January 28th, 2012

My typeface design work will be displayed in a book called Carácter Latino published in Barcelona by Index Book. You can get a super quick glance at one of my spreads at :56 of the video. Keep an eye out for it in a couple of weeks at your local book store!

January 27th, 2012

My CCA students presented finals for their first project yesterday. The assignment asked them to design QR codes for a chosen poem. Carolyn Cuykendall designed hers for Pablo Neruda’s ‘Too Many Names’. A QR code is a pixel code that navigates a user’s mobile device to a specified website. You can read the poem by clicking the ‘Too Many Names’ link above, or, if you’re so inclined to play with a QR scanner, you can use your phone to scan the Carolyn’s code on the first image above.

January 26th, 2012

I love old things. By old things, I mean, for example, old espresso machines, old barbershops and old letterpress printing techniques. The best way to experience old things is when they are still active and in use. There is a love of these types of things here in San Francisco. I got my haircut the other day at FSC Barber which feels like it’s right out of the 20s, hot face towels and all. Yesterday, on Mission Street, I ran into the poster above. It’s printed by a company in LA called Colby Poster Printing. They print these posters for local nightclubs and musicians. I just got off the phone with them and Glen, one of the printers told me even Snoop Dog is a client. I’m giving a lecture at CCA in April and I’m hoping to get the poster for the lecture printed with them. On another note, I ate at this amazing hole in the wall Burmese restaurant called Yamo’s. Maybe the best vegetable curry I’ve eaten.

January 25th, 2012

Here’s another beautiful doorway one block away from where I’m staying. I’ve been noticing that many of the murals here are not painted by just one artist, but are collaborations between many. It looks like that was the case here. The hat to the left is a ‘sombrero volteado’ from the Magdalena River region in Colombia. That’s why it caught my eye and that’s why I’m loving this town. San Francisco is 4,000 miles from Colombia and someone painted a sombrero volteado. Gotta love it.

January 24th, 2012

CCA students are no exception to the massive bike population here in San Francisco. Other than the dealing with the hills, which you can avoid with ‘the wiggle,’ it’s a super bike-friendly town. The wiggle is a map of bike paths that help you avoid the monstrous hills. Something that I’ve had to learn about the hard way. Above is just a small sampling of the hundreds of CCA students that fly around town on two wheels. Stephanie was super proud of only having spent $300 on her bike from a shop in Oakland called Manifesto Bicycles. Gabriel built his bike from scratch at a bike building co-op called the Bike Kitchen. Al, well Al rides a Cinelli track bike. Enough said.

January 22nd, 2012

Went to Oakland today and had a very pleasant, albeit rainy day driving around town with a friend looking at murals, eating Indian food and drinking a very strong café latte. My favorite mural was the one of Reggie Jackson and Ricky Henderson (both former Yankees btw) trimming a shrubbery of an elephant on a big baseball, with a bat in its trunk. That and three shadowy characters contemplating the whole thing. It’s so weird, it’s genius. Tomorrow, I’ll be at teaching at CCA and have been meaning to take some pictures of some art-school hipsters with fixed gears. Expect to see that post tomorrow night, so check back if you fancy that sort of thing.

January 21st, 2012

It was a move day for me today. I moved into a nice studio apartment on 16th St and South Van Ness St. Still of course in the Mission. To stock up on food for my new apartment, I went shopping at San Francisco’s best food co-op called Rainbow Grocery. It reminded me of Park Slope’s co-op except bigger and they don’t sell meat. Boo. It’s only four blocks from my apartment and has the city’s best selection of local produce. I keep seeing Ritual coffee all over the place here so I had to buy some. Considering the lefty population here, it’s a good bet that using a logo that references the hammer and sickle will sell a hell of a lot of coffee. You can cut the irony with a knife but still it’s nicely done and I’m always a sucker for Russian-esque graphics.

January 20th, 2012

Today it’s raining in San Francisco. It’s one of those days made for lovers and poets. I had breakfast at my favorite diner St. Francis. It’s a throwback to the 1950s with striped straws for the milkshakes. Buddy Holly was an appropriate soundtrack. Today, I’ll work some and do laundry. Tomorrow, I move to my new apartment. I’ll end with a line from Pablo Neruda. “That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off, my soul is not content to have lost her.” Thank God for poetry.

January 19th, 2012

Last Sunday, my buddy Brian and I met at Café du Soileil and walked from Lower Haight to this hip, boutique photo store called Photobooth in the Mission District. Brian is obsessed with instant cameras and organizes these walks once a month or so. He brought along these two old Polaroid cameras to shoot with. Meanwhile, I was the sellout with the G-12 digital. Along the way, we stopped at this little vintage camera shop to pick up some film for him and then made our way to the Mission. We walked down Clarion alley which is this alleyway in the Mission covered in murals. Our last stop before Photobooth was to talk to Lucas Torres a muralist who is in town from São Paolo.

January 18th, 2012

Had a good first class at CCA yesterday. We talked about design, San Francisco, New York, Anthony Bourdain, tacos and the 49ers. I told them that I’ll be secretly rooting for the Giants on Sunday. Their first assignment is designing QR codes for poetry. Stay tuned to see what they come up with.