Another FREE font site!

I found a new site with FREE fonts! My go to site for free fonts up till now has been dafont.com. I love dafont. It's a designer's best friend (watch out for those license agreements though). I just found fontspace.com today when looking for a Mexican themed font for a Mexican joint I was creating an ad for. They have a lot of really great typefaces that aren't on dafont. Check it out and thank me later.

- Amy
Listening to: Donovan's "Season of The Witch"

Eddie Vedder and Tambourine Therapy

Today's inspiration is this video of Eddie Vedder playing "Slow Night So Long" with Kings of Leon. Not only is this an amazing song (and only made more amazing by Vedder sharing vocal duties with Caleb), but look at the energy and enthusiasm with which Eddie Vedder bangs out a beat on those tambourines. Nathan and Jared Followill look very amused with the whole thing. It looks therapeutic, doesn't it? Almost like those rooms they have in Japan where you can go and just break stuff. I think the moral that I learned from Vedder here is to just rock out and get into whatever it is your doing, even if it's just playing backup tambourine for a bunch of Tennessee bumpkins.

- Amy
Listening to "Slow Night, So Long"

Yellow Fever, Aesthetic Apparatus, and Radical Face

I was looking through my inspiration folder for ideas today. OK, that sentence made me sound like one of those inspiration/motivation junkies that watch too much Oprah and listen to too much Tony Robbins. If I ever say I've had an "Aha!" moment, then it's time to worry, but I really just keep the folder for when I get designers block. Isaac Newton said it well, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” Nothing is new under the sun, and the sooner we cope with that fact and stop trying to come up with something brand new is the sooner we can draw on what the greats who have gone before us have to offer and make it our own.

That being said, here are a few of the contents of that folder that I collected a while back. They are a couple of posters from Aesthetic Apparatus. ANYTIME I'm looking for a creative pick-me-up, I go straight to this site. It's like crack for designers, artists and the creatively inclined. It's an endless black hole of amazing poster after amazing poster. The fonts, the colors, the composition - I don't think there's a bad one on the site. If a black hole were ever something you wanted to get sucked into, this one is it. Once you've clicked on the site, you may have well just sat down in the used vinyls section at Goodwill, because you WILL be there for at least two hours thumbing through page after page of the site. 

Here are four AA posters that were in the running to be included in my room. I love the yellow! And the multiplied overlapping elements. I ended up getting two other ones. It's times like these that I wish I had a house with endless blank walls to hang all the amazing posters and art I find. Enjoy!

- Amy

On my iTunes: Radical Face's "Welcome Home Son"

Danny Lyons, Adventures with Kevin, and Indian Summers

[ "Crossing the Ohio River" from The Bikeriders by Danny Lyon. I have a giant poster of this framed above my bed. ]

Rule No. 1 of being a photographer:

Don't forget the battery.

I'm not a photographer though, I'm a painter. This is my only excuse for breaking the cardinal rule yesterday. Yesterday I met my friend, Kevin Vesely at Kaylani Coffee in San Clemente. Kevin is the bearded man who will be the subject of my next painting. We met at Kaylani's to plan our attack of the photoshoot that was to follow:

AMY & KEVIN'S PHOTOSHOOT PLAN OF ATTACK

1. Snivel and whine about the unbearable heatwave. I knew this beatifully mild summer was just a prelude to a sweltering Indian Summer. [Author's Note: Indian Summer (n): (Earth Sciences / Physical Geography) a period of unusually settled warm weather after the end of summer proper.] 
2. Make final decision on locations for shoot.
3. Go to said location and take epic photos to be turned into even epic-er painting.

We successfully achieved points one and two of our attack, and half of three. We made it to the location, but here's where the record scratches and the camera does the three frame zoom (closer, closer, closer) from my horrified face into my horrified eyes because I realize my battery is sitting at home on it's charger. Luckily Kevin has that mellow, easy quality that most San Clementians possess, and my profuse apologies were all graciously accepted. Some great poet somewhere once said, It's not the destination, it's the adventure.

So I rescheduled to meet Kevin next weekend to take some pictures of him, his fierce beard, and his bike. It's going to be such a great painting. I can feel it. I've been looking through my well worn copy of Danny Lyon's The Bikeriders a lot for inspiration on composition. I found out about Danny Lyon through one of my favorite blogs, The Selvedge Yard. Read the post here. You'll be hooked on this blog for life. 

Here are some of my favorite photos from The Bikeriders.

