the mehallo blog. beta.

Jeanne’s gotten herself hooked on this thing called SuperPoke! Pets.

And she’s turned it into a major playground, building elaborate constructed environments. With pets at the center. Grendl is her dragon. The whole thing has a manga-like feel.

My Valentine from my wife (above) took hours to build and features my absolute favorite food, crab. (It’s a San Francisco thing. And tearing thru all the shells, with one small fork, I consider an art form.) Each black dot is a piece of coal, each white and blue flower carefully placed. See the completed environment (animated) live today by clicking on the image.

Sort of watching from the sidelines, I’ve seen how elaborate this SPP universe has become. I have a few observations: [Read more →]

Tags: art, cool finds, exhibitions, illustration, thoughts // Comments Off on An SPP Valentine from my wife

Click for larger view/jump.

Found via Hugo van der Molen

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, illustration // Comments Off on Chocolate Stock

‘Love Fonts Memo is a classic memory game where it’s all about finding a matching pair of cards. At the end the player with most card pairs wins. The cards represent love stories about different kind of type faces.’

The work of Swedish design student/freelance designer Sara Strand.

Found via The Dieline

Tags: cool finds, design, education, fonts, typography // Comments Off on Love Fonts Memo

‘On December 7th, 2009  . . .  Starbucks invited musicians from all over the world to sing together at the same time to raise awareness for AIDS in Africa’

The Starbucks Love Project here. In partnership with (RED).

Tags: cool finds, events, music // Comments Off on Worldwide Love

‘Look for a young Mick Jagger sitting in the crowd’

Tags: cool finds, music // Comments Off on Love

‘Love is a dish best served in a buffet  . . .  free mixtape features tunes from Echaskech, Fol Chen, Magnetic Fields and many more’

Here’s a link to an intense Valentines Day mix from Alan Ranta of PopMatters.

Happy Valentines Day!

Tags: cool finds, music // Comments Off on Mix

Photo found via Jessica of The Veronicas

Tags: cool finds, photography, thoughts, typography // Comments Off on Sorry

HE incredible Jessica Hische is also from Hazleton, PA.

Knows what a good Eastern Pennsylvania snack pitza is. Knows about this thing called Root Liquor (which I didn’t know about; I just know about Birch Beer, my favorite beverage from back there). And she’s been doing a drop cap a day for a few months now.

Drop caps, initial caps go wayyyy back – mainstays of illuminated manuscripts, and they’re part of the reason we’re still using caps today (for beginnings of sentences, names).

Jessica provides code to add caps to your own blog. Grab em here.

ND, as of last month, the caps are available as prints. Archival, on velvet coated fine art paper.

But that’s not all. Jessica has a bunch of other cool stuff in her store, including this wonderful ‘Day-Runining’ notepad (pics below). The pad has individual sheets one can send to unruly clients who don’t pay for your services, waste your time and – of course – ruin your day.

Order the pad here. Order the Drop Cap prints here.

And
Visit Jessica’s complete store here.

Tags: art, cool finds, design history, typography // Comments Off on Jessica’s initials

I love when the general public finds brilliant solutions to overlooked design problems.

from south korea
Cold weather + not wanting to remove gloves + iPhone + sausages = productivity!

Snack sausages make great substitutes for browsing fingers. Something Apple’s design team hadn’t quite anticipated. Details here.

And
You too can be productive! Snag some Slim Jims for your iPhone  . . .  here.

Found via Kottke

Tags: cool finds, culinary, design, thoughts // Comments Off on iPhones and sausage

The beautiful photography of Barcelona-based Lara Alegre.

Website here. Flickr here. MySpace here.

Found via Because It’s Nice

Tags: cool finds, photography // Comments Off on ‘i love winter’

Joseph Polchin, Sr. (1906-99)

Today is my grandfather’s birthday.

I always thought it was cool that his birthday was celebrated with a National Holiday. He always reminded me of Lincoln anyway. We call him ‘Pappy.’

Pappy spent most of his life in Hazleton, PA (my family is from there). Loved baseball, enjoying a cigar (taught me how to correctly smoke one), could bake a killer huckleberry pie (with berries picked locally, they grew wild in Hazleton) – and I still have a full bottle of the Windsor Canadian Whisky he picked up on his last visit to California (he always insisted on the cheap stuff). At this point – it’s at least 20 years old – makes a really smoooth cocktail.

In the 1930s, Pappy took a printing/typesetting correspondence course. He actually knew a bit about what I do as a graphic/font designer. He was one of the few in my family I could talk to about my chosen profession.

So have a whisky (or martini), cigar, kick back and enjoy Pappy’s Day 2010.

Photo taken by Bob Gray, Winter 1987

Tags: cool finds, photography, thoughts // 1 comment  . . .