Tag: design

Design Exploration in Adobe Illustrator

Carl Setzer

A barista at my favorite local coffee shop had this phrase on her t-shirt yesterday: “What Goes Around Comes Around”. That inspired me to create this one in Illustrator. I haven’t used it as much as I’d like, so finding reasons to open it and mess around always feels good.

What Goes Around Comes Around
Illustrator Exploration

Design Matters Podcast Featuring Fanny Singer

Carl Setzer
Design Matters With Debbie Millman

I’ve been following Debbie Millman’s “Design Matters” for years (I’ve written about previous episodes before). She’s a brilliant interviewer with a great gift for finding interesting guests. With a focus on creatives and the life of being a creative, I find her guests to be inspiring and fascinating. I love seeing a new podcast in my feed.

Today’s episode features Fanny Singer, author, art historian, and, perhaps, most famous for being the daughter of restauranteur Alice Waters, proprietor of Berkley’s Chez Panisse.

I must confess my ignorance of Dr. Singer, Ms. Waters, and Chez Panisse before today. Even though I have an affinity for Berkeley that started in the mid-80s when I was a music student. One year we went to the West Coast Jazz Festival, hosted by Berkeley. I loved the campus and the city and seriously wanted to head there. But, well, life happened. With all that, I’m disappointed in myself for this ignorance.

I highly recommend taking the time to listen to the podcast. For some reason, the podcast is only showing up on the Design Matters Soundcloud feed. Maybe it just takes some more time to ripple out to iTunes, Google’s Podcasts, etc. But, hey, Soundcloud is awesome!

 

The episode references a few things that I thought I’d add links (for your convenience).

  • Fanny’s Instagram
  • Alice Water’s Instagram 
  • Alice’s Egg Spoon: A classic tool that, well, looks like fun to use. Not cheap, but I’m sure hard-core foodies will find it indispensable.
  • Debbie and Alice discuss the fun cooking videos make together during the pandemic. You can see them on their IGTV channels on Instagram (here are their direct links for your convenience: Fanny & Alice). Also, they put together a few YouTube videos through Knopf’s YouTube Channel. Here are the videos (finding them is a bit of a pain):

Colophon: Dr. Singer’s dissertation focused on the British Pop artist Richard Hamilton, who I hadn’t heard of before this podcast (I learned a lot this one). Their description of him makes me extremely intrigued so I intend to research him further. In particular, his cutting edge computer-generated art seems very intriguing.

 

Some Design Observations

Carl Setzer

I have a couple of design considerations/mediations today.

  1. I just found this gem on Pinterest. A clever use of the fire extinguisher. It draws your attention to it, but not in an obnoxious way.
  2. Related to the above:
Building, Belonging, Becoming
  • Lastly, here’s a little experiment I created for my church. Sort of an computer based doodle.

A Monday Morning Haiku

Carl Setzer

summer’s excesses
Helios’ angry glare
I await night’s grace

Today’s predicted weather brings temperatures in the 80s. As a Seattleite, this sits far above the realm of comfort. We tend to whine at such, those acclimated to temperate climes.

I designed this piece with both an eye towards negative space and a clean font. Lato, built into InstaQuote, carries that light sans serif quality. I like the readability, too. This parchment background brings a nice historic/traditional quality.

I hope your Monday sets you up for a productive and satisfying week.