Watch this

More video... this time, from Disney. 

If you suffered through Wreck It Ralph this summer, than your patience was rewarded before the movie even started with this beautiful, silent animated short, Paperman.



From Time:

First-time director John Kahrs employed a technique—a groundbreaking hybrid approach using a software called Meander—that fuses the hand-drawn 2D animation that gives Paperman its old-school look on top of a CG world. Producer Kristina Reed said, in her official comments on the film, that the goal was not to make a photorealistic CGI look but instead to bring an artistic touch, with drawings that were transferred to computer without losing any of the original expressiveness of the work. Art director Jeff Turley added that the graininess, soft focus and style of photographers like Ansel Adams and Berenice Abbott inspired the unique look of Paperman.

Makes me smile every time I watch it.

Wish I could watch this

One of my favorite Twitter accounts lately is @SeinfeldToday. The premise is pretty simple: "What if Seinfeld were still on the air?" Basically, it's a Seinfeld plot--in today's world--in 140 characters. And, really--if you're a fan of the show, can you not see these totally working?

Kramer follows his car's GPS voice wherever it says, even though it's broken. KRAMER:"She's a professional, Jerry!" JERRY:"She's not real!"
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) January 25, 2013

Kramer pitches Amazon a Kindle with no screen that reads books out loud. JERRY: "You mean audio books? That's audio books! We have those."
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) January 24, 2013

In light of the Manti Te'o story, Jerry, George, and Elaine begin to doubt Bob Sacamano exists. KRAMER:"Oh he's real. He's real alright!"
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) January 24, 2013

Jerry's gf (Carla Gugino) is mad he can't "speak emoji." JERRY:"It says building, crying cat, clock!" KRAMER:"She's running late, Jerry!"
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) January 22, 2013

A homeless man refuses Elaine's offer of a used first-gen iPad. George carries an empty Starbucks cup so he can use WiFi at any location.
— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) January 18, 2013

Hysterical. I can envision every single tweet as an episode, and I love it. Even better is that they are good about posting a couple per day. It's like a gift-wrapped present every day, designed to make me giggle.

Watch this

Volkswagen's pretty funny pre-Super Bowl ad (featuring viral YouTube "stars" best known for being upset):



It's no The Force, but it's cute.

Just stuff I see that I like: 1.25.13

I know, I know, I've been writing a lot about Caliber Collection--but it is truly exciting to see all of the press they are getting! The LA Times, NY Post, Yahoo... I could go on and on, but instead, I'll just link to the Buzzfeed article that has a lovely banner image of the packing.

Speaking of Caliber Collection packaging, I'm thrilled to tell you all that I recently won an American Package Design Award for it (man, we have a house FULL of winners this week!). The American Package Design Awards are put out through the trade magazine GD USA, and I am so thrilled to be a part of it.

----

Seen + noted this week:

Mad Men season 6 cast photos are here! Mad Men season 6 cast photos are here!

The Fascinating Business Cards of 20 Famous People: Not sure how real this is, but in any case, my faves are Steve Martin and Andy Warhol. Super cool to see Abe Lincoln's business card, no?

Speaking of Lincoln, have you seen his inaugural ball menu? With items like pickled oysters, tongue en gelée, and boned and roast grouse, I don't think I would have enjoyed it very much--no wonder there was a food fight. Although. That whole right column is dessert-type food, yet there is a separate (and lame) dessert category at the bottom. Huh.

Here's food (OK, drink, but hello? Segue?) I can get behind: beer. Specifically, The Intersection of Color Design and Beer. I love the idea behind a swatchbook of beer colors! Also, cool logo.

I want this job: graphic designer for film and television. I mean, really. How freaking cool is this?

And finally, yet another well-designed (and fun to look at) annual report, this time from Mail Chimp.

----

Instagram of the week:

The temperature has been hovering around 10 degrees here in CT--certainly not the winter norm. While I like to ski, and I like the winter, 10 degrees is far too cold, and 5 straight days of it is ridiculous. So I've got my fingers firmly crossed that Mother Nature is going to ease up a bit. In the meantime, I am dreaming of wearing these cute gold sparkle flats that I scored at Target for a mere $7.

Happy weekend!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Two photography celebrations at my house this week:

First, one of the teenager's photos has been included in the Drexel University High School Contest Exhibition! Out of 1825 entries received, hers was one of the 140 chosen to be in the exhibition. We're going to the opening reception on February 2, and I'm sure I'm going to be the mom that teenager's nightmares are made of, because I am just bursting with pride. Here's the photo that was selected, Burned:

  



Second, the 9-year old dabbled into photography for this year's PTA Reflections contest, and ended up winning 2nd place in her school! The theme was, the Magic of a Moment; and if you don't know the intern, then you should know that not only is this the perfect representation of her personality, but there is a lot of magic in this moment.

I couldn't be more proud of both of my budding photographers!

Whatever, paper cutter

Sometimes I have to comp things up for clients and sometimes I might be a big baby about it. Cutting out 1 or 2 business cards is fine, but 5 different stationery suites? Ugh. I usually cut myself; and heaven forbid there's any spray adhesive involved--I'm sticky for like, a week. I swear it's like I'm a kindergartener; except that kindergartners probably handle x-acto knives better.

