First up is ISO50, the online home of DJ and artist Scott Hansen and his friends. His visual work is quite nice, I think, and he seems relatively knowledgeable in music. He and the other contributing authors offer regular selections of quality tunes under the Music category—good examples are a short list of the best indie hip hop producers or four favorite sensitive electronica tracks. Oh, and I enjoy their attention to the design of album covers.

My next offering is a much-lauded blog, Just Watch the Sky. The author—I'm not sure who he or she is—presents a song accompanied by beautifully rendered typography of a notable sequence of the song's lyrics. The color palettes are spot on and the presentation always balances subtlety and power. I don't like all of the songs but I cannot stop myself from clicking through all the posts and having a listen. I particularly like the presentation for Now I want to give away, I want to hurry home to you, and The empty movements that once were so inspired. Maybe this was not so much about music as it was typography. Shocking.

And lastly, I'd like to share OMG Posters, a website which is only tenuously having to do with music. The author posts daily updates on art prints, posters, toys and the like, including interviews with noted poster artists / designers. The aforementioned tenuous connection is that many of the posters featured are for musicians, bands and concerts. Regardless, I enjoy the site as a source of inspiration and artistic stimuli.

So there you go. Anything good to share with me?

Oh, bonus: you can check out my listening habits via carlosdavis on last.fm. Here's a teaser: all I listen to are Girl Talk and Rilo Kiley.

I am proud of this theme for a number of reasons. The first reason is that I think the site looks great. My typographic skill and intuition has been increasing for some time and I am quite pleased with the site's readability. I am using nothing but Helvetica (or, ew, Arial) and color is minimal. The information organization does the majority of the work in directing the user, as it should.

I might still add a few typeface flourishes to certain elements. All-uppercase words look particularly nice in Georgia, though I suppose I lose that quality on Windows. Ew, again.

The next point of pride is of a more technical bent. My CSS file for the theme is particularly simple and bare. I feel WordPress themes have a tendency to be overly complex and I wanted to avoid this pitfall, especially in the context of producing with which I can easily work in the future. Furthermore, I do not feel I sacrificed design quality or site functionality at all by taking a simplified approach to the theme.

The final matter with which I am happy is that I completed the theme. Every bit of it is done; nothing is broken. (If something is broken, please leave a comment.) Despite the completed nature of the theme, I feel that I have built in the possibility for future customization and changes without the need for a complete overhaul.

Well, okay, I admit that there are few pieces I need to add but none of them are vital to the site's function, to your reading my writing and generally stalking me.

I hope you enjoy the new look of drewd—please leave any comments you have so that I might improve my craft.

Cheers!

Here, at last, is the design for our 2008 jersey.

Just kidding. The design is secret until Potlatch. Only two people have seen it (and neither are coming to Potlatch): Whit and Stylish.

I think this new jersey is one of my finer works in general and likely my best jersey design, edging out the LMLP jersey I designed for Paganello this year. I went a bit simpler and less ridiculous than the original DarkHorse logo and with no sublimation, just purple and orange printed on purple.

I am so excited. I am so excited for our jerseys and our gifts and our drinks and most of all our team. Did I mention that four dozen pony sweatbands and nearly 300 pony tattoos were delivered to my apartment today? And that we are increasing our quantity of giant foam cowboy hats from one (1) to two (2)?!?!?

We are:

1. Kirsten Avery
2. Amanda Bailey
3. Lucy Barnes
4. Schuyler Charf
5. Neva Cherniavsky
6. Ashley Hovey
7. Katie Krump McDonald
8. Deirdre Ronaldson
9. Sarah RV Ross-Viles
10. Trina Stout
11. Faye Ziegeweid

1. Daniel Shy Chazin
2. Drew d'Avis
3. Steve Kolthammer
4. Sam DarkHorse Miner
5. Joaquin Nagle
6. Michael Prude
7. Cassidy Rasmussen
8. Jay Jughead Schulkin
9. Kevin Stout
10. Michael Stout
11. Alex Mom Wells
12. Dave Zucker

Helping to wrangle the herd are additionally:

1. Nick Kassebaum
2. Joe Kolthammer
3. Brooke Riggio (and family?)

Beautiful.

