

In The ‘Hood: Telegramme Prints

Yesterday Ian and I decided to take advantage of all the gorgeous weather and go for a walk in our neighbourhood.  There are so many new shops and restaurants – we wanted to check out all the latest and greatest.  So we walked west from our place along Queen St all the way to Logan, and then back.  I picked up an old treasure at a new shop (Highway 11) – a vintage RCMP mechanical desktop calendar.  So cool!

Highway 11 is a new store next to one of our favourites – Telegramme Prints.  We have a bunch of graphic prints in our house, including a few gig screen prints we bought online.  That was before we knew about Telegramme, and how they import prints from some of the coolest designers (Aesthetic Apparatus, Decoder Ring Design, etc).  Telegramme does gorgeous custom framing too – we picked up this North by Northwest poster and had it matted and framed.  It looks amazing in our living room.

Telegramme is featuring prints by Shinzi Katoh that I just love.  There’s something about them that screams “kids room” but I also think one of these would look great just about anywhere.  Now to decide which one I like the most…

Funny on Friday: Stuff White People Like

I’ve been hearing way too much lately about the blog-turned-book, 1000 Awesome Things (the book is called The Book of Awesome).  I think it’s cool that a blogger is getting so much attention, and a nice book deal, but the subject matter is way too touchy-feely daily-affirmation style for me.

I prefer an earlier blog-turned-book, Stuff White People Like.  Unlike The Book of Awesome and its heartwarming, positive outlook,  Stuff White People Like is ironic.  And hilarious.  I think it’s so funny to me because I self-identify with the writing.  As much as I like to think I’m an individual, and not a stereotypical white, liberal, urban hipster, I still am.  So almost every entry in the blog/book resonates with me.  Because like it or not, it’s who I am.

Just look at this entry about Moleskine Notebooks (yep, the very same notebooks I blogged about yesterday).  Stuff White People Like helps me to laugh at myself.  Which is very important.

Oh yeah, and the title of this blog is a bit of a nod to Stuff White People Like.  If you hadn’t guessed that already.

The only thing I’ll put my pen to…

I love pretty paper.  I love fancy pens.  I love all things written.  But I’m pretty predictable when it comes to my notebooks of choice – I go old-school with Moleskine.  I’ve tried other brands, but I keep coming back to Moleskine because of the paper texture and the different shapes and sizes available (and available without lined paper – I don’t like lines).  I use this one for my notes on my biggest client (there are a lot of notes), and I use the smaller cahiers (available in three packs) for everything else.

I’m working on a web design right now that features a moleskine notebook as the background for the site.  More on that later.

Also, check out these laser-etched Moleskines – cool!