I’ve talked about it forever, but it’s finally, really, actually happening. In addition to the new site launch, I have a brand refresh that’s happening and I’m excited about that as well. The site will be rolling out very soon (like in the next week). It will showcase newer work, personal work, contain a “shop” section where I’ll have random things I make and design for sale… and finally at some point a blog. I’m holding off on that for launch, as clearly I have seriously neglected it, but plan to incorporate it back in once I can discipline myself to write more often and provide value to the blog.

Alas, our garden is planted. Several weeks after roto-tilling the plants are finally planted.

If all goes accordingly, we’ll have: cucumbers, tomatos, watermelon, honeydew, sweet peppers, chili peppers, jalapeño peppers, two different kinds of pumpkins, gourds, butternut, buttercup, and acorn squash… and strawberries. I have quite a bit to learn still, but the beautiful thing about gardening is it can be as time consuming and complex as you want it to be. You plant something in the ground, give it water, and sunlight… and it grows (well, hopefully).

That said, there are a lot of things to learn and I’m looking forward to it.

Homepage Design

Interior Page Design

It’s time to start planting. Thanks to my father-in-law (and his rototiller) our garden is ready for us to plant this weekend. The space is pretty massive for our first garden, so Amy and I spent a good amount of time planning what we wanted and trying to best utilize the space without being overwhelmed with a such a large spot. As it is, I’m sure we’ll still produce way more than we need.

Per my “Plans for 2012” note way back, we’ve purchased our first birds. We have 3 laying hens, 3 guinea fowl (noise-makers to try and keep predators at bay), and 10 meat birds… they will be ready in a couple more weeks. I have plans to build a large chicken tractor, but intend on having them still be free range. We’re still feeling that out. Also, depending on how things go we’ll likely end up purchasing some more laying hens, and having at least enough eggs for ourselves, but you never know… like our garden, we may end up with more than we need.

Republican? Democrat? Gahh… either way you’re screwed.

Launched a very small personal project over the holiday weekend. For lack of a better name (and because certain tumblr names were taken) I ended up with “A Real Quote”.

I design something that accompanies a quote said by a friend, family member, or total stranger.
My wife tells the story behind the quote in several paragraphs.

That is the whole shebang.

Check it out — http://arealquote.tumblr.com

I’m a big fan of beautiful ampersands. While I’m certainly not a type designer, custom type really interests me and I’ve been diving into it purely as a learning experience. I decided it was time to give a go at creating a custom ampersand and the following is the result of that exercise. It’s certainly not the best, and there are already lots of things about it I’d like to tweak, but it was a fun experience and I hope to continue exploring the world of lettering and typography.

Here is a splendid tumblog that has a different ampersand for every day of the year. As well as a great post from SimpleBits on using the best ampersands on your website.