front cover

front, back and spine

insider and disc

canoe

me (far right), harris (#12) circa 1983

Harris Eisenstadt was my best friend when I was growing up in Toronto. When I moved to San Francisco when I was 10 I started to lose touch with him and I hadn’t really spoken to him in about 20 years when I reconnected with him last December. My dad sent me a link to a write-up in the NY Times about Harris’ jazz band. Turns out my old friend is a highly accomplished and extremely talented jazz drummer and composer. Harris had finished a new album, Canada II, and asked me to design the artwork. The album is inspired by his Summers spent in the woods outside of Toronto. He sent me old photos from the camp he went to and, combined with my memories of that part of the World, we came up with some imagery that worked with the music. It’s been a dream of mine to design a jazz record since I was in junior high and it was such an honor to be able to work on this for Harris. I also found out he lived in Silverlake then moved to Brooklyn where he lives now. Next time I’m out in NYC I look forward to spending some time with he and his family. Check out his website for some music samples, tour dates and more information. Watch the video above to get a glimpse into his process.

I was asked to design several noir-style novels for a feature film one of my bosses, Chris Gibbin, has been working on. The movie, City of Jerks, is a modern day noir film set here in LA. They were a lot of fun to make as I was able to spend a long time refining the typography to get an aged and believable look. There’s something really gratifying about seeing these props show up in the actual film. City of Jerks is in post production now.

On March 8, 2010 my good friend, Matt Roff (Southpaw, Franklin Park Public Assembly) will open a new burger joint on Franklin Ave. in Brooklyn. The restaurant, Dutch Boy Burger, will be accessible through the main bar at Franklin Park as well as the storefront entrance on Franklin Ave. The food options are nothing less than amazing. You’re all in for a treat. I’ve had the honor of working on his menu designs and some other pieces of collateral and we’re printing these today. I thought I’d give a little peak. We’re hitting them with the sometimes nasty, but in this case vintagey-lookin’ Copperplate Gothic and the utilitarian master font Futura. I can’t wait to see these printed and dripping with burger grease. Congrats to Matty who is just one of those guys who gets things done. This looks destined to be another huge success.

New Year’s Eve is just around the corner and I just finished up the poster for the New Year’s Eve bash at Franklin Park. You’ve got some leaf clusters thinking they’re fireworks up in the sky of this poster and everything else is just as it seems. Happy early New Year – is this decade really over?

I found this flyer on Dropular. The line-up is mind-blowing. The Smiths, Chameleons, Kurtis Blow…amazing. In college my friend Clint and I hosted a British music show called The Haciena on the powerhouse known as KWVA. Made me happy to see this today and made me miss listening to music as much as I used to. At some point, I just stopped charging my iPod before leaving the house.

I was reading on idsgn that IKEA changed their font from Futura to Verdana for their new catalogs. Like many web designers we use a lot of Verdana for website, but for print it doesn’t really do it for me. Jason Kottke had a link to an old IKEA from 1965 which is worth checking out. You can see all the old IKEA pics here.