Marques on Black Cab!

So Just found out that Marques got his own Black Cab Session! Super proud.

We don't have a long history, but he lived in St. Augustine for a few years and was a usual suspect at the guy's house on Kieth Street, back when that was the place you went after classes and on the weekends. He was naked a lot of the time and was fond of sandwiches and paid rent for quite awhile by playing violin on Hypolita for spare change.

Two years ago he moved to NYC and has since performed with Grizzly Bear, TV on the Radio, and Dirty Projectors. He travels to England all the time and has pretty much made it as a performer.

So while I'm not a close friend, I feel like I know him well enough to be like "HEY I KNOW THAT GUY".

Found one.

Wallowa-Whitman National Forest will be the most jammin' forest EVA.

(Not, you know, because it isn't already.)

All I can think about recently is the night last summer when my family and I slept under the stars in the middle of a field in Zion National Park. Let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing like the deafening roar of silence you hear in the wilderness. Staring at thousands of stars, stationary and shooting. Just in your sleeping bag. Gets ungodly hot during the day but chilly at night. The smell of wet grass surrounding you in the morning. Ohhh so good. I wish I was back there right now.

I've spend a fair amount of time in national parks in the west (California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada) and I haven't found anything more satisfying than being completely isolated from everything I've ever known.

Even more of a sign that I need to move out there sometime soon. Oregon might be a little ways off, but a 5 hour bus ride for some national park'n would beat a 3.5 hour flight with 8 hours of drive time any day.

July 2010 has been my most active blogging month evr. Not that there's anything else to say about that, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

My friend Ashley Smith is turning a few of my robot doodles into cross stitchings! She finished the first one tonight. How awesome is that? It's always exciting to be involved in projects such as this, projects where people further simple ideas of your own. I'm anxious to see the rest.

Badabing.

Another poster! Coming right up. Hand-drawing this one, going to make some cool illustrations and letters and everything. I'm already happy with it and it's only about half done.

Is Neutraface's "N" supposed to be warped like this? It appears as if it is. What ze heck?

House Industries: Yes, those are ink traps in the text weights so it doesn't clog/get heavy in the joins at small size. Not in the display.

Ah, I knew there was a logical reason.

Don't let it disappear and it won't.

If anything, I think there's some comradeship between designers and design firms on twitter, I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy using it so much. You see what great designers are saying and interact with local designers at the same time. I'm just going to make a list of people I enjoy following on twitter:

The Onion
NPR
icreature
OCLS Library
The AV Club
DDC (Draplin Design Company)
Story Corps
Public School
Mamas Sauce
...And there are lots more.

I don't know, it's like getting just links and status updates from your favorite stores, friends, design firms, Novelists, Libraries, and everything good and wonderful. 141 characters of information, shared from another human bean with the intent of helping someone else procure knowledge of something going on in our world. It's just good stuff all around. If you don't have a twitter, you're missing out. The NPR links are good enough reason to start an account.

I've long awaited the day when something I designed would be produced in China. Today is that day. In case you couldn't tell, it's an arm sleeve given out to perspective Magic season ticket buyers. You wear it when you play ball or lift weights or bully kids out of their milk money.

I live for those singular minute instances of mutual understanding with complete strangers. Connecting on a most basic level. Eye contact for half a second. In the right moment with the "right" person you can convey the most honest of emotions in a fraction of a second with a lone facial expression. It happens once in awhile, but each time it does I'm left thinking about it for days. There's just something about that kind of experience that stirs the metaphysical in my head.

So much space! After being confined to a laptop for 4 years this is a breath of fresh air. Next feat: install Adobe CS3 (4?(5??)) on this guy. And for a bit of extraneous knowledge, my hard drives, internal and external, have Life Aquatic themed names. For whatever reason, hard drives are the ONE inanimate object I choose to name. So far there's only Starálfur and Kingsley, but we gladly welcome Klaus to the family.

Stickers are in!

$25 flat for 250 2.75" stickers from stickerguy.com

I'm telling you, there's no better deal on the internet. They stick and everything. Way good deal, I'm super satisfied with this purchase.

Watch out dive bars, I'm coming after you.

If you want a couple of these, email me at hillergoodspeed@gmail.com and I can send you a couple...FER FREE. Let me know.

Yessssssss! Hahaha. Oh wow. I love this so much.

Currently creating a promotional fabric tribal sleeve a la Dwight Howard for the Magic. Searched istock.com for "douchebag" but didn't find any inspiration.


Blake: "Can you find some tribal patterns involving flames?"

Myself: "Oh, don't worry, I'm finding lots of flaming tribal stuff."

New poster for my friend Eric's band, Almanac.

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose an article of the length
you wish your poem to have.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out carefully each of the words in the article
and put them in a bag.
Shake gently.
Then pull out each cutting one after the other.
Copy them down conscientiously
in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And you will be a writer of infinite originality and of
charming sensitivity, although incomprehensible to the masses.

Via Loren Myhre via Tristin Tzara

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

New poster coming for another friend who is playing the Elbo Room in Chicago.