These photographs just made my life! (And my next life, too!!) Elke Weber, of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University (one of my clients), shares the climate-change book — that I designed — with his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. And he appears rapt! So honored that my work has made it into his hands.

I got the call the night of Wednesday, October 5th (a vacation week), saying we were going to produce a special commemorative issue of Newsweek for Steve Jobs — in the next 48 hours. I hit the ground running early Thursday morning, alongside the rest of Newsweek’s art department and editorial team. The rushed experience, in retrospect, was in fact a perfect way for a designer to honor the way Steve Jobs so beautifully shaped the way I work.

After the issue came out, and I saw the special issues that the staffs at Time Magazine and Bloomberg Businessweek also released, I felt proud to be a part of this effort from the news magazines. An article from SPD perfectly captures the behind-the-scenes action of this world.

December 2011 update: Our Newsweek Steve Jobs cover is chosen by Ad Age as one of the ten best magazine covers of the year. Awesome!

Had a fantastic time this past weekend, exhibiting with FAQNP at the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 in Queens. So many inspiring folks in one space. So many awesome books on display.

Photo captures my collaborator Ray Cha in the foreground. The brilliant Scott Hug in the middle. Butt Magazine in back (naturally).

Grave as the subject is, I was warmed to read a typography story in the “Talk of the Town” section of the New Yorker this week. On the design considerations [and complications] of arranging all two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-eighty-two names on the memorial at the World Trade Center site. Lovely piece of writing.

Loved this lady in the newspaper on X-Mas. “Hallmark’s Cher,” as her co-workers call her.

A couple months late with this, but what the hey. I feel like I need to weigh in on the re-painting of the DKNY mural at the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street in New York City. A travesty.

I remember seeing the DKNY mural when I first moved to New York, and it was deeply moving. I wondered at the time if I should be so moved by — let’s face it — a big advertisement. But still, it beautifully captured my aspirational vision of the Big City: The skyline framed through the cool black outline of the sans-serif letters, the Statue of Liberty unrealistically growing up out of the cityscape, just to get ’er in there. And all hand-painted (!), not some cheap stretched-vinyl billboard.

It probably deepened my reverence for the ad I preferred to think of as public art, that the DK of DKNY had attended the school I’d just enrolled in, multiplying my sense of promise and possibility in relation to my new city.

Now, sadly, the beautiful mural — visual ode to the city — has been painted over by a solid beige bore, with a piddly little Hollister logo in the center. A clothing brand that screams West Coast, right at the crossroads of two famed New York City streets. I now wince (almost wretch) every time I look up, in my frequent passings.

May Hollister be short-lived in this visual real-estate of Manhattan. May we instead see more visionary walls where graphic design outdoes itself to become public art on the streets, on the grandest scale, for all to see, and for some even to love.

Two of my great loves — pre-Modern interiors and flea markets — join forces in one fantastic mashup: The Brooklyn Flea’s temporary digs at One Hanson Place.

During the colder months (till March 28), The Brooklyn Flea is movin’ on up, from its standard location in an empty asphalt lot to the palatial lobby, mezzanine, and underground vault of the former Williamsburg Savings Bank.

If you’re into this sort of thing, it is quite a special experience. The mosaics on the walls and ceiling are spectacular. The food court can be found behind a 6′-thick metal door in the old vault. Vendors populate the old teller booths. The light streaming through the Gothic windows makes the wares seem to glow with their nostalgia.

No need to spend a dime, even. The space is enough of a treasure.

Snuggle up with your nearest radiator. Obvi.

I’m curious: How do y’all feel about “fun type?” You know—typography that feels ‘bouncy’ or ‘playful,’or like what it really wants to say is  Party Time!!? Well. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

The thing is, I’ve been kicking around an idea for a personal project, and the last time I paid a visit to Momma’s house I hit upon a fitting title: Carter’s. (Not ready to tell you yet what the project is exactly, but that’s beside the larger point; you’ll just have to bear with me.) Title inspiration struck when I unearthed this old photo of my grandmother, Mary, with a couple other gals in Milan, Tennessee, in 1962, next to grandpa’s pickup, emblazoned with the name of the gas station he used to run: Carter’s DX. See—that was their last name. Carter.

[side note: DX was a midwestern brand of the Tulsa-based of Sunray DX Oil Co., which merged with Sun Oil in 1968. In the late ’80s, Sun began rebranding the DX stations under the Sunoco name.]

Anyway, I thought Carter’s would be a fitting name for my project. So I set about thinking up a logo. I was originally going to lift the type treatment right off the hand-lettering on the side of the truck, but as you can see, whoever scrawled that on there wasn’t exactly a wiz in the aesthetics department.

As I played with the letters of the name, it seemed it wanted to be a bit off kilter. The letterforms just didn’t fit snugly enough when they were all in alignment. A page from my sketchbook below:

Which brings us back to my original quandry: It looks so damn playful!

I think what it is is that type that doesn’t share the same baseline with the adjacent letters automatically looks like it’s having a good ’ol time. Why is this? Is it some residual effect of epic 20th century branding efforts (on the part of kids’ products, toys, cereal, etc.), now ingrained in our visual-cultural mental library? I mean, why does it automatically scream out, “I’m having fun!,” and not “I’m drunk!”?

To get to the bottom of this, I investigated other venerable brands that use a similar treatment. There’s Playskool [Won’t be getting into all the questions the spelling raises, in this post]—

—Obviously, they’re just doin’ it for the kids.

But then there’s the inexplicable PriceWaterhouseCoopers logotype:

Um, please explain? Is this solution just to horizontally compress such an incredibly long name? ’Cause it looks pretty fun to me, and I don’t see how that could be what they’re going for.

The last witness I’ll call to the stand is the title treatment for the play/film Alfie, which kept the “playfulness” intact from the Michael Cane version all the way through to Jude Law’s interpretation of the role.

And here’s Jude, for good measure:

(Alfie was [is], like, a playboy, I think. Which must explain all the playfulness going on.)

All of this to say that perhaps I’m okay with Carter’s sans consistent baseline? Or maybe I’m venturing into treacherous waters, and should just stick with the truck type? (The more I investigate this question, the more I think the latter might be the way to go.)

Watch for it…

I ’bout fell off my bicycle Saturday afternoon riding across Brooklyn through Crown Heights, when I rounded a boarded up pre-war apartment building and came upon this giant yellow monster.

So this is the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Why didn’t anyone tell me Brooklyn had one of those? I really should get me a kid, so I can be in the loop on such swell goings-on.

Not only is the museum a gem to behold, it’s super-sustainable. Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects and opened last September, the building achieved a LEED Silver rating for its use of rapidly renewable and recycled materials in construction. The big yellow building even has geothermal wells for heating and cooling purposes. Wow. I wonder what those look like.

And check out the Museum from above:

Lovely. It’s incredible to see such bold design in a public project—plopped in the middle of Crown Heights, no less, rather than in Dumbo, Brooklyn, or some such trendy (read: ridiculous) location. This place for kids could hold its own against any boutique hotel on the Lower East Side.

Score: 1, NYC Department of Design and Construction. And one for Brooklyn.