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got $5? help save This American Life's podcast!

2008-12-26T18:12:00.000-08:00

hey everybody. i normally don't do this but i feel this is really for a good cause and the solution is cheap cheap cheap...

i know many of you listen to This American Life, recount the stories to other people, laugh at it, laugh with it, get all excited when there's a new episode. of course, not living in the US, the only way we can get the podcast is via the internet, and it turns out the cost of streaming the TAL podcast is huge. NPR is a non-profit and the recession is hitting the organization really hard. they may have to cancel the podcast if they don't raise 150 000 bucks. they've already laid off people. things seem kinda bleak.

apparently, there are close to 200 000 listeners to TAL, and next to none of them give any money. if each of them gave $1 (ONE DOLLAR!! THAT'S IT!) this whole bandwidth situation would be solved. i really, really, love this show and i think it's worth it to toss them some dough around christmastime. the amount can be anything, there's a fill-in-your own amount slot at the donation page. if you can spare even $5, please consider giving it to TAL so we can continue listening to Ira Glass and Johnathan Goldstein and David Rakoff and David Sedaris and Starlee Klien and the host of other folks who have kept us company on the radio for the past while. there's nothing else like TAL out there, so please please please help keep it going!

giving dosh to TAL is easy, just click on this link and use your credit card. the next time you find yourself doubled up laughing at something david sedaris just said, you'll be thanking yourself, and i'll be thanking YOU.

https://secure2.convio.net/wbez/site/Donation2?2740.donation=form1&df_id=2740&JServSessionIdr006=vyehe48z35.app20a

xoxo
vikki
(see below for NPR's email to me)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ira Glass adio.org>
Date: Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 3:54 PM
Subject: This American Life's podcast
To: vikki@veekee.ca

This American Life Store: conf_signature_image

Hello,

Ira Glass here. I hope you'll forgive this mass email. I'm writing to you because you've donated money to This American Life in the past, and I'm hoping that you might do it again today. As I've been mentioning on our podcasts, our home station, Chicago Public Radio, like all non-profits, is struggling in the current economy. It faces a $1.5 million dollar deficit. A dozen of our colleagues were laid off.

Which brings me to our podcast. It costs Chicago Public Radio over $150,000 each year just for the Internet bandwidth to get you our free podcast and free streaming of our show. They don't need to make a profit on the podcast but they can't afford to have it cost them money. It would be horrible if they had to lay off more of our friends and co-workers so we could have a free podcast. So I'm turning to you again to ask for your help in covering that cost. Whatever you can afford, $1, $5, or if you're still doing well in this economy, $20 or $100. Here's the link to do that.

Or - even better - if you know someone who listens all the time to our show but who - unlike you - has never donated, get them to pitch in for the first time. I know it's kind of lousy that I'm coming to you for a second donation when most people who hear our show never give anything at all. Let's fix that! Forward this email to them. If we can get more people to donate, we won't need to turn to you as often.

Thanks,

Ira

punk rock christmas present!

2008-12-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

edmonton, here are your instructions to receive your punk rock christmas present:
1) put on 30 layers of clothing, one layer for every negative degree in the -30 air
2) go to your local friendly Vue Weekly box
4) take out a copy of the Dec 25th Les Tabernacles edition
5) open to the centre spread
6) follow some local punk rock history. rejoice!
7) amazing illustrations by the illustrious Kirsten McCrea
8) words by mr. bryan birtles
9) design by yours truly
10) i just realized we three all went to high school together
11) HAPPY HOLIDAZE!

- veekee.

"stop designing, start playing"

2008-12-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

There's a really great interview over at design:related with book designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. Her philosophy of "stop designing, start playing" rings really true. She says:

"It was a way to get the students to free up their creative processes and really explore as widely as possible around a brief before focusing in on a particular solution. The temptation is always to take the constraints of the end product as a starting point as well as an end point. That shuts off so many avenues of exploration."

Indeed. Now go play!

veekee in designsponge and uppercase!

2008-12-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

wow wow wow, thanks so much to design*sponge and uppercase for featuring the veekee agendas in the last couple of days! i've received some wonderful repsonses and i'm so grateful and inspired!

there's a few agendas left over on etsy. now, never fear, this is an annual project, so i'll be making a whole new set of agendas for next year and onwards basically until my fingers become arthritic and no one uses paper anymore (which will be never, i hope!).

also, stay tuned for more projects in the new year, post san fran inspiration blitz.

love,
veekee.

I <3 SF

2008-12-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

I'm heading to San Francisco this new year's for a well-deserved break. Lucky me! Now if only I can find the time to plan my trip or even just read a guidebook I'll be set.

So this is where you come in - I've got a google map here in which I've been pinpointing my points of interest. I'd love your help in pointing out great places in SF. Bonus points for stuff not in the guidebooks. Anything goes - neat streets, great cafes, a nice place for a walk, etc. Just click on the google map link above, search and address or name, and save the point to the map....I promise to take tons of pictures in exchange!

