It doesn’t mat­ter whether you won or lost.… just that you tried your best. So just keep try­ing.

It’s been a long time since I’ve shared pho­tos or non-daily por­trait work with any reg­u­lar­ity; but thank you, dear read­ers, for your patience.

I think it’s time to end the wait…wouldn’t you agree?

Haven’t been feel­ing it lately as no doubt evi­denced in the daily por­traits and lack of chatty posts. Hang in there, dear read­ers, my brain will defrost some­time soon.

In the mean­time, please feel wel­come to share any con­tent requests you may have. And wel­come to all the new read­ers from around the world–thanks for stop­ping by!

Var inte rädd … Jag har inte glömt er alla…

In the midst of a move, the last three weeks have got­ten away from me. But fear not, dear read­ers, I shall return to more active and reg­u­lar updates very shortly…

For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve had trou­ble sleep­ing… An old friend told me years ago that we’d sleep when we’re dead.. I quite agree.…

Despite unre­lent­ing rain for the last few days, I’ve been in a pretty great mood lately, yes­ter­day espe­cially. But today, a warm, glo­ri­ous sunny day, I’m feel­ing blah–seems I’ve strained my upbeat muscle(s). So, I’m try­ing to perk up with music in the form of a fairly ridicu­lous and silly playlist this after­noon. Among the tracks is:

Lis­ten­ing to this sort of music makes me want to cook up a storm and host a mas­sive din­ner party for all the peo­ple from around the world whom I love. Imag­in­ing every­one in one place for once in my life is absurd and thrilling, but maybe some day, right? Per­haps for my next house warm­ing? Who’s in?

The end of print pub­lish­ing? Or?? Watch and see:

This morn­ing has brought hard­ware dif­fi­cul­ties to my stu­dio which pre­vent dig­i­tal work from being under­taken until repairs can be made. As a result, Aman­daMuses will not likely see many updates dur­ing that time.

Stay tuned, folks.…

So it’s Valen­tines Day, for those who cel­e­brate the occasion…

Can’t say I’m the biggest roman­tic– I grav­i­tate towards the Baude­laire and Poe end of the spec­trum ver­sus the Keats and Byron end. Even so I enjoy thought­ful obser­vances of the day whether expe­ri­enced first hand or not–it is a shame really that we need a sched­uled hol­i­day to get us to artic­u­late our affec­tions but what­ever works, right?

For those who pre­fer the greyer end of the spec­trum, here are few tunes for you:

This video was made by a fan after Mark Sand­man’s death but it’s a good song, imho.

So dear read­ers, how do you observe this spe­cial day?

Atlas Snow­shoes–with ~4′ of snow on the ground, these are almost a necessity

Keen boots–with­out a good pair of boots, snow­shoes aren’t much use

Under Armour base layers–keep warm and dry no mat­ter how wet you get in the snow

Design House Stock­holm pleece–warm and snuggly

North Face Wind­Wall–keeps the wind out and adds a layer of warmth to any good win­ter anorak

Aleve–after all that shov­el­ing you’ll need it!

How about you dear read­ers? What do you depend on dur­ing harsh winters?

Images:
mine, 2, 3, 4, 5,6

I took this shot of myself a year ago today when I lived in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. A lot, thank good­ness, has changed since then… not the least of which is my cyborg eye shrink­ing back to its nor­mal humanoid size…

It has always fas­ci­nated me how seem­ingly triv­ial things can trig­ger one’s mem­ory on a dime and trans­port you to another time or place in an instant– hid­den snap­shots of one’s life pep­pered through­out our daily com­ings and goings.

This morn­ing, pay­ing bills at my desk and watch­ing the rain pour down, iTunes sur­prised me with a mem­ory jolt– a musi­cal time machine back to col­lege:

This song always pro­pels me back in time to a rainy night in Pitts­burgh– bib­li­cal rain, soak­ing you to the bone and wait­ing on Car­son Street for the 54C back to Oak­land. The expe­ri­ence or night holds no sig­nif­i­cance to my present life, no new char­ac­ters came into my life that night, no pro­found obser­va­tions were made on that day, the rain did not cat­alyze any­thing other than hail­ing a taxi and yet it remains as a warm and vivid mem­ory: Crum­pled up in an old leather jacket, wait­ing beneath a street light flip­ping through sketch­books with the other reg­u­lar from my cof­feeshop (who was also wait­ing for the over­due bus), wet licorice streets, head­lights exag­ger­ated by raindrops…

It seems strange to me that such an insignif­i­cant moment in my life remains so firmly imprinted upon my mem­ory and yet it does.

What ran­dom moments are firmly implanted in your mem­ory, dear readers?

