Things no one told me about: The North American Handmade Bicycle Show

Photo by Tim Potter

Seriously people. Why was I not told about this? An entire show dedicated to hand made bicycles; I am not sure I can imagine anything I would rather attend. Luckily, the NAHBS has provided extensive photographic documentation of the event and the bikes in attendance. Click on through their galleries and marvel at some true works of art. For some more professional photos, check out Urban Velo’s Coverage of the show.

I am going to go mark my calendar for next year.

(via Bicycle Design Blog)

Flat-Back Hardcover Book Structure

Image on Flickr

These are my class “notes” on the flat-back hardcover structure for Gail Deery’s Papermaking and Book Structure class. If anyone is interested in the .pdf let me know.

Ampersand Book

My latest book for Laurie Snyder’s Artist’s Books class. Yeeeeaaaahhhhhhh it’s a little typical-graphic-design-student-project-ey, but I do not care. I went through all 900+ fonts on my computer and selected what I find to be some of the most interesting, beautiful, or historically significant ampersands. Paired with their designer and in chronological order, all the way from Bembo in 1495 to Jos Buivenga’s FREE Delicious, designed just last year. They were transferred from laser prints with wintergreen oil onto tan Rives BFK, and bound accordion fold style with some sourced leather covers (I hope to write an article about sourcing leather soon).

This was my first time working with leather or oil transfers, and both processes were very rewarding. I love the texture created by the transfer, and the leather was a lot easier to work with and acquire affordably than I anticipated. I think I will be doing more work with both of them in the future.

Detail shots in the unabridged post.

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Thoughts (DRAFT)

This is my one-week-book from last week’s Artist’s Books class; I am only posting it now because I lost it the day of class last week and only just found it again! We had to make a simple, pamphlet-bound book from one 11×17 sheet of paper printed on both sides. When it came time to do this, I had been thinking a lot about relationships, and the truly unbelievable things people say when they are entrenched in them. The contents of this book is an email I wrote, but never sent, to my first “girlfriend” during freshman year of high school. (Thanks for archiving every little thing, Gmail!) For me, this book is about sharing everything about myself. I always preach honesty, and I think it is probably the single most important thing to me. Honesty is easy when you aren’t ashamed of anything, but the contents of this book is something I am truly embarassed I ever thought/wrote. I figure if I can be honest about these things to anybody and everybody, I am upholding my end of the honesty bargain. (more…)

My Tools

This is my latest project for my Artist’s Books class. The assignment was to bind together atleast 8 of something at a single point. Usually, this style of binding ends up functioning like a booklet of paint swatches, fanning out to be read. My book is all about the tools I use to create; it is both a reaction to my being the only male in my book arts class and people who assume design is synonymous with digital.

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Custom Built Wine Rack

For Christmas, I decided to build a Wine Rack from scratch for my good friend Josh Hepworth‘s parents, who have always welcomed me into their lives. I looked at a lot of racks online for inspiration and eventually decided on this simple and elegant solution. It is made from Red Oak, purchased at my local Homies. The full “article” has more pictures and a simple plans so you too can do as I have done! (more…)

Clarendon Type Specimen Books

A series of two type specimen books for the typeface Clarendon. The content is written by me and the covers are made from Cocobolo and Bloodwood samples I bought online, joined, and laser etched.

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Monopoly Repackaging

Monopoly, in spite being the classiest of all board games, unfortunately is packaged just as boringly and uncreatively as every other garbage board game on the shelves. So, I decided to repackage it… turning the class up to 11.
All of the boxes are made out of chocolate brown mat board and skinned in cream arches cover. The final package is just over 10″ x 10″ x 1.5″ and includes smaller containers for all of the various pieces and cards and a laser-cut holder for all of the houses and hotels.

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Wood Handle Bars (.com)

I must apologize for the extremely inconsistent blogging; I cannot promise I will ever level out. I have been working on a website re-design for Ken Carroll, craftsman of beautiful wooden handlebars for bicycles and here is a bit of a teaser for the redesign, which should go live sometime soon. I will write more about the site and project once it goes online.

For now, let me know what you think about the typography overlaid on top of the photograph. I did it by hand, inspired by some fantastic analog typographers and calligraphers I found online over the weekend.

Moleskine External HDD Project

Inconspicuous eh?

My old Apricorn External HDD was sittin’ around, held together by gorilla tape, lookin’ all sad and what-not. So I took the HDD and small board on the inside out of the case, and noticed they would fit nicely into a moleskine notebook, of which I have many lying around. So I cut the center out of all 80 pages of a Moleskine sketch book to form a cavity, you know like you would make if you were hiding a flask in a bible, and placed the HDD inside. And I recorded a time lapse of it too! (more…)