So it is with great awe that I watched this video, depicting the re-creation of Beck's new album cover (lettered by the fab Jessica Hische) in paper art. Like, this person is CUTTING and CURLING all those little pieces of paper. And if that's not enough, they then glue them in specific places to mimic the album cover design.



WHAT THE WHAT.

I need to hire this person, stat.

Just stuff that I see that I like

The other day, I blogged about Caliber Collection, a project I was fortunate enough to work on. They've been getting CAR-RAZY amounts of press lately (yay!), and I think the ultimate was Newark mayor Cory Booker presenting Rachel Maddow with 2 bracelets on her show:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

YOU GUYS. I can't even explain to you how excited I am about this. First of all, Cory Booker is like, holding packaging that I designed. AND THEN HE GAVE IT TO RACHEL MADDOW. And then, she held up the bracelet... with the tag dangling just so... and the super cool tag that I designed... was backwards, and not shown on national television.

Ah, well. It's been a super great week for Caliber and I couldn't be happier for them. Tag, or no tag.

----

Seen + noted this week:

Old(ish) news: The White House officially denied a petition to build a Death Star.

Not to be outdone, the Galactic Empire then responded back (Some might say the Empire Strikes Back. Heh heh).

Warby Parker released their 2012 annual report, and it's a treat to look at (and read).

This made me giggle: 20 of the Most Ridiculous Job Titles in History (The guy who's a Bear Biologist and Paper Folder makes me curious).

This note--taped up in a university bathroom stall--is beautiful.

Finally, here's a super cute Instagram pic of my dog, who (clearly) likes to sleep in weird positions. Yes, she is sleeping with her front paw straight out in front of her, way up off the ground. Someone told me that dogs who sleep all weird like this are happy dogs. Mine must be thrilled.

Happy weekend!

Everything Ipsum

Way back in 2011, the internet seemed like it was a flutter over "ipsum" websites (for those who don't know, Lorem Ipsum is placeholder text in a layout [It's Latin, and doesn't really make much sense]). There were sites like Gangsta Ipsum and--Mattio's favorite--Bacon Ipsum--basically nonsensical gangster and bacon gibberish that could be used in lieu of regular, boring, plain Lorem Ipsum.

Mattio and I had a brilliant idea of making all kinds of Ipsums: shoe ipsums, beer ipsums, you name it; and host them all on one website called Everything Ipsum--basically choose your own Ipsum (OK, how many more times can I say Ipsum in that sentence??). And way back in 2011, I must have had hella free time on my hands, because I even designed a logo:

Unfortunately, the hella free time didn't last long, because aside from a logo, not much else got done. But still, cool idea, right?

Right it is, because somebody else has gone and done all of the hard work and cataloged all of the Ipsum websites for us!

It's not Everything Ipsum, it's Choose Your Ipsum. And internet, you don't ever let me down. Romney Ipsum (which is spectacularly hilarious)? Bluth Ipsum? DOWNTON IPSUM??? Awesome, awesome, awesome. 

Going forward, clients, you might want to take note of placeholder text. You never know when I'll be slipping some Samuel L. Ipsum in there.

(I mean, really. Samuel L. Ipsum? So mother f*cking funny, as he might say).

I'm back. For reals.

The past few weeks I've had thoughts and ideas that make great blog posts bubbling to the surface, but no time to get them written down. The 5 or so months before that, I was just lazy. And busy. But mostly lazy.

---

One of the thing that kept me more busy/less lazy the past few months was a super fun new project: Caliber Collection. I had done some work a few years ago for a Greenwich, CT-based jewelry designer, and she called me up over the summer with an exciting new project.

When I got to her house for our kickoff meeting, the only thing I knew was that I was there to help with the aforementioned exciting new project. After quickly catching up, she showed me... a box of guns, and another box of bullet casings. Ummmmm... OK.

The project was Caliber Collection: the guns and bullet casings were from Newark, NJ. They had been processed as evidence and the case had been closed on them. At this point, they were just taking up space. Enter my client, who'd like to melt them down into bracelets, sell them, and donate a portion of the proceeds to Newark's gun buy back program. She had Cory Booker, super cool mayor on her side, and since the launch in late November, she's sold so many bracelets that she was able to donate $20,000 back to the city of Newark. So cool!

Here's the final logo:

And the logo for 250, the first 250 pieces from the collection:

Here's my mockup for the packaging: manilla "evidence" envelopes, with stickers that can be checked off for "suspect" size, and "weapon" of choice; as well as a rubber-stamped logo:

And here's the real deal:

"Evidence" tags were affixed to each bracelet, mimicking the envelope labels:

The back of the envelope:

And finally, the bracelets themselves:

I am so super proud of having worked on this--it was a blast to design, and it's so awesome to follow all of the press and attention it's getting. It's pretty awesome when your friends are texting you to tell you that Cory Booker is on Rachel Maddow, talking about a project you helped make come to life!

Here's Jessica, the woman behind it all, presenting Cory Booker a check for $20,000.