It’s just one of those days; we all have them– you wake up and the world feels grey and unwel­com­ing. You scuff around and feel sorry for your­self and maybe mope a lit­tle. Well today, I’m hav­ing one of those days.

BUT instead of mop­ing about like a fool when I feel like this, I rally my inner troops and forge ahead. This gen­er­ally involves a longer visit to the closet– pulling out espe­cially fun shoes and a col­or­ful jacket, a big­ger than usual cup of cof­fee, a longer lunch break and a tight­en­ing of the cir­cle of dear­est friends. When the world feels unwel­com­ing, I find it best to sim­ply become the ulti­mate host­ess– wel­come the unwel­com­ing and just out­shine the grey.

One of my longest stand­ing friends from child­hood, loved the Bea­t­les when we were kids; count­less week­end hours swam by to the sound­track of the fab four and today my mind has drifted back to those days:

Watch­ing this clip from the movie Help!, the semi-sad lyrics of the song mixed with the sub­tle silli­ness of Paul and George perks me up and makes me smile.

How about you, dear read­ers? How do you perk your­self up when you’re feel­ing down?

When I was an under­grad in design school , I was one of the weak­est draw­ing stu­dents among my peers our fresh­man year. My pro­fes­sors, patient and inspir­ing though they were, seemed to remain con­cerned about my weak­nesses in the fields of draw­ing and craft; it was the final pin-up dis­cus­sions at which I shone.

When the sec­ond semes­ter of my fresh­man year came along and my draw­ing skills still fell short of my peers, one of my pro­fes­sors, who held a master’s in draw­ing, pulled me aside and gave me some advice. He gave me a few tips on how to improve the qual­ity of my work, but above all advo­cated sim­ply for prac­tice. One of the exer­cises he rec­om­mended was to draw sim­ple shapes over and over again– to draw until they were com­ing out of my ears. By so doing, I would be train­ing my hands to be more skilled at qual­ity of line and form. So for weeks I drew obses­sively– cir­cles, squares, cones, pyra­mids, tri­an­gles, lines, lines, lines; it was the mad hatter’s geom­e­try and it was explod­ing inside my sketchbooks.

By the time I grad­u­ated with my BFA, I was selected as the designer of the year, so some­thing must have clicked along the way; the mad hatter’s geom­e­try had pushed me fur­ther. Today, sim­ple forms like those from my professor’s exer­cise tend to creep into the mar­gins of my sketch­books and meet­ing notes– an uncon­scious habit, it now seems.

When I came across the above video from the Design Coun­cil, one of the first things that came to mind was that exer­cise of draw­ing sim­ple shapes over and over and over.

Why be good when you can be bet­ter? What do you wish you could do bet­ter, dear read­ers? And how do you plan on get­ting there?

I’m not one to make new year’s res­o­lu­tions, gen­er­ally, but this year it just seemed right. This year, I aim to:

Draw More
I’d really like to try and make more of a habit of sketch­ing dur­ing my trav­els and off time.

Be Happy
I’ve learned a lot dur­ing the last few years, I’ve done some pretty excit­ing things and I’ve done some work of which I can be proud. But hap­pi­ness and joy have not been at the core of my daily life, at least not as much as I would like.. so in 2010, I want to work on that.

Write more let­ters
When I was ten, I had a teacher who gave us an assign­ment to write a let­ter to some­one every week for a year. It was an excel­lent habit and one I’ve not main­tained duti­fully over the last twenty years or so as I’d like to say. Want a let­ter or to be added to my post­card list for when I’m on the road? Send me an e-mail and I’ll add you to the snail mail list

Be more active
Over the last few months, I’ve spent too much time in my work­space (or com­mut­ing to it). As a result though, I’ve got­ten less active and miss the pace I tend to main­tain when liv­ing in a more urban envi­ron­ment. This year, I want to be bet­ter about mak­ing a habit of being phys­i­cally active since it feels so good.

Make more art and per­haps sell some too.
If I don’t make things, I don’t feel good; it’s as sim­ple as that. When I don’t make things, my skills get rusty. This year, it’s time to make time for art no mat­ter what. And to start lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple who have been ask­ing and telling me to sell my work for years.

What are your res­o­lu­tions this year, dear read­ers? Need help with yours? Here’s a handy res­o­lu­tion generator.

How are YOU cel­e­brat­ing the hol­i­days, dear readers?

I’ll admit it Inter­net, I’m a list maker. It is an odd com­pul­sion of mine, one of many, which has per­sisted for years. A quick perusal of my count­less sketch and note­books from the last decade will con­firm this habit– scores of lists scrawled along the edges of sketches, notes and half-baked ideas for rainy days.