Nikki McClure

2008-12-16T12:15:00.001-08:00

Maybe Nikki McClure's painstaking exacto-cut-out illustrations are no secret to everyone else but they pretty much hit me over the head yesterday as I was scouting out neat places to visit on my upcoming trip to San Francisco. I'm dazzled! Tongue-tied! There's really something about the graphic simplicity of her images coupled with the precision and detail in creating them that's really refereshing in this digital, edit>undo, 10-second-epic world we're working in these days . I particularly appreciate the interrelation of her subject matter and the labour-intensive way she works.

early century arts and crafts, where are you?

2008-12-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

It has long been my hope that the venerable Arts and Crafts movement would return and slay the evil factories, terrible working conditions and shoddily made mass produced products of the Industrial Revolu----wait wait wait. Sound familiar? Yeah. I say it's time for Art and Crafts v. 2.0. Let's get a new William Morris and a new Josef Hofmann, but maybe they could, like, be chicks or something.

[RIVA Handkerchief by Josef Hofmann, c. 1910]

The Red Shoes - Sun Young Yoo

2008-12-08T12:19:00.001-08:00

Hanging out at Audrey's Books this Sunday, I came across The Red Shoes, a beautifully re-imagined version of the Hans Christian Anderson tale. Sun Young Yoo's drawings feel so close to my own style I felt a little bit like my brain has been stolen! All graphic, all black and white, and all lines, all the time. Those genius designers over at AMMO even used Mrs. Eaves - swoon! Thought I'd share.

ps: in my continuing effort to spend time and support my own community, I've gotta commend Audreys for being open on a Sunday for all those downtown folks who would like to hang out in their own neighbourhood. cheers.

veekee agendas

2008-11-29T17:22:00.001-08:00

following a three month ordeal which you are welcome to check out on my flickr, i am pleased to announce that i have somehow managed to create 100 hand- silkscreened, vintage silk scarf bound, originally illustrated agendas with

pockets and stickers. veekee agendas can be found at Uppercase Gallery in Calgary, Nokomis in Edmonton and Propeller Clothing in Osoyoos B.C. If all else fails, you can also get them at my Etsy shop.

They were truly a labour of love. i hope you enjoy using them as much as i enjoyed picking the fabric, drawing the interior spreads, and mucking around with a silkscreen and gold paint.

xoxo,
vikki

ps- there are 50 more books which i have not covered . i'm willing to do custom orders...let me know!

Making Artistic Careers Lucrative

2008-11-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

I got tingles down my spine tonight when I read this article from nytimes. Working in a creative field and making a living at it is the dream. Point: there's only room for a handful at the top. Indeed, few of us will become massively successful conceptual painters with solo shows at SFMOMA, but many of us have a rock solid chance of making a fulfilling career where we don't starve and can maybe afford a side trip to San Francisco without having to mortgage out your cat to fund the damn trip (ermm...). Have faith, my creative, unable-to-stomach-the-temp-job-anymore friends! You can do good work and not sell out!

Tips and tricks? Post freely.

microphotographs

2008-11-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

totally neat images (this here's a Dune Mouche) curated by SFMOMA (via Wired). There's a quality to them that is something between drawing and photography...and gel transfer?

lovely package indeed

2008-11-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

there's something about those overly intricate mint tins (altoids, newman's own, etc) that make me stop in my tracks and share them with y'all.

(from lovely package via notcot)

Turn on your sound and TYPE

2008-10-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

Part of Amy Papaelias' amazing bank of experimental typography:

http://www.sonotype.com/

Your favorite stops in the blogosphere

2008-10-21T14:11:00.000-07:00

Jillian Temaki has written a great post (via drawn.ca) about idea generation. Among other things, she advises young grasshoppers (ie. the rest of us) to:

BE INTERESTED. Consume media. Participate in culture. Read books, go to movies, the news, fashion magazines, stupid blogs, etc. Browse the bookstore just for the hell of it.

It's no secret that I'm (mostly) a pop-culture-know-nothing. In the spirit of remembering that art and design should not be produced in an intellectual bubble, keeping in mind consuming (pop) culture is as important as creating it, and that above all art and design is a response to our surroundings, I want to ask you what your favorite blogs/culture gathering things are. Art+design related, tech, pure pop culture, literary, whatever, I want to hear it.

And c'mon, don't be too cool to admit it - I read perezhilton too!

vote today!

2008-10-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

i would like encourage you all to vote today, so, uhh, i've drawn you a picture?

last minute info: www.voteforenvironment.ca

beautiful losers

2008-10-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hand-drawing a tesselated pattern is apparently not a superhuman feat

2008-07-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

For all you pattern junkies out there, I've found a tutorial on how to draw your own, as intricatley as you want, and still have the patterns tesselate. I know my eyes went as wide as saucers (sorry, too much Mad Men these days) when I found this - here you go. Thanks to Julia Rothman at Design*Sponge.

