Andy Mangold

One of my favorite resources in Baltimore is The Book Thing, which is just an awesome place where one can go one weekends and get free books of all types. Though most of them are unfortunately designed, every time I go I manage to find a few gems. These are some of my books from my last two trips to the book thing. The Practical English guide and “Geometry: Plane & Solid” are definitely two of my favorite book covers ever. I would love the opportunity to design a textbook cover!

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do, and you can find bigger versions of the pictures on Flickr

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This past semester I was really digging on my lettering course, but also feeling compelled to connect more directly with my community, and maybe even help somebody with my work. So, for my final, I decided to try and unite my aesthetic, passionate interest in lettering with philanthropy and community focused design. I set out to create an old-fashioned hand painted sign, for one of the many well meaning organizations in Baltimore with less than wonderful signage. After some research, I decided on “The Action Upscale Cultural Community Thrift Store,” a secondhand store nearby my apartment, run by volunteers, that puts on programs for “women, youth, young adults, and the elderly”.

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Photo by Becky Slogeris

Today, I had the pleasure of taking a tour of Globe with my letterpress class. I of course forgot my camera on said life-changing tour, but luckily the amazing Becky Slogeris had her’s and was snapping away.

I was absolutely in awe of the equipment, tools, wood type and presses in the Globe shop. It was humbling to see the workspace of such authentic craftsmen, and very sad to see it so dusty and unused. In its prime, Globe was a premier provider of show and carnival posters, among other things. They have an enormous collection of wood type, one-of-a-kind etchings and wood cuts, not to mention a prestigious portfolio of work. Globe is a family run business, and unfortunately doesn’t have the money to get their huge poster presses running again just yet. They do sell stunning screen-printed re-issues of their classic posters, and they are available here: Globe Poster Classics

The posters are cheap, beautifully printed, unique and supporting an incredible business that has sadly fallen off the map in many ways. Holidays are approaching, I’m just sayyyiinnnn’. (so is Becky)

Becky’s Pictures

For my independent research project in my Folk Art and Folk Life class this semester, I am planning to research the story, design, materiality, and personality behind objects members of my generation hold significant or irreplaceable: a study of the Heirloom. I hope to interview anyone and everyone I can in MY generation who has an object they consider irreplaceable and document my findings in a book I will edit, design, and bind by the end of the semester.

This is where you come in. If you are under the age of 26, have an object that you consider unique, irreplaceable, or significant for ANY reason, and (preferably) are located in the Baltimore, MD or West Chester, PA area, please consider letting me interview you for this project; it would be a huge, huge help. If you are interested, or have any questions, post a comment below, shoot me an email, give me a call, or otherwise get in touch with me.

I will be sure to provide status updates as the project moves along!

This semester I am going to have the unbelievable privilege of working with Mike Weikert and Ryan Clifford, along with a small handful of other undergrad and grad students, at the Center for Design Practice. We are working on an exciting project I will not explain just yet, but Mike & Ryan have said it will be okay to blog about the work we do, so I hope to document the project fairly thoroughly on here.

Now that school has started back up again, my work will be for ME and I will therefore actually be able to post it. Hopefully things will get a lot more lively around here in the weeks and months to come!

Had this bouncing around my head for some time and threw it together. I think it, or something similar would make a fine screen print. Thoughts?

I was fortunate enough to attend Cameron Sinclair’s lecture at MICA tonight, something I have been looking forward to for a very long time. His lecture did just what I thought it was going to do for me: he was amazingly inspiring while simultaneously overwhelming me.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with him, he got fed up with the world of Architecture with a capital A catering to the designer crowd and not the common man, or as he calls it “the other 98%”. So, one day after seeing the refugee situation in Kosovo in the late 90′s on the news, he just straight up called the United Nations and asked to speak with whomever was in charge of refugees. Long story short, they actually patched him through to whomever is in fact “in charge of refugees” and he talked his way, quite accidentally, into presenting housing solutions to the UN, who had not spoken with an Architect with an implementable plan in some time. This really kicked Sinclair’s drive to put architects and designers in situations where they could be a part of real change in real time into high gear, and he co-founded Architecture for Humanity, an open source community of designers and architects that give a damn. He throws all of the preconceived notions about what it means to be a designer to the wind and focuses almost entirely on how to use one’s skills to be a positive force in the world. The program has grown immensely over the last decade, but don’t take it from me, check out what they’re up to: www.architectureforhumanity.org

I am immesely impressed and inspired by the man. He is a big “If you are not part of the solution you are a part of the problem” kind of guy, and I am going to be trying very hard in the future to be an integral part of the solution, instead of just polluting the world with classy boardgames and my own personal philosophies set in Clarendon.

This past Saturday I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to help facilitate a Leadership Retreat for the MICA and University of Baltimore community. I had been working with the planning committee for a few months prior, and the whole thing went off without a hitch and was a really great experience for me, and I hope all involved. I had, with the help and feedback from the planning committee, come up with the branding for the retreat, and it was cool to see the logo plastered all over folders, name-tags, signs, and screens at the event. (more…)

Made it back to Baltimore and MICA last night just before they closed the roads for Obama. As I am now back at school and no longer wasting my time/life posting will resume and be of and about things that actually matter (hopefully). (more…)