As the year draws to an end and the next creeps up upon us, I find myself in plan­ning mode– cri­tiquing what worked and what didn’t dur­ing the past year, revis­ing sys­tems and lay­ing ground­work for next year’s strat­egy. And part of that is more lists, cal­en­dars and even things like spread­sheets and other orga­ni­za­tional tools. It always inter­ests me how peo­ple keep them­selves orga­nized and struc­ture their agen­das. Hav­ing had this con­ver­sa­tion sev­eral times with friends and loved ones recently, and ever in search of the ulti­mate orga­ni­za­tional tool(s), I’ve com­piled a quick list of some of the dig­i­tal tools avail­able for orga­niz­ing lists and agendas:

• Check­vist
• Remem­ber the Milk
• Ta-da List
• Google Tasks
• Teux Deux
• Things
• Todoist
• Tooledo
• Vital­ist
• Voo2do

How about you, dear read­ers? How do you keep orga­nized? How do YOU sort your tasks, to do lists and day? What’s your system?

While catch­ing up on news and blogs this evening after spend­ing much of the last two weeks on the road, I came across a post by Seth Godin about brand­ing that caught my eye. Over the last few months, my brand hat has been col­lect­ing dust on my career hat rack while I shift focus to more graphic art-intensive work; but ever the brand man­ager (Abranda, if you pre­fer), my ears usu­ally perk up when the word ‘brand’ pops up on my screen.

In his post, Godin raises some inter­est­ing and valu­able points about the breadth of mean­ing to brand beyond just the logo or visual touch points most of us asso­ciate with the word ‘brand.’ So often peo­ple seem to rel­e­gate brand­ing to sim­ply a func­tion of mar­ket­ing or design which is both frus­trat­ing and reas­sur­ing– frus­trat­ing in that the topic remains an uphill bat­tle with some audi­ences, yet reas­sur­ing in that the need for respon­si­ble brand advo­cates remains strong. Godin sum­ma­rizes the issue well when he states “Design is essen­tial but design is not brand.”

What do you think, dear read­ers? How do you define ‘brand’ or ‘brand­ing’?

My father and I both share a love of cof­fee. It has been part of the morn­ing rit­ual for as long as I can remem­ber; before I even drank cof­fee, it was part of my life. Today, few morn­ings pass with­out at least one cup of coffee.

When I trav­eled to Alaska in 1996, I delighted in the local cof­fee cul­ture from town to town, dis­cov­er­ing that Seat­tle’s pen­chant for the brown elixir extended up the north­ern coast. Each lit­tle town seemed to have a homey, inde­pen­dent café and per­haps a smaller walk-up style cof­fee hut com­plete with per­fect espresso drinks and inter­est­ing syrup options– mango latte, any­one? One town, Seward, I think, even had con­verted a tug­boat into a cof­fee hut; too cool. The high­light though of my Alaskan cof­fee tour, was the dis­cov­ery of Raven’s Brew Cof­fee. Drawn in by their raven-themed art­work, they con­verted a cus­tomer for life with their deli­cious brews.

Years later, I spent lengthy stints in Seat­tle, arguably one of, if not THE cof­fee capi­tol of the world or at least the United States. Cof­fee there is an art­form, but we all know that; I still lament the untimely death of Cof­fee Mes­siah. Van­cou­ver, Canada earned a spot on my cof­fee radar when I tasted some of the best espresso I’ve had in my life at Café Arti­giano.

My years spent in Swe­den revealed another haven ded­i­cated to its cof­fee, one that even had its own verb for tak­ing a cof­fee break– att fika (as I men­tioned ear­lier). I still laugh to myself when recall­ing Amer­i­can col­leagues vis­ited me at grad school who couldn’t drink the Swedish cof­fee– it was just too strong for them! This inabil­ity to han­dle the strength of Scan­di­na­vian cof­fee was beyond me, but charm­ing nonetheless.

This morn­ing, I finally tried Star­bucks’ new Via prod­uct– instant, microground ready-brew cof­fee. And I can hap­pily report, much to my own sur­prise that Star­bucks Via makes a decent cup of cof­fee. As handy as could be and a close match to their other brewed cof­fees– rea­son­ably strong and smooth; not too shabby Star­bucks. Finally I can enjoy decent qual­ity cof­fee any­where I travel and not just the colder climes of Scan­di­navia and the Pacific northwest.

Tell me, read­ers, what is your favorite hot bev­er­age? Where in the world do YOU go for good cof­fee or tea??

Images: Ravens Brew Cof­fee and Star­bucks Girl

“Accu­racy is the least sig­nif­i­cant part of draw­ing… but you have learn to draw accu­rately before you can do any­thing else…”

Five min­utes with Mil­ton Glaser on draw­ing from 2006.

Video by C. Coy