It was my birthday when I was down there and we met up with my dad, step-mom, and sisters at the beach. They were all hanging out at this beach called Denny Park that was right down the street from the house I grew up in. I hadn’t been to that park in years, but it definitely brought back crazy memories. I spent so many days hanging out there in the summer and we’d always go watch the boats with the Christmas lights and stuff in the winter. It really got me thinking how much fun it was to be a kid.

So, like I said before, I was my b-day and Michaela hooked up some amazing gifts!! New clear(ish) Nom De Guerre X Oliver Peoples glasses. I have the black ones, but the clear are so hot! (Andrew McMullen shot that photo on the Burrard bridge the other day)

And then she followed those up with a Tolomeo desk lamp! Now my desk is super official!

So, since I’ve been twittering a bunch, I’ve been slacking on my blog. I’ve really been thinking about twitter vs my blog and I think I’ve got it figured out. Twitter is for random crap that happens throughout the day that doesn’t really matter… and sharing links and stuff that I might not post on Defgrip. But my blog should be where I document the important stuff… or more like a summary of what I’ve been up to… like my journal. It’s so rad to go back through old blog posts and look at old photos, but I’ve had twitter for over a year and not once, have I gone though my old posts and looked back on life. We’ll see if i follow through with it, but I’m going to try to step up my blog posts on here a bit.

I’m going to try to do more fun, non-work, design stuff more. I seem to easily get cought up in only doing design for clients and months go by where I haven’t done one thing for my self. I guess Defgrip still feels like a personal project, but even that gets to feel like “work” a lot. So, this morning, I was listening to my brothers new album. He’s in a few different bands, but just finished up a project he did with his friend Nash. It’s more of a fun thing they threw together, but it was in my iTunes with no art… I’m super anal about having album art for all my music, so I though, what a perfect opportunity to do some random crap.

Hamilton and Nash titled this project “Horse Grinder” and for some reason, I had horse illustrations stuck in my head. I didn’t have much time to spend on the art, so I just hit up google images and came across this rad anatomy drawing of a horse, made a little logo, threw some type in there, messed with a the background and that was that! I only spent like 30min on it, but it was super fun messing around and I’m going to try to do something along these lines a few times a week… Keep my brain fresh!

Hamilton doesn’t have anything online for Horsegrinder, but you can check out his main band, Song Sparrow Research here.

Andrew and I were out in New York working on Defgrip features. Our trip was rad and I’ll post more when I have some time, but for now, check out a little music feature I put together for In The Gnar.

Check it out here.

Amazing… I had never seen this album cover for whatever reason, probably because I don’t really know much about Grace Jones, but I’ve had this on my computer for a few months and every time I come across it, I stare at it for like five minutes. The whole cutting and pasting of her hair and mouth has this really childish but yet so conceptual aspect to it. I completely love how they left the pieces of tape in and also used a sticker from a roll of film or something near her hair. The cover has this whole “fuck you” feel to it, like she just doesn’t give a fuck that her mouth is like 10x to tall… With the whole cut and paste thing, but also the look in her eyes. The cover wouldn’t be as amazing if the photo didn’t suit it so well… There is also a nice use of Trade Gothic for the type. Nothing crazy to distract you from the image, but not dull enough to bore you.

I found this video with a few shots of the creation of the album. Not sure if this is the actual video to this song, but it is also pretty incredible. I’m going to go and listen to Grace Jones now.

Kanye West’s 2008 album 808′s & Heartbreaks.