A while back I mentioned a very cool publishing/distribution inititative by Alain Bieber in Hamburg. And now today, I’ve just gotten word that our zines have finally arrived in his library!

I’m really excited to be a part of Gute Seiten, and will hopefully soon be contributing content to the site about the zine scene in Canada for them. So, if you have some interesting projects you want European indie publishers to know about, hit me up.

photo by Oubliette

Ravenswing was a great success today and Cat and I really enjoyed our time in Ottawa. Many thanks to the beautiful, hard working people who put it all together and to Colin for being a great host and table mate. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity and enthusiasm of the crowd. My perception of Ottawa as a sleepy government town has certainly shifted a bit.

I was happy to see fellow Montreal zinester Lisa Hoffman there with a ton of new work on display and reconnect with fellow Concordia grad Catherine Pearce who’s been making some beautiful jewelry pieces.

Sincere thanks to everyone who put down some hard earned cash to pick up a zine or a poster today. I’d love to know what you think of them, so please feel free to contact me. We’ll definitely be back again next year, hopefully with a new issue in tow.

Check out some more pictures here of a damn fine day.

PS. So Good was very good, thanks for the reco John! The Pepper squid was exquisite!

Illustration by Colin White

To all our friends in Ottawa, Catherine and I will be in town on Sunday (May 24) at the Ravenswing Craft and Zine Fair alongside Ottawa Comics guru Colin White. The fair is held in Minto park, between Elgin & Cartier and Gilmour & Lewis. The weather promises to be good, so it should be a lot of fun.

Along with copies of the zine, I’ll have a series of art posters for sale featuring some new (and some old) work. I’ll post pics soon, but if you’re in the neighbourhood, come by for first dibs.

I just finished reading a great little interview with designer/director/artist Mike Mills over at The Marma Spot.

“To me the different career categories are really just false creations of art schools, the people who thought up careers. It’s all one big conversation I’m trying to engage in, there are different parts to the conversation, different ways of talking, short talks and long deep private talks, but it’s all the attempt to communicate, to not be alone, to be a part of things.”

Inspiring stuff… Read the interview here.

I’ve been slavishly waiting for this book from Tomato‘s John Warwicker to be published for a long time now. After patiently waiting for about a year(!) for my pre-order to be filled by Amazon, I contacted John asking him about the state of the project. He kindly explained that there were complications with the publisher, but that things were being worked out and that the book would be available in the near future. That was over a year ago. But now it seems that, according to Tomato’s website, it’s actually true! The Floating World: Ukiyo-e will be published this September by Steidl Publishing and I’m pretty sure it’ll be worth the wait…

Isn’t the internet GREAT? Shortly after posting Paranoid to the public domain, Ukranian (type) designer Sergiy S. Tkachenko sent me an email with a reworking of paranoid that includes a few extra glyphs as well as the cyrillic components. Thanks so much Sergiy, the zero glyph is super sexy…

Download Paranoid (updated file)