notes from home & doe bay

Here's a project I am very proud to be a part of: Notes from Home

Notes from Home in the simplest of terms is a house show series. The shows take place in living rooms in and around Seattle. The audio is multi-tracked live. Photographers are invited to come shoot the show. And a few songs of each set are recorded to video by Tyler Kalberg and Dylan Priest. Now that the site is up and running, you can listen to (and download!) that audio, you can look at the photos, and you can watch the videos. It's pretty incredible.

I was lucky to design both the logo and do the majority of the type work for the site and videos. I'm very, very happy with how it's all come out and I couldn't be more proud of Tyler, Dylan, and Zach for putting this all together.

I also helped organize show #3, with Damien Jurado, John Vanderslice, and Colin Reynolds. I sang with Jurado and Vanderslice, and one of my songs with Vanderslice made it into the video section. You can watch that here (it's the second song of three, but you should watch the whole thing):




I also mentioned a few posts back that I sang with Vanderslice at Doe Bay Fest on Orcas Island this past August. We filmed a Doe Bay Session for Northwest music blog Sound on the Sound (also shot by Tyler Kalberg), and here's the result of that:

case studies - "lies"

While Paper Tiger goings-on are slow, here's a piece of news I forgot to share earlier. Local Seattle photographers Kyle Johnson, Andrew Waits, and Miles Burnett made a music video earlier this year for a local band called Case Studies. The video is shot from the point of view of the singer, Jesse, as he goes on the same date over and over again with different girls. I was fortunate enough to work with these guys as one of the girls in the video, and I share that role with a whole heap of talented ladies from Seattle (including Melodie Knight from Campfire OK, and photographers April Brimer and Aya Sato, to name just a few). And if you look closely, you might just spot a familiar sweater.

where in the world is paper tiger?

Hello, friends. It's been a little quiet in this space as of late, I know! It's high time I provided an explanation.

Arts and crafts are a huge part of what I do, but I am an academic as well. Earlier this year, sometime in the spring, I was getting ready to finish up my master's degree in TESOL (that's Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and feeling restless, I decided to apply for English teaching jobs abroad. Well, I was offered a few, and so I have relocated to Debrecen, Hungary for the 2011-2012 academic year to teach at the university. My new job takes up quite a bit of my time and energy, leaving less time for the various art projects I usually have going on.

But never fear! That does not mean that I'm not working on any projects. I still have some design things on the horizon, and I'll be doing quite a bit of knitting and crafting over the course of the year. I'm hoping to finally work on a few of the knitting patterns I've been meaning to write for months (or years). I will continue to post about arts and crafts and music happenings. And next summer, when the year is over, I'll be headed back home to Seattle.

If you have any interest in my Hungarian adventure, you can read about it and see lots (and lots) of photos right here:
greathungarianplain.wordpress.com

And in the meantime, here are a few recent happenings:


I performed at Doe Bay Fest on Orcas Island in Washington with my old friend John Vanderslice, and it was an immensely good time. I might have something to share with you in the next few weeks. Until then, this is a photo of me and John by the supremely talented Lori Paulson, taken at the festival.


On a trip down to San Francisco this summer, I made sure to swing by Vanderslice's studio Tiny Telephone to see the new B Room, Minitel. Having shot the A Room last summer, I had to shoot the B Room too! You can see all my Minitel photos here.


My first knitting project in Hungary: this is Knitted Bliss's Stockholm Scarf


I had some WA Home shirts printed for my art show in June, and there are still a few available through Luckyhorse Industries.

Check for more here soon. Promise!

inspiration: books and pdx

This summer has been surprisingly full of travel, and I'm only just getting around to projects that have been on the to-do list. In the meantime, I've been totally in awe of two new projects by Portland-based illustrators/authors.

My friend Amy Martin recently relocated to Portland from Los Angeles. This coincided with the release of her new children's book, Symphony City, by McSweeney's.

Amy's illustration is hugely inspiring for me - her work is saturated with color and her graphic style is appealing and very well-suited for everything from music posters to (you guessed it) children's books. What impresses me the most about her latest project is that she also wrote the book herself, and great children's literature is deceptively difficult. If you get a chance, pick up a copy from your local bookstore (it's also available on amazon.com).


Another huge inspiration at the moment is the new project of Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and Decemberists illustrator (and wife of Colin) Carson Ellis. I have long loved Carson's work, and so it's been incredible to see what she's come up with for their new book Wildwood, the first in a series of books known as the Wildwood Chronicles. Colin is authoring the texts, and Carson is illustrating. You can preview the first four chapters via the Wildwood website now. I think I'm most excited to see all of the illustrations Carson has come up with.

on home and community

Many people have a lot of pride for their hometown or their home state - I grew up in North Carolina and even though I haven't lived there for several years, I still carry around a little replica of the state's silhouette on my keychain. It reminds me to think about home. But there's more than one meaning to that one word: home. There's the home you came from, and then there's the home you choose. The home you make for yourself. The friends you surround yourself with who, while they may not be your blood relatives, are like your family. Washington state is that home for me, and I've noticed that folks around here have a lot of Washington pride (myself included). Seattle is a city with a pretty sizable population of transplants; I know plenty of folks who uprooted their lives and moved out here to take a chance on Seattle. And we may not have grown up with Mariners baseball or the Kingdome or Fisher and West on the radio in the morning, but we love this city all the same.

Last fall my friends Damien and Sarah were spending some time with me after they got home from tour. I'd started making my "hello" maps, and after Damien saw one and proclaimed "that's awesome!", he said, "You should make one that's Washington State and just says 'home.'" Friends, let this be evidence of Damien's genius.

Now, remember when I was talking about the home you choose, and the friends that are you like your family? Damien and Sarah are that for me. Without going into all the boring details, they were there for me at a time when I needed them immensely, and I wanted to give them something meaningful for Christmas. I remembered Damien's Washington "home" suggestion and came up with two things: the sign and the sticker you see below:

Damien put the sticker on his guitar. My friends immediately began asking for stickers and signs of their own. I only made nine signs, but I kept making stickers, and those are available via Luckyhorse Industries. As you can see at the top of this post, the graphic from the sign is now on T-shirts - the lyrics came from a song by our friends The Head and the Heart and they recently approached me about putting it on some shirts exclusively for their two upcoming Seattle shows. I was thrilled to oblige (and happily, Luckyhorse Industries also printed the shirts).

My friend Abbey from local music blog Sound on the Sound loved the WA home stickers so much, she got the design tattooed on her arm:

I have been trying to write this post for weeks now, and failing, because this feeling of home is so much bigger than just a few friends. There's a strong feeling of community in Seattle right now, which has been much discussed and written about (check out the March issue of City Arts Magazine for some examples). I'm just grateful to be part of such an inspiring community and I can't wait to spend some time behind the merch table at the Head and the Heart's sold out Showbox gig tomorrow night, meeting people who love this community and this state just as much as we do.

on hand lettering

In a world dominated by almost infinite type, the art of hand lettering has lost some of the prevalence it once held. From time to time it's possible to become disenchanted with even your most favorite typefaces (I am certainly guilty of this) - the uniformity becomes overbearing. The uniqueness of handmade lