Finally, the per­fect use for an iPad:

Lately, I’ve found myself attend­ing a lot of net­work­ing events and meet­ings; not sur­pris­ingly, one of the results is many con­ver­sa­tions about the design ser­vices I offer through (A) Muses Media.

Per­haps though, I should con­sider an ad like the fol­low­ing:

Great stuff, right? Espe­cially that smash­ing logo at the end…

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?

A brief video of the cur­rent instal­la­tion at the Bar­bi­can in Lon­don by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot which explores the unex­pected rhythms of daily life.

I tweeted about this months ago but some­how over­looked shar­ing this won­der­fully fun art­work here.

On dis­play at the British Library in Lon­don is a paint­ing by British artist, Patrick Hughes:

Beau­ti­ful!

As a jump-start to the week, here is a gor­geous piece to get your cre­ative juices flow­ing, dear readers:

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?

A few months ago, I had the plea­sure of watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the work and career of early French film­maker, Georges Méliès.

His work is the sort of early silent film many of us have seen with­out real­iz­ing who the names behind the work were. He is the cre­ator and mind behind the A Trip to the Moon (Le voy­age dans la Lune):

Y’know that one… the one Smash­ing Pump­kins appro­pri­ated as a con­cept for their 1996 video Tonight, Tonight sin­gle?

Yeah, THAT one.

Méliès began his pro­fes­sional life as a stage magi­cian in Paris and in 1895, after a demon­stra­tion of Lumière broth­ers’ cam­era, became fas­ci­nated with film. Within two years, he had estab­lished his own film stu­dio and was cre­at­ing elab­o­rate films. In the eigh­teen years before his com­pany went bank­rupt, he directed over five hun­dred films.

Here is an amaz­ing piece from 1903, Le Mélo­mane– a mar­vel of multi-exposures:

Le Mélo­mane, 1903

Le Cake-walk infer­nal, 1903

“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

For the last two days, or evenings really, I’ve been read­ing The Barn­brook Bible as my break from work. It has been an absolute delight, leav­ing me fur­ther inspired by and in awe of Barnbrook’s work and per­spec­tive. I had the good for­tune to spend some time with him at Grafic Europe in Berlin 5 years ago, but tried very hard not to be THAT per­son at the con­fer­ence– the annoy­ing fan who asks really spe­cific ques­tions about old work, celebrity clients and odd hypo­thetic situations.

Ear­lier this morn­ing, I decided to catch up on what I’ve missed in the Virus Fonts and Barn­brook Design uni­verse online. In so doing, I came across a num­ber of his motion pieces from the last few years, here is one of the lat­est breath­tak­ing pieces:

A Half-Rememebered Sen­tence from The Quiet Man

Here are a few pieces from a series of polit­i­cal pieces he did in 2004:

This is one of a series of three pieces pro­duced in 1995 for BBC Radio Scot­land:

See more of Jonathan Barnbrook’s amaz­ing work here on his studio’s Web site.

It’s been an strange day– pro­duc­tive on the one hand but dis­tract­ing. Oddly enough, today I tripped over an artist whose beau­ti­ful work simul­ta­ne­ously hit the nail on the head and sparked my imag­i­na­tion. I know I’m hardly the first per­son to share this video, but it’s so lovely it needs to keep being shared. Take a four minute break and enjoy this clever ani­ma­tion with which we can all identify:

While I’m on the sub­ject of artists whose work gets my cre­ative tail wag­ging this week, these videos of Lucy McLauch­lan work­ing just blow my mind. It makes me want to lock myself in an empty room with a gal­lon of paint or ink and have at it; though some­how I doubt the results would be com­pa­ra­ble. Check it out:

WOW, I love this woman! The den­sity of the illus­tra­tions she gen­er­ates are incred­i­ble, and the inten­sity with which she works is so inspir­ing. There is so much work to be done…

Lately, I’ve been gen­er­at­ing increas­ingly more work after hav­ing lapsed into a brief cre­ative coma of sort ear­lier this year. As I shake off the cre­ative cob­webs and jit­ters, I feel more com­pelled to work and tend to have more ideas than I can make good on or even record or realize.

Typ­i­cally, when I get into this state of mind, I tend to pay even more atten­tion to art, and find myself seek­ing out new ideas, inspi­ra­tion, artists, etc. Recently, a friend turned me on to She One and not sur­pris­ingly, the cogs in my brain are turn­ing and crank­ing out of control:

I’ve been dream­ing of let­ter­forms and just haven’t made good on the pic­tures in my head. Per­haps it’s time to roll up my sleeves and dig in… Where have you found inspi­ra­tion lately, dear read­ers? Has it been from new stars in your own field, or seem­ingly more abstract sources? Talk to me people.

It’s been a quiet week­end around the stu­dio, draw­ing mostly; but for some, it’s been quite a busy week. Released this past Fri­day, Leigh Delamere is the sec­ond video from Under­pass’ debut album put out by Urban Plan­ning Records:

A visual con­trast to the first video from the album, which explores the urban Cardiff nightscape, this video takes us through the more organic side of Under­pass’ world. It’s been hard not to watch this repeat­edly as a visual break from my own work; even so, I’ve had the song stuck in my head all weekend.

Dig­ging up that last batch of car­toons made me won­der about other old favorites from my child­hood. Not sur­pris­ingly, the vast­ness of the Inter­net did not fail me. So I present to you two more child­hood Dis­ney favorites:

Man do I love Don­ald Duck.. the mut­ter­ing KILLS me… and both the sound­track and foley for these two are great. Even though I’ve prob­a­bly seen each of these at least a hun­dred times in the last twenty years and I know exactly what’s going to hap­pen next, I still smile and laugh every time I see these.

What are your old car­toon favorites?

For as long as I can remem­ber, Hal­loween has been my favorite hol­i­day. Each year, I’d look for­ward to an annual excuse to get dressed up and be silly, and go around the neigh­bor­hood trick or treat­ing, smelling the autum­nal smells and laugh­ing all along the way. Today, I still love the hol­i­day, even if I don’t have kids or even dress-up.

While work­ing in the yard today, I was over­come by the glo­ries of the autumn sea­son– crisp air, golden light, col­or­ful leaves crunch­ing in my hands, even the smell of an east­ern fall. Yum. Now inside, set­tled in with a glass of apple cider and a twitch­ing cat, I am just itch­ing for Hal­loween. So much so, that I thought tonight, I’d share with you, dear read­ers, some of my Hal­loween favorites. I grew up watch­ing these car­toons as a kid and still get a kick out of them:

The Skele­ton Dance By Walt Dis­ney from Kor­nell Rasta­fari on Vimeo.

Both are old Dis­ney car­toons from 1929… eighty years later they’re still great!

This was stuck in my head while work­ing on the most recent daily por­trait, Maybe Spar­row by Neko Case. The video was done by Julie and Paul Morstad.