Double Business
Double Business
Working on an identity for DJ Lani Love, who also happens to be half of the fashion blog Sugar Rock Catwalk. For the upcoming NY Fashion Week, she needed something that could do double duty, as she will be DJing the Independent Fashion Bloggers event and there as a representative for the blog. Information overload on business cards is a tough thing to deal with. I tried to keep it clean with a lean font and simple graphics. As with nearly all projects, there ended up being a designer’s pick and a client’s pick. On the internet, you get to see both!
More Posts from Austineustice and Others
Starting a new project that catalogues the main villain from each X Files episode: X-Villainy. Starting from season three since that’s what I’m on currently, but I’ll eventually get to them all.
Season 3 Episode 1, in which the Well-manicured Man is introduced, member of a secret society of powerfully shady men. Guy definitely has some pull, and his alliances come into question, but remains a pretty bad dude, working with the Smoking Man and all.
This is part of an ongoing project to catalogue the villains from the television series X Files. Check out the others here!
My Year In Bicycles
I’d say my cycling enthusiasm level is now “avid.” It’s been about a year of serious riding for me (or since I was convinced to take my roommate’s 80s Schwinn road bike after he left for another coast of America). The bike was impossibly small for me and he’d kept anything related to comfort free of what he called the bi-cycle (top right). I believe the frame was 51cm, with a plastic seat (I have to call them saddles now that I’m avid), and awful, bare drop handlebars. These words may mean little to you - simply put, the bike was a pain in the ass. And hands. And back. But, I speak of the bike in an ungrateful tone, which is completely the opposite tone I’d like to be speaking of it in. The bicycle was my entry into the mania that now permeates my everyday life. I returned the borrowed mountain bike (top left) I’d had for several years (having ridden it a handful of times [which was also far too small for me]) and set out every late-spring day on that little red beast to try to get my confidence up riding in the city. I’m getting ahead of myself however, I had to ride every day just to learn how to deal with something so foreign. The first time on a road bike is extremely unnerving and seems wrong - the way a lot of things you’ve never done and go against your basic human understanding of ‘how the world should work’ feel wrong. Two skinny inline wheels should not stay upright, especially when adding a skittery, lanky 140 pounder on top. Once you’ve given into the magical psuedo-science keeping a paper thin bike upright, you have to deal next with the posture a classic road bike thrusts you into. Riding on the top of drop bars is not comfortable, especially for a person with wide shoulders and lanky arms (me, I’ve already mentioned my lank) - but what’s worse is the leap of faith you must take to enter the lower part of the curved drop handlebar. If flashes of your face grating against the sidewalk don’t instantly pop into your mind, you’re a brave person with a brain problem.
Suffice it to say, I learned to ride the bicycle without too many issues - and through daily riding and an ever increasing interest in how the parts worked, I was well on the way to my present compulsion, need, and desire for all things bi-cycle. After taking the Schwinn to a bike shop and complaining of outrageous back pain, I was told the bicycle was about 4 sizes too small for me. They set me up on a monstrously large bike and it fit and was a revelation to my atrophying back. So I got a new bike (not pictured) and donated the Schwinn to a friend who still rides it lovingly to this day. My new bike was a low-end fixed gear that was promptly stolen after 3 months of use outside a bagel shop. I hope someone is enjoying it (or its various stripped-off parts) - I did, for the short time I rode it as it gave me a brief but thorough look into the world of fixies - a dangerously associative world I may not have escaped if my ride hadn’t gotten jacked. Despite thinking not all that highly of the New York fixed-gear order, I got another fixed-gear bicycle (bottom left) - but a nice, proper one. It was not long before I threw a freewheel on there though, and indulged myself a little coasting. The rest of My Year In Bicycles involves a lot of conversing with my old roommate who bequeathed the Schwinn to me about bicycle parts, trips we’ll take, and bicycles we need to buy. We’ve both begun a small collection at 2 a piece with a 5 bike plan in the works. My latest acquisition is an old French road bike (bottom right) from the mid 70s that I rescued from a Salvation Army and cleaned, painted and rebuilt as a fairly faithful restoration. I’ve begun training on this monster for a long trip myself and the Scwhinn’s original master are planning. I will always think very fondly of that little bicycle and the awfully wonderful time I had riding it.
Prints!
Get all the fab four. Put George in the dining room, Paul in the den, or all of them in your quiet place. A set of four 8"x10" giclee prints (300gsm, 100% cotton, bright white, matte). What a present... to yourself (or someone else). Get 'em here!
Working on a wedding invitation for best buds. Maybe 30 or so more like this - but not just fish, it’s not a fish wedding, my buds are people. This is a brook trout though.
Bird 5: Blue Jay
A very pretty, pretty mean bird: the Blue Jay. These things would always scare away the smaller birds on the feeder at my childhood home. In the city, they’re a bit more humble with nastier competition.
Bird 12: Red-winged Blackbird
An east coast staple, always mistook these at first glance for the much more elusive Oriole in my homestate of Maryland. Cornell Ornithology via Wikipedia claims this may be "the most abundant and most well studied bird in North America." Go figure.
Good good, Good bad, Bad bad: Buffy
I watched the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie last night, and while I remembered it being good, I had not remembered how good. This is a fantastically funny, stylish vamp/90s high movie. Self-aware camp and super likeable vampire make-up makes this Good good. One of the finest scenes involves Paul Reubens getting stabbed with a ruler.
