Aahhhhh. Sunshine and sandy beaches has been my addiction as of late. Early mornings spent doing responsible things, late evenings spent trying to do responsible things, but failing miserably by laying down and taking naps. Everything in between is just a nice, bright blur of bike rides along windy waterfronts and making the perfect soundtracks on the iPod to go along with the lap, lap, lapping of the waves at my feet. I have chosen Fluxion as the perfect beach music – no it isn't your crazy surf rock or typical beach bum, shake-your-booty beats – but lovely, atmospheric sounds that almost seem to mimic the patterns created by the ocean's movement and the staggering, sluggish foot steps of passers by. Fluxion also serves as the perfect music to escape into, allowing you to lay back and take in your surroundings without having to listen to the drunk girls who can't play frisbee worth a damn and like to make sure that everyone knows through their terrifying shreaks and evil laughter, it also lets you forget that you are laying under an extremely bright, glowing ball of gas that is sending harmful rays directly into your skin, causing it to redden and perhaps even provoking little cancer cells to duplicate and spread throughout your body. You can think about the sunburns later, after a cold shower and a warm beer – yup, I will probably be there again tomorrow, letting Fluxion take me to the dreamy land of infinite battery power and picture perfect landscapes.

OMG – will someone please get me these shoes. pleeeeeeeeeeaaaase. I'm crying over here people, it isn't fun when girls have to cry. (Oh and I want the ones with black trim, thanks)

WAIT! THIS PAIR!! Oh baby, San Francisco shoes stores better watch out, mama needs some new sandles!

I don't know whether to laugh, cry or pray.

I have whispered here and there about a possible move, or change in my near future. Well I can finally tell you what the big secret is all about. To make a long and uninteresting story very short and sweet as hell (throw a biatch in there for kicks) – I have just become, or soon will in under two weeks time, the new intern at a place that shall remain nameless until I am calm enough to punch in the right keys, without cutting myself on, whatever might be, uh, sharp. So, what does this mean exactly and why is it exciting? When you decide to buy my a drink I will tell you all the many reasons, but for now lets just say that a) I'm pickin up and headin on down to San Francisco for a lil' while; b)typophile + typecon= my kind of pornography; c) yeh, my summer is gonna rawk. Hmmm – the liquor store is still open. I'z gonna gets me sum celebatin', yeh I mean celebratin'.

It has been a while my friends (and foes, I know you still visit – evil foes), I have avoided the web loggin' routine, for, er, no reason really. I was busy, gimme a break – yeh so I read everyone else's blogs, and I surfed around some pretty incredible flash sites and laughed at more Strong Bad emails than one person should physically be allowed to handle, but I still thought of you. So sorry, so sorry.

My school year has come to its bitter-sweet end and I contemplate a geographical, but temporary, move (tune in later for more on that topic). Aside from that, all I can think about is how badly I want to clean and organize my shit. The better part of the last few months has involved me seriously neglecting my dear sweet possessions and their uncomfortable little positions on my barely visible floor. Clothes that I forgot I owned are strewn about, playing hide and seek with each other and tall piles of papers are wondering if they have been residing in the home of that elderly woman down the street, ya know, the one with the cats, and the piles of papers. Pens! Welll, lesseeee here – I can count a bout three dozen that are in reach of my foot. You need pens? I got em. I got mo' pens than you got hairs on yo' head, that's how many pens I got.

As part of my daily get out into the sunshine and find something to do routine, I snagged some serious bargains! On my way out the door yesterday, I dove into a great free box of goodies left by the door of lovable neighbor Cindy (who is moving to Toronto, farewell!) and found a smashing burnt sienna poncho. Not but two hours later, while standing on the #20 bus heading down the Drive, I spotted a gorgeous white shawl hanging from the rack of the Jean Queen. I jumped off the bus and sprinted for the sidewalk rack, telling myself along the way that I wouldn't buy it if it was over 10 dollars (am I cheap or what?). Well, lucky for me it was only 4 dollars! Four canadian dollars. That is like, 3 US dollars, or better yet, like 138 rupees which is like cheap man. Some lovely, dangley earrings that lovingly tickle my neck also made it into my bag, how – well I don't know. It all happened so fast – the whole experience is a blur.

Is it wrong of me to laugh hysterically at this video? Perhaps.

Mmmm… pretty flash site.

You gotta friggin love this… my type teacher hand-lettered his garage sale signs, based on one of his old digital typefaces. Fabulous, really.

This is rad. (translation here.) This is scary, but rad.

