Look what dropped through my door....

Do you remember, a while ago I posted about the loveliness of Crispin Finn's screenprinted 2010 wall planner? And I was coveting it madly, but even refraining from buying it in London because of my (relative) poverty?


Well I got an unexpected and awesome email from Crispin Finn, saying they saw said post and wanted to thank me for talking so enthusiastically about the wall planner, and thought they could help my overdraft by sending me one!

Enter grinning Rachel!


It's uber lovely. It hurt me slightly to rip the sealed paper to open it, but here it is! It's not on my wall yet as it isn't 2010 and I'm sure that's bad luck or something.

So thanks Crispin Finn! My overdraft thanks you ^.^

I actually got this in the post last week sometime, but have been so busy that there hasn't been any blogginess at all. As you can see. Working in retail at Christmas = tiredness. On a better note, said overdraft is reducing ever so slightly every week, even after succumbing to sparkly dresses in River Island. Well, it is Christmas. You gots to have sparklies. Might be out of parent's house, I dunno, in the next year? Lol....*

*Not actually Laughing Out Loud.

The Daily Ampersand Project

Since leaving Uni I haven't really started any new projects. I've done lots of drawing here and there but now I think it's time to embark on something with weight and that has structure, and is something I can do everyday and stick to it.

This idea originally started as a Font Book - I wanted to create a small handmade book which included all 26 letters, handdrawn, from 26 of my favourite/most interesting looking fonts. I still may do that, one day. But last night it came to me (I always think of stuff at night, gift and a curse) that this might be more interesting if it just focussed on one letterform - my favourite of which is the Ampersand.* Has been ever since I discovered it in year 5 or something - all my prose at school was filled with '& then jack & jill went to the shops & they met sam & sue', which of course is terrible grammar, improper use of the ampersand, and would mean I got red circles all over my stories. But I loved writing that letter so much! So swirly. I was the only one out of my friends who could do it without it going fat and lopsided.

*I also really like the letter Y a lot, it was a tough call.

So I thought about it, and there are so many crazy variations of ampersands in all the typefaces that I could fill a whole book of them. So this is the plan...

• Every day, draw one ampersand. They will be hand drawn/traced from an actual real font, or taken from a photograph of any ampersands I find in the real world, or they will be designed by me.
  
• I have given myself no limitations on the medium - pencil, biro, collage, paint, stencil, anything.
• My limitations are that I must not use a computer to create the ampersands, save for scanning the finished piece in.
• They are going straight into a nice new clean moleskine sketchbook, not a handmade book, which is slightly smaller than A4 - no drawing on a seperate piece of paper and sticking in. Unless it's a collage piece.
• Every day I will scan it in and post it on this blog.
• I am setting a target of 30 ampersands - 30 days, starting from today (15th October). If I want I might do more, but no less than 30.

The History of the Ampersand: Taken from wikipedia, click here for more.

The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and".

The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase "and pe eminti and", meaning "and [the symbol which] plus this [is] and". The Scots and Scottish English name for & is epershand, derived from "et per se and", with the same meaning. Traditionally, in English-speaking schools when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," "&" and, at one point, "O") was preceded by the Latin expression "pe eminti" (Latin for "plus this"). Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign, pronounced "and". Thus, the recitation of the alphabet would end in: "X, Y, Z and per se and." This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1742.

The modern italic type ampersand is a kind of et-ligature that goes back to the cursive scripts developed during the renaissance. After the advent of printing in Europe in 1455, printers made extensive use of both the italic and Roman ampersands. Since the ampersand's roots go back to Roman times, many languages that use a variation of the Latin alphabet make use of it.

I find that quite interesting, I had never really thought of where it came from. While researching this project, I wanted to see if anyone else out there had done anything similar to this; I didn't want to recreate a project that had already been done. There are a few ampersand projects out there but none exactly like this.

Existing Ampersand Projects I have found:

Students from Bath Spa Uni took part in a project to design their own ampersands. They then screen printed them onto t-shirts and took photos. They look pretty damn awesome if you ask me! This was found at an Ampersand Blog, http://ampersand.gosedesign.net/.

That blog is great for anything to do with ampersands - tattoos, photos, user designed ones, lots of great stuff. And the ampersand they have at the top of the site is one of my favourites - Baskerville 169 Italic, or a variation on that:

Which may just be my first ampersand of the project - kicking things off in a flamboyant way :)

The last project I found is by M.Finley Designs, a final year american uni project where the ampersands will be screenprinted. Sounds like a really great project; there's no images of it on that site, but on his Flickr Page there's a good selection:



An important part is what to call this project. I tried to think of a really exciting name, and very nearly called it The 27th Letter Project. (It's on wikipedia - apparently the ampersand is known as the 27th letter of the alphabet) But I thought, that's a bit ambiguous, so I've gone for The Daily Ampersand Project. I might change it, it feels a bit dull.

So i've started my first one - i'm off to an interview and visit my grandparents so I will finish it tonight and post it here. They will all have the 'daily ampersand project' tag.

All Daily Ampersands can be found if you click here.

Previous work of mine to do with ampersands can be found here.

Crispin Finn's 2010 Wall Planner

Here's something lovely. I first heard of Crispin Finn when Grafik Magazine gave away a copy of their 2009 wall planner, probably around the beginning of this year. It's stayed lovingly on my wall for most of the year (I've lived in 3 different rooms so far this year, so it's been up and down) and I have to admit, I haven't actually written on it. It's just too nicely designed and pure and organised that it doesn't deserve to have my random, very un-designed, scrawl all over it.

