The early view from our table

Another great Expozine weekend is in the books, and as tiring, stressful and hectic as it was, I’m pretty sad it’s over and we’re going to have to wait a whole year for the next opportunity to see so many amazing independent creators and creations.

As a member of the illustrious board, headed by the indefatiguable Louis Rastelli (with big shoutouts to Billy Mavreas, Genevieve Boyer, Pascal-Angelo Fioramore, Michelle Lacombe and Graham Hall) I spent Friday setting up hundreds of tables and chairs while hoping that issue XI of Four Minutes to Midnight would be printed and bound in time by my printers Kata Soho (kids, remember, don’t leave printing to the last minute!). Everything worked out in the end, and I was able to enjoy the opening event at Sala with some good friends and great performances by Sherwin Tija (reading from his collection of Pseudo-Haikus and new zine, “The Little Cancer that could”) and Super Fossil Power. There was a nice turnout, but unfortunately, as was to be expected, a lot of zinesters I was hoping to meet were MIA as they frantically finished their wares.

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On Friday, I received my much anticipated copy of Ruud Linssen’s Book of war, mortification and love in the mail. Published by one of my favourite typefoundries, Underware, the book, which consists of a collection of personal essays on the concept of “voluntary suffering”, also acts as a type specimen for their Blackletter typeface Fakir.

The book is beautifully designed and crafted, which is not a surprise given the quality of Underware’s work. I was pleasantly surprised by how well Fakir reads as a text face though, since I had always considered it a bit of a playful display typeface. Even more impressive is how well it sits in such a serious and sombre context, accentuating the darkness of the essays with its jagged edges.

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To make up for the negativity of the previous post and the recent lack of activity on this site, please enjoy this series of lovely murals by Steve Powers in Philadeplhia. Much love!

As a little bonus, have a listen to this hauntingly beautiful session from Bon Iver.

Beautiful, intriguing, crafty and smart work by Alex Egger at Satellites Mistaken for Stars. Really loving the hand drawn type on the site, looks like a lot of work…

First up, check out the wonderful work of Montreal-based artist and illustrator Kirsten McCrea. Her illustrations have recently graced the covers of the Winterhouse designed Poetry magazine (I’m so jealous and impressed!), and having had the pleasure of hanging out with her a bit lately, I can tell you that there are great things on the horizon for this talented and prolific lady.

I recently finished teaching my third course at Concordia University, a portfolio class for graduating students. It was a challenging class, but I’m quite happy with the results and think that my students were as well. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the time to properly document their very well crafted print portfolios, but here’s a selection of their portfolio websites: Gaia Orain, Catherine Wakim, Zacharie Delavertu, Emmy Huot, Rebecca Rosen and Stefan Spec. Great work guys!

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In honour of International Women’s Day yesterday, I wanted to write a post on a few of the women designers that have impacted my practice. I remember during my final year of undergrad (in 2000) being asked by my professor to name some female designers that we admired and, very ashamedly, drawing an almost complete blank (not that I was that aware of design culture or history in general at the time).

I asked my portfolio class this same question last night and was happy to see them fare better than me, but not by very much… So as always, there’s work to be done, and I’ll start with a (very) select list of women who’s works have directly guided my own.

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A few days late, but I thought it would be a nice idea to mark the end of what ironically always feels like the longest (and darkest) month here in Montreal with a long and chunky post filled with inspirational images selected from all my various feeds. Hope you enjoy the collection, and if there’s a modicum of interest, maybe I’ll make this into a regular feature.

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The latest redesign of the design content site Thinking for a Living is turning web paradigms onto their side. With mobile standards in mind, an intuitive and simplified navigation, alongside a very refined approach to web typography, I have a feeling that this site could really change how we design for the web. Built with XHTML/CSS and jQuery, the site is delivered through WordPress but feels nothing like it…

It’s a site I’ve often visited for their quality content and design coverage, which is generally more in-depth and better written than most design “blogs” out there (yours truly included). Now it’s even easier on the eyes and provides a really fluid reading experience. Way to go guys. Hopefully this thoughtful, holistic, and detail-oriented approach to design serving content catches on.

Read about the redesign in the first issue here.