[ "From Dayton to Columbus, Ohio" ]

[ "Outlaw camp, Elkhorn, Wisconson" ]

[ "Renegade's Funeral, Detroit" ]

[ "Jack, Chicago" ]

[ "Racer, Schereville, Indiana" ]

[ "Route 12, Wisconson" ]

[ "Cal Elkhorn, Wisconson" ]

- Amy

Listening to: The scottish lads from We Were Promised Jetpacks, specifically "It's Thunder And It's Lightning." I just found out that they are on tour with Jimmy Eat World and will be playing at The Wiltern for Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday. Who knew? Speaking of Jimmy Eat World, I miss the days of Clarity and Bleed American. Call me old and set in my ways, but the new stuff just isn't doin' it for me.

Ralph Steadman

 

I was talking with my artist friend Sonya Ko the other day about how her work reminded me of the great Ralph Steadman. Steadman was the "Goose" to Hunter S. Thompson's "Maverick." They were partner's in crime on many a project: Thompson supplied the words, Steadman made them come to life with his illustrations. If you've seen the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you've seen his work. (If you haven't seen that cover, you should consider coming out from underneath your rock and joining us here in the 21st century. It's nice here.) His illustrations are a hurricane of color and lines, moving 100mph, out of control, ready to offend and disrupt anything or anyone in their path.  They're wreckless, crazed, manic. In short they're awesome.

 

[Steadman.]

 

Some fun facts about Steadman and Thompson:

1. They met in Kentucky (my old homestead) where Hunter was born. 
2. When Hunter S. Thompson died, they fired his ashes out of a cannon at his funeral. We're probably breathing in microscopic bits of his innards as we speak.
3. Thompson wrote a script with his neighbor, actor Don Johnson, for a two hour TV movie called "Bridges" about an ex-druggy cop who works in LA with his latino partner and dates a mob boss' daughter. It was rejected, but NBC bought the script and later turned it into a show my mother would watch religiously called "Nash Bridges."
4. Thompson accidentally shot his assistant while trying to scare a bear off of his property.
5. Under the Freak Power Party ticket, Thompson ran for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado in 1969. He barely lost.
6. Thompson missed his high school graduating exercises because he was in jail for robbery. Took a writing course in jail.

OK, so most of those were about Thompson and not Steadman, but Thompson just caused so much more mischief and mayhem.

- Amy
On my iTunes: Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender." Now there was a hunk-a-hunk of burnin' love.

Even Esquire Makes Mistakes

[Figure 1. Click to enlarge.]

I caught a mistake in Esquire Magazine! [See Figure 1. See it? In the flag tab?] To me, Esquire is the be all and end all of magazines when it comes to innovative, accessible, just damn clever design. So to catch a design blunder between their envy-worthy covers made all those mistakes I've made (how many times can a designer forget to use true black?!) in The OC Gazette over the years feel a little less weighty.

[Figure 2]

That being said, I hasten to add that when you weigh that tiny mistake against the issue as a whole, it's a mere drop in the bucket. One gem from this issue is "The Discerning Man's Guide To Grooming." [See Figure 2.]

If it's something I hate, it's a man who refuses to take care of his hair. Wherever it may dwell. I don't ask much. I pretty much like a man scruffy and grungy and smelling of wood and gasoline. But please... take care of the hair. The hilarious and very helpful guide includes "How to Properly twirl a Mustache" (if I was a guy I'd definitely have a lip tickler), and "How to Control Your Eyebrows." The final step to the latter is: "Lick the thumb and pinkie of your left hand. Starting at the middle of your brows, smooth outward. Proceed with confidence." Nothing like a good Graucho Marx reference.

This section also includes a funny ode to Antonio Banderas' cologne and how it may be the only cheapy, celebrity namesake scent that isn't horrible. The only problem? "The real trick is where you store it: at the very back of your medicine cabinet, turned around, so no one will ever know."

Call me strange, but women's magazine's don't come close to providing the kind of knowledge I glean from the witty and informative pages of this men's magazine. So, step it up Elle and Vogue. I can only read so many "How To Get Smokey Eyes" and "How To Tell if He's Into You" guides.

- Amy
On my iTunes: The Growlers' "Her Command"

P.S.  After posting this blog, my designer friend Leon Ingram (who works for Disney) told me he could totally go for a sawdust/gasoline scented cologne, and so after deciding to add whiskey into the mix, he came up with the ingenious name for our new men's scent: "Dusty Whisk - A fragrance by Hoodgram" (our last names cleverly joined into one). After both agreeing this was a million dollar idea, Leon posted the initial promotional ad for said cologne on my facebook. Here it is:

 

[Click to enlarge.]

Director of Design for Churm Media, Luke Hodsdon, is raving about Dusty Whisk: "No more rolling around in the garage to get that perfect scent!!"

A Happy Graphic Designer

A fun little illustration I did one day to get the creative juices flowing.

On my iTunes: Tokyo Police Club's "In a Cave"