And I know the point of a planner is to like, plan things. Not just look pretty. But then, that's what I've got my awesome moleskine diary for, and that's certainly been written all over. A lot.

So this new one seems even better. What's that? Embossing? Mmmmm.
And the fonts in this one are still so retro/modern (if that exists), I wonder what they are. And the way it says 'twenty ten' in that lovely way... just pure genius.

I'm glad they've stuck with the red and blue too, I know it's their branding colours but the two are just so pleasing together. Very friendly. I don't look at my wall planner and go 'Omg, 3 days til deadline' or 'Omg, only 3 months til the end of this year' or anything frightening like that, I look at it feel a bit calm and lovely. Also, I'm glad that the 2010 version has the weekends highlighted because this year's didn't. Although, weekends didn't mean a lot to me when I was a student, I worked all the time and partied all the time.

It's hand screenprinted too which is impressive, '2 colour screenprint on 120gsm 100% recycled white colorset' apparently. Recycled! Oh wall planner, is there nothing you can't do?

AND it comes in this brown paper bag. Which is screenprinted. Pure design porn. *fans self in melodramatic way*

I discovered this through a post over on Creative Review and the images are all taken from Crispin Finn's site. I couldn't find any images of last year's (2009's) one on t'internet, so here's a shot of mine:

It didn't have January, the Grafik version. Maybe they sent it out in January. Anyone know if the real version had january? Also, it's early evening so there's shadows being cast on it, strangely annoying. See what I mean about it staying virginal? Silly me. And the lack of not knowing if it's a weekend or not. Yes yes, I do believe next year's design is better than this year's. Ah.

I really hope Grafik give the new one away again for next year. Otherwise, it's going on my christmas list. (Although for £10 you can't actually go wrong, maybe I'll just buy it now.)

David Fullarton - Illustrator from San Francisco

I found David Fullarton's work a while ago now (I've completely forgotten how I came across it, possibly just from my own mintynet meanderings, possibly from another blog) and I'm finally getting round to posting about it.

I absolutely love it. It's got all the factors that make me take notice of another illustrator's work - collage (graph paper mwahaha), hand rendered type, mix media, amazing drawing skills, wit and a touch of melancholy. I can't stop looking through his Behance portfolio - definitely check it out.

I love this one. Made me giggle.

He's also done a series for the Sisyphus Office Exhibition, Houston 2009. - "The artists involved in the project are collaborating with businesses and offices in and around Houston in order to highlight art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life."

Heh. I think we've all felt like this at some point.

I just really love his entire visual language, and the fact that it's entirely handmade is always a winner for me - digital is great but I love the feeling of having something finished (or not) in your hands.

It just reminds me that I really need to keep drawing - I've basically stopped at the moment, haven't done a collage or anything for bloody ages. That makes me sad. Time is so precious these days though, I get home from work every night at about 7.30-8 and end up going to bed at 10 at the latest cos I get up so early... so any creativity (outside of placement - I'm being creative all day there) has to be done at weekends really. And I haven't had a spare weekend for weeeeks so I'm feeling really antsy at the moment because I have a massive to do list. Some of which includes redoing the header for this blog, redoing my website (I don't like it anymore ha), and making my twitter page and avatar pretty. And those are the easy things.

All of which I could do right now if I had a mac! I was bought the entire CS4 suite for a graduation present which is so ace and I can't wait to use it... just need something to install it on :P Cos I bloody hate windows and photoshop. Eugh. Worst combo ever.

Anyway, my placement is going really well, despite the fact I was ill (swine flu? hmmm) last week so missed a day and a half. Including being deathly ill on my birthday. Which was so crap. But I'm all good now and getting proper stuck in, I'm really loving it there. Worcester is so nice as well, really pretty town. (city?)

Enough rambling. I could ramble all day. But apparently I'm going for a run in 20 minutes and I semi don't want to. But fatness has occurred and I must. Sigh. Turrah.

Vegetable Book!

I made this book as a birthday present for my dad.

He (and mum) have a veggie patch where they like to grow (and sometimes fail to grow) all kinds of nice things. Home grown potatoes are soooo nice and mange tout is so crispy and sweet and just immense. Beats supermarket anyday.

So he wanted a notebook/journal thing to keep track of what he's growing and when he needs to planet more stuff and dig things out etc. I was going to buy him something but I can't resist making books!
All the pages inside are either reused or recycled paper, so there's lots of random stuff in there...
bit of graph paper and all sorts :)

There's also pockets and things at the back to keep seed packets and whatever else in there.

And little veggies:
Heehee ^.^

Vintage Times - lipbalm and labels

I've just been catching up on my RSS subscriptions and generally surfing the mintynet and I've stumbled across some awesome vintage finds.

I know it's the latest thing to love everything vintage but I genuinely do; things that have a history, a feel of the old, like they've been places, are very exciting to me. It's also a great thing to keep old things and reuse them instead of always buying new - a great help to the environment and something we all need to start adjusting ourselves to doing, now that the recession is changing consumerism, and the way we see buying new commodities needs to change.

Anyway.

I came across Andrea Garland, who has an amazing range of handmade, organic and ethical lip balms, body balms, all kinds of things, that are all sold in old vintage one off tins and pill boxes! They are so cute and I desire one or many greatly.









Have a look at her online store, and gawp, stare and covet. They're on my birthday list.

I also came across this site as well, with lots of vintage sewn clothing tags.

There's something so pretty and delicate about these - you know they're all handmade and lovingly stitched onto clothing. I just love the old school italic type and 'made in..' you don't get that anymore. Unless it's made in oh holy topshop. And they look like they took time to design and actually make something of. Check out Kindra's Blog for more vintage yumminess and happy things.