The last week of school has arrived. Five projects (this includes one 3000 wd essay and two formal presentations, as well as a fairly complex flash project that hasn't really been given much thought) are due in the next 5 days. Exhaustion has began setting in every so often, especially after spending entire, 12 hour days sitting in front of screens, then spending entire 12 hour nights sitting in front of screens. A break was had on Friday, as the communication design and industrial design grad night was held. Hundreds in attendance, watching a range of presentations given by the graduates; projects they had been working on for either one semester or one year. Hate me if you will, disagree if you must – the small handful of projects I saw were not very innovative, uninteresting and unoriginal. Being the type nerd that I am, I always went with the typography projects. Yawning was inevitable throughout much of what I saw; though I should give props out to one interactive piece related to hip-hop culture – it was obvious much thought and work went into it, most importantly it meant something to the designer. I just have a bit of a problem with some people who take this last chance to experiment, to ask questions and to explore a medium or idea – and waste the opportunity by making something dull and easily marketable? It is more important to challenge yourself and make yourself aware of something that you never thought of, that wasn't there before. To be fair, I attended perhaps 6-10% of the presentations. I am sure there must have been a few that stood out and showed potential, though I did not see them. So, that is just my perspective and I wanted to put it out there. Next year I expect more out of you guys! (er, us) Eventually I found myself back at the bar, begging my fellow classmates/barmaids to fill my eensy teensy wine glass to the brim to I could at least get my money's worth. Soon after, they ran out of boos and quickly we all escaped to the nearest bar, where I remembered why I hated that place so much, then escaped again 5 minutes later to Granville Island's classy version of Hooters. But, I knew almost every patron and it wasn't raining, the starry sky watched over our tables as we threw a few back and shut the place down.

Two hours late for class today, but because I am such a good student, I showed up for the third hour. It is a studio class, so it isn't like I disrupted anyone's train of thought or made a scene, unless of course everyone was admiring my new jacket.

The pink flowery, fluffy spring trees are dropping all their petals, turning green and well, just not as pretty. Though there are these fabulous blankets of pinkness covering parts of sidewalks and cars. White cars, regardless of their make and model, are especially lucky because the flower petals stick to them and make them look as though they will be used for a nice parade of some sort. Walking onto the island this morning, I passed a lovely little bunch of these delightful trees, perched next to small bodies of water filled with duckies and geese; a grassy knoll covered in layers of pink flowers made me want to get a unicorn and share a cup of sparkly, magic tea with my friends, the elves or fairies or whatever little funny creatures may happen to live in wonderlands like that. I would have to get a sword, so I could fight off any demonic trolls who wish to take my unicorn and sacrifice him to the lord of darkness, damning my pink paradise to eternal hellfire and black, smokey skies. This lord of darkness would be the most frightening, yet coolest looking mo-fo on the planet – but evil is evil. Yup, I would definately need a good sword.

The effects of burning colour into your retinas. Very cool.

Hmm… I can't think of anything to write. Not that there isn't a plethora of events happening in my life, not that there aren't dozens of observations that I am making daily, like the fact that I am hating this growing out my hair stuff but I hate having it short kinda thing, all which is making me crazy but then again it gives me a good reason to wear at least one of my ten thousand beautiful scarves on my head; then there is this need, this desperate desire to find the perfect sling-back sandals and a light-weight spring jacket; and of course we cannot forget about my new love for this one song and how I have been dreaming about raisin gardening and baby cows – but in the end I just can't think of anything interesting to write about. All of my creative energy is being dumped into the final stages of projects and such, as well as trying keep myself awake night and day. Caffeine molecules slowly eating away my last bits of effort and my mind is turning to mush, mush that might resemble used coffee grounds.

I think the reason I decided to post anything here was to make those aware, at least those in Vancouver, that New York based writer and comedian Todd Levin, from tremble.com…
(don't you hate it when you are sitting in a room full of strangers, quietly doing work blogging while listening to the latest from your favorite rock band, when suddenly everyone is staring at you, waving their arms and hands, tapping your shoulders trying to tell you that your cell phone – playing the latest beepy version of your favorite hip-hop tune, *clears throat, Get Your Freak On – is disturbing the peace, breaking everyone's concentration, and making you look like a fool because your headphones are too loud?)
… is doing a stand-up comedy routine, right here in Vancouver – better yet, right on the Drive, about 2 blocks from my house. Gotta luv that. I highly recommend this show, follow the Tremble link to get more info on the show and find out why he is my absolute favorite on-line writer. You have to luv a guy who is coming all the way out the west coast to see the Pixies and who gets upset because there aren't time machines.

