moved

I've moved my blog to be part of my web site for the time being. I am going to ask someone clever if there is a way to publish here and there at the same time, because I know some people prefer blogger.

But in the meantime, I am here: www hundreds dot ca

hundreds & thousands online

My studio web site is online at www.hundreds.ca. It will take me a few months to complete the portfolio section, but it's all up and running. I like squarespace 6. It's so much easier to get things like this done nowadays.

talk

Yesterday I gave a talk at Simon Fraser University on book design and publishing practices — while I was researching I found a new moomin app. Of course there are moomin apps, why didn't I think of it! 

Today I'll be at the Alcuin Society's symposium on the printed and the electronic book called The New/Old Book. Chipp Kidd and Marian Bantjes will be speaking. It's been a while since I took a day off for professional practices.

This time last year I gave a small talk on the same topic at the Adobe Max Education Summit in LA. It's an interesting time in publishing. Although I personally prefer simple, tangible print books I completely see the value in electronic books. I think there will need to be a lot of new content created to develop the form of the electronic book, rather than just adapting traditional books to the screen. This is a good time to be a student, I think. Confusing, but fun.

oh

As soon as I send out a little complaint about the weather the sun comes out and new business cards arrive in the mail.

By the way, OCR F is great, but it is very hard to kern (even though it isn't a monospace like OCR A).

When I was Small

When I was Small just won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize — congratulations to Sara O'Leary and Julie Morstad for the third book in their Henry series. Phew, that's a lot of links.

(I was meaning to post this last week, but I've only just gotten going on photographing my portfolio, so it was lounging on my to-do list, heh.)

I also found this snapshot in my files of trying to get the pink on the cover to be the right shade — it's so easy to go wrong with pale pink!

What's in your pocket?

There are 2 fun things to explore at jaszakschatten. One is a lovely set of free e-cards to choose from.

Here is the e-card we made.

The other is their ongoing project to curate the contents of everybody's pockets. Send a picture to info at jaszakschatten dot nl to be a part of it all.

This is a book I designed last year which is also about curating pockets, in this case the pockets of a little girl over the course of a year: Bella's Pockets.

Owls See Clearly at Night | Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer

This past Saturday Simply Read Books launched Owls See Clearly at Night at Collage Collage. Owls See Clearly is an introduction to Michif, the language of the Métis people. Michif is a combination of Cree and French and used to be a common language in the Prairies, but is now disappearing. This book is a resource to help preserve Michif and it is also beautifully illustrated and carefully conceived by Julie Flett.




If you would like to know more about Michif, here are some resources from the book (click on the image to enlarge), including the online Métis Museum, which contains educational resources, stories and more.


This book was designed by hundreds & thousands, which is my design studio. It is typeset in Electra and Syntax. The book proportion is 1:1.1 and was derived from a 4-column grid in Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typography (incidentally and randomly, the grid is patterned off an ancient Egyptian text—it was an almost perfect fit with the material). The paper is a really beautiful off-white which was recycled. It printed beautifully. It's really great to see how well recycled papers are performing these days. A few years ago there weren't many to choose from.