I grew up in a bucolic, classic New England, suburban town 13 miles outside of Boston. It was predominantly white and Catholic. Its claims to fame: a maximum-security prison that housed the Boston Strangler among others, its proximity to the home of the New England Patriots (aka Foxboro Stadium/Sullivan Stadium/Gillette Stadium), the place where numerous… Read More
On August 23, 2019, I wrote an article about the images, names, and references to America’s native peoples, after a visiting an exhibition titled “Americans” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. I discovered this week that one of the brands I had featured, Land O’ Lakes—the butter and dairy company based in… Read More
Ellen Hoverkamp is a photographer based in West Haven, Connecticut. She masterfully creates food, botanicals, and floral still lives. Her tool? A flatbed scanner. Typically, scanners are used for reproducing flat materials, but this is the complete opposite of Ellen’s work. Laying her natural, found elements on the bed of the scanner, Ellen’s work captures… Read More
I truly believe that “good design” pays attention to details. Even better design adds a personal touch. I think this rings true of all types of design—graphic, interactive, interior, etc. Grace Mitchell, an interior designer on HGTV’s One of a Kind, has a really unique process of really getting to know her clients before diving… Read More
When NASA was founded in 1959, the organization’s first logo featured a blue planet, stars, an orbiting comet, and a red flying V. It served NASA well, landing on the moon with Neil Armstrong in 1969. A few years later, a NY design studio named Danne & Blackburn was hired to redesign the NASA logo,… Read More
If you’ve ever considered creating a side hustle, now is the time. Everyone is spending more time at home, and some have encountered either a reduction or a total loss of income. What better way to put your passions to use. Below are a few tips to help you get started. 1) Make Time To… Read More
Imagine losing 200 acres of gardens for 75 years. Pretty hard to comprehend, but that’s what happened to the gardens on the Heligan Estate in Cornwall, England. From the 15th – 19th century, Heligan was the seat of the Tremayne family who started planting the gardens in 1766. The gardens grew larger and more extravagant… Read More
Restaurant owners in our studio’s neighborhood have crafted their own signs to communicate their state of affairs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some signs are computer generated while others are drawn by hand. Some signs are philosophical about their limited operations while others have thrown in the towel and simply written “closed.” The Peruvian restaurant below… Read More
Now that we’ve all been mainly indoors for a few weeks now, I thought I’d share one of my favorite artists whose oil paintings examines the idea of “home.” Ekaterina Popova’s current body of work consists of paintings (ranging in size from 9″ x 12″ to 6′ x 5′) of interior spaces (particularly bedrooms) of… Read More