My future lies in the hands of one of my most dreary and hated enemies – a panic attack and virtual mental breakdown forced me to make the 2am call, it was time to hand it over to them. To let them take control while allowing me to settle into a slight calm, not having to think about it for a short while, let them handle the rest. I had no choice, perhaps my future is really my very own fault, I should've dealt with it sooner – I should have created a solid target date of completion, one that wouldn't end in a painful punishment if not met, one that I wouldn't completely forget about and let slip my mind. Then, its the last minute – the process wasn't working, something was wrong but I couldn't figure it out. Lack of sleep was hindering my abilities to slowly and precisely work out a simple problem, a problem I face daily, one that shouldn't be a problem but it was, it was turning into a massive, grueling, ugly problem, my problem. Then I made the call, one I really did not want to make, the call that I feared, the call that started out with, "OK, so I may be a slight nightmare for you, so be patient…"

Ok, let's cut the drama down into its essential bits: I have a deadline. It is in less than two days. I haven't printed my portfolio yet. I had a corrupt file. Had to rebuild, fix, de-bug. I had to call Kinko's at 2am and tell them I was going to be their nightmare. I left them incredibly strict instructions. They always fuck it up. Always. I am going to pick up my portfolio this evening. At that time, I wish not to flip out on them. I am going to blame them for every failure in my future, if they fucked up. Happy Day.

There was a great post written, by myself, prior to an unwelcomed crash by Safari. You really missed out big time, really – I had talked about pink bunnies and blue sunshine; gay men on beaches and/or riding motorcycles covered with pink fur; crazy flute playing, kart-wheeling bicycle men who spend their days lighting pipes with magnifying lenses and the sun; and of course me observing all of this as I sat in the grass trying to get some work done. Too bad, so sad as they say, I can't possibly recall all of my words now. You can simply take all these elements and construct your own story.

Pretty pictures.

Design First, sleep second. That is the way things work around here; desperately trying to make one of possibly 5 or 6 deadlines, surviving on coffee and finding myself asleep on my keyboard at 3 in the afternoon mumbling to myself about making sure the paper stock is right before printing. It will be over soon – school comes to an abrupt halt in approximately two weeks. These last days are always the hardest – the sun is making daily appearances and the flowers are telling us to go outside and look at them. Bikes are begging to be ridden, airplanes are saving our seats and hockey fans are freaking out about the play-offs. Focusing is difficult this time of year, though in the end it will have all been well worth the struggle.

Below, examples of our daily struggles as design students.
Click for larger image

For a good hour this morning, inbetween the dozen or so snooze button hits and my sleepy mind trying to comprehend what the hell the word snooze even meant – I created blog posts in my sleep. Not that I can remember any of them with any kind of detail (other than the layout format), but at the time I thought every word I was creating in my little imaginary paragraph box, (I was using InDesign, hide frame edges turned off and optical kerning on) was solid gold (all copy set in Los Feliz Bold). Chocolate, frogs and some lawn dwarves were definately part of the posted content, and my grammar was impeccable. I kept saying to myself, and perhaps I was saying it aloud, "damn, they are gonna luv me for this." Yes, luv with an L-U-V. My ever-increasing time spent on iChat conversing with people thousands of miles away and less than one mile away (sometimes even at the same table) has forced me to start spelling words differently. Sweeter, shorter versions – as you all know – allow you to get in more words in less time. Eventually, however, my spelling skills are going to drastically decrease and I will be back at the 5th grade level of constructing words and sentences in no time. I am at approx the 8th grade level now.

In other news, Matthew Carter has created a new typeface for Yale, with fonts designed specifically for use on screen, signage, for use in display or advertising for the college, as well as for basic in-house information exchange on memos and newsletters. He has also created en and em dashes that require no adjustments – the spacing on either side has already been adjusted for all yer dashing needs.

Buy this for me, please.

Damn, baby! Who would have thought that Dot Matrix + Old English hand = totally sexified Brea! mmmm… mmmmm, yummy.

Too busy listening to new music to write. Also too busy customizing my OS to look like my iPod to care.

Ok, any Paul McCartney song should never, I repeat, never be played on a panflute. Just, *sigh*, don't do it.

Spring has sprung – yes and I can't breathe. The flowers and green grass are lovely, though being doped up on the appropriate allergy medications is essential for my survival out in the wild outdoors (of the city?). As I wait for the wonder drugs to kick in, I'm curious to know – since I have been on this medication, and a variety of others for so long – do these little pills really work? Are the next 24 hours truly made comfortable by small, white clumps of stuff that relieve sinus pressure? If I were to take sugar pills, placebos, would it have the same effect? What if I have just been playing mind games with myself, tricking my gullible head into thinking little pills make a difference?

Glyph vs Character. Plus talk of this book.