Do you know what else are beautiful? Handmade bleach-stenciled The Hedge hoodies.

Dave Zucker and I have had our eye on this project for nearly half a year but never found the time or inspiration to complete it. Around two weeks ago, we realized that our dearest Claire Storck (see below) was leaving for New York City today. As in, she's already left right now. To commemorate the fantastic, loving house we shared, Dave and I needed to produce before she departed.

Dave had the concept for each letter of 'hedge' based on congruent (is that the word I want?) circles at varying heights. I took this concept and added some thematic flair—the leaves and branches you see adorning the letters above. One late night with Illustrator and I had the design you see above, complete with a leafy heart for the left breast. Dave laser-cut the stencils into plastic sheets at work on Monday. We were ready last night, armed with bleach, a cosmetics spritzer, rags for blotting, and plastic bags for masking.

And we produced two perfect hoodies with nary a hitch. Success! I'll have to take some better (non-iPhone) photographs because the one we have really doesn't do the piece justice.

These final shots came from a fantastic evening over Memorial Day weekend, when Whit and Claire were visiting from San Francisco. We had purchased (nearly) matching shorts at REI then added to our outfits with 15 minute–$10 limit shirts from Buffalo Exchange, assigned to all participants randomly. What choice did we have but stage a photo shoot with these gorgeous ensembles?

I drew laughter and mockery for not focusing on the more typically recognized, but no more valid, aesthetic qualities of the advertisement (I'm talking about the half-naked underwear model), but I stood my ground. I don't have anyone for whom to buy lingerie, and I'm not sure I would if I did, and certainly not on the merits of a Super Bowl commercial. On the other hand, I was genuinely interested today to discover that the Law & Order typeface is called Friz Quadrata, and that it is used on ramen flavor packets.

And I don't think my attribution of similarity between the Law & Order and Victoria's Secret typefaces is too far off.

In other typographic news, Apple Trailers committed an error of false relation between two upcoming movies. The placed the trailer link images right next to each other and used the same typeface---Lucide Grande---for each. The obvious disparity in time period between the two just creates confusion for the user.

I would blame lazy movie poster designers from Paramount Vantage, the studio for both films. Lucide Grande is used for all the non-image titles on Apple Trailers and must just be stuck on by default when the image lacks a title.

And, no, I have not watched either trailer yet, no matter how hot Keira Knightley and Daniel Craig are. I was too busy thinking about fonts.

I am not sure how I would like to approach these "problems," or if I should even define them as such. I certainly have the knowledge and resources to win Google for specific, noncompetitive search terms. Also, there is a two word phrase, both common dictionary entries, that I think I can win over the course of a few months. I do not want to reveal it lest someone steal it from me. I will report back... or not.

I worked a great deal on the design (a custom WordPress theme) for the new Rao & Pierce Law Firm website. You can check out my design in progress here. I love feedback.

I will try to jam another WordPress theme this evening but I am not sure for which website. We shall see.

Oh, and last note, I would like to get some search results for "Carlos d'Avis" pointing to information about my grandfather, for whom I was named. Did I mention that he was a famous doctor in Bolivia and served as the mayor of Cochabamba? A street is named after him there, but searching for "Calle Carlos d'Avis" is problematic because Brian Calle is a good friend of mine. Hilarious.

What do you think about these? Have you noticed posters by a particular artist or for a specific band that you always like?

I am bit skeptical of the lists: the writer has not visited all of the schools personally. Take his offerings with a grain of salt.

I was rightly impressed by the creativity and innovation in design concepts for a business card-sized calendar.

I bought a simply lovely calendar in Portland, Oregon when I was down visiting Whit and Claire this last weekend. The artist, Nikki McClure, has beautiful work---seemingly all paper cut---and I hope to visit Olympia to see more of her pieces. The calendar is intended for public space somewhere in our house.

Brooke and I have spent the last handful of months almost wholly focused on the calendar functionality for CaseHawk, our law firm management web application venture. I am happy with our current treatment, beginning to believe in it as a strong alternative to Outlook and the like. The law firm will begin to use the calendar on Monday so Brooke and I will see how the functionality fares in real life. I am looking forward to moving on to another bit of the application.