I’ve been making some tweaks to the look of this thing. Sort of slowly. I’m working on integrating my Portfolio site into the blog…or rather the blog into the site to make it one thing. I’m one of those designers that sort of thinks she has the ability to understand code, and potentially suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. So please bear with me as I conduct some trials between now and whenever this new site comes to a full realization.
Cheers,
Alice
Since the fall of 2008 my friend Melissa has spent a lot of time gathering stories about this awesome city and has worked with designers to make the stories come to life visually. She put all this work into a book called Our Portland Story. Last night, Our Portland Story had it’s second coming out party at Backspace during First Thursday. A handful of authors read their stories. Unfortunately I missed most of them, but I did have the chance to hear the last two including the story I designed. I also finally met it’s author, Alex Rauch. The curator of Backspace picked 17 pages to display during the month of November, including mine. So if you are sad you missed out…it’s not too late.
You can buy the book in a variety of ways including directly through OurPortlandStory.com and a handful of local stores including Powell’s (should be on shelves by next week).
P.S. If you have a great story to tell about Portland, I hear Melissa is already taking submissions for Volume 2.
I love this blog: 1000 Awesome Things
It shares really simple things that are pretty common experiences. Things to smile about and think, “Yeah that is Awesome.”
Number 447 reads:
Walking into a crowded party and locking eyes with someone you know across the room.
Ding-dong.
The door opens to you on the porch in your just-washed jeans and crispy clean shirt staring into a sweaty sea of strange faces. You walk in and stumble past a pile of shoes and a kissing couple while awkwardly scanning the room for some friendly faces. Stepping a bit deeper into the anonymousbass-thumping scene you move past empty bowls of chips, slippery wet countertops, and loud laughs … wondering for a second if you’re in the right place.
Then it happens.
You make laserbeam eye contact with a close friend smiling across the crowded room.
Suddenly it’s all confirmed.
You belong here.
AWESOME!
I’ve been keeping my eye out for things like this. So glad to finally have found something worthy of the hunt.
Get yours at Bright Thread.
Bright Eyes’ Coyote Song for The Sound Strike, an Artist Boycott of Arizona and the SB1070 Law. Proceeds from the song go to children in Arizona whose parents have been detained or deported, as well as immigrant rights organization and legal defense.
This whole idea just makes a lot of sense to me.
Check out the original video here. Learn more here.
I don’t have a lot of space. And I have a hard time getting rid of things once I’ve got them. So I’d rather practice my non-hoarding skills by painting on some butcher paper (two things I always have on hand) than buy more paper to add to the closet.
Saturday I went to the coast with some friends trying to escape the heat of Portland. We succeeded so well that we were actually disappointed. It was cold, foggy, windy. And I forgot my sweatshirt of all things.
That place must make so much money off of people like me. I was excited at first that I had been so forgetful. It gave me a chance to buy a cheesy tourist sweatshirt. I swear I know someone with a sweet tie-dyed one. But I was disappointed twice.
Yeah, there was one I found that was tie-dyed, but the typography and other graphics on the front were just too much. There was one that was an imitation Lifeguard shirt. But the composition on the mostly white sweatshirt just seemed so drab to me.
It seems like such a lost opportunity. I hope some designer with some awesome type skills gets their hands on a Seaside sweatshirt project soon. Then I would spend my 45 bucks on that nice piece of work instead of a solid colored 12 dollar one.