FrontPage is closing.

2008-07-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

That's right. Yeah. You heard me. FrontPage Newsstand on Jasper Ave will close on the 18th of July due to rent costs. Sad, isn't it? Don't we (and I mean the royal, collective society "we") read magazines anymore? Newspapers? Anything? Are we all THAT glued to our computers and our TVs and iPhones? You know, there shouldn't be two newsstands in this city, there should be some on each corner. Especially because downtown Edmonton seems to have this strong "community" - it seems big enough to attract a Sobeys and a flipping Farmer's Market but somehow there's no room for one of the biggest Saturday-afternoon-walk attractions in the downtown core.

Great. Just watch, as Hub Cigar will randomly close next and all of a sudden I'm going to have to buy my mags at Chapters. And we all know how much Heather Reisman loves her censorship. Cripes. Mom and Pop shops, beware. It seems Edmonton is not the place for you, to the detriment of any shreds of independent culture we have left.

Intricate Patterns in Illustrator!

2008-07-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

Found this link today. There's some good possibilites there.

EDIT: Actually, the whole GoMedia site is a pretty sweet resource. Check out the free stuff here.

Laurentien Pencils

2008-07-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

I found some Laurentien pencils at work today and they just reminded me so strongly of colouring books and childhood memories and after school things. Back then, I was happy to have all these colours to play with! Green skin? No problem! Gold eyes? Done! Now I'm pretty stoked that the design has remained the same for 20 years at least, complete with painted numbers corresponding to each colour. There's something with the history that I appreciate - there's no need to update the pencil designs for the sake of flash or branding. I'm glad they've stayed the same.

Also, these pencils appeal to my love of colourful things in sets. Maybe I should post more things in sets sometime soon.

Cinemathon - July 12, 2008

2008-07-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Hold on to your hats, Cinema-thon is coming up on Saturday, July 12! It's a fundraiser for Metro Cinema and I swear it's going to be a fun, fun party. Nay, a circus! What's going on, you ask? Well, there will be some quality bands (Field+Stream, Electricity for Everybody, a DJ set with Jaycie Jayce and NIK7) as well as the results of the FAVA HD competition and some great shorts from the Prairie Tales 2008 series. As an added bonus there will be video artists jamming all night long and for all you drawers out there, art making on the sidelines is a must! There will be drinks and food and we're hoppin' until 3AM.

Poster by yours truly - take a look for the details and if you like, you know, doing things that are fun and late night this may just be your bag. F-U-N!

Dalek + Swindle

2008-07-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

What I do love about working with my Magazine Project interns is that they're like a small army of search engines, always scouring the interweb for new, shiny objects/magazines to show. This makes things especially hard because then I have to sit on my hands and resist the urge to ditch out on a meeting to rip on over to frontpage and buy the New Neat Shiny Art/Culture Mag in question. This particular Juxtapoz cover and Swindle mag (yeah yeah, I sure you've all heard of them) were found by a couple of my interns. Thanks, guys!

Taking a flip through Swindle magazine is worthwhile. Its writing isn't trite and the cover art is usually incredible. Issue #12 had a gobstopping cops and gangsters photo shoot that was much more a visual essay or narrative piece than just another photo shoot. They also featured Dalek a while back. No, not the Dr. Who episode, but the artist James Marshall, whose work is on the Juxtapoz cover above. I am completley cowed by his complex use of colour and geometry and solid compositions, and I just rolled over to his website and signed up for his email list.

Darren Booth

2008-06-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

Just saw a posting over at drawn.ca about the work/life book for uppercase gallery - what made my jaw drop is the cover by illustrator Darren Booth. Golllllllly!

Work/Life is here.
Darren Booth is here.

Charley Harper - An Illustrated Life

2008-06-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

Wandering through Montreal last winter I stumbled onto (into?) the Drawn and Quarterly shop in Mile End where I proceeded to black out and feed my book addiction while my friend patiently waited for me. For hours. I can't say it was the worst place to be stranded!

One lovely book that I didn't pick up due to its sheer size (how shall it fit in my backpack?) and hefty price (how shall I pay my rent?) was an oversized tome of the late Charley Harper's illustrations.

He is a master colourist and his graphic but simple illustrations of birds, insects and nature are brilliantly composed in flat planes of colour. It reminds me of 50's kitsch mashed with modernist influences, though of course no modernist would ever allow this much color into their work, which is just fine by me. He's also known for some children's books such as "Birds and Words", which the publisher's website tells me is a classic. I'm looking forward to discovering more about him.

Read more/order (I wish!) here.

Letterpressin'

2008-05-31T01:36:00.000-07:00

Got to play with SNAP's letterpress the other day. I had ordered some woodblock type off of ebay and the next thing I knew, I was inking up rollers and playing with leading. Joy!

The thing I find queer about letterpress is the actual text block is so filled with texture and colour and variation and metal and wood and everything else and the print comes out so clean and blank. I'll post pics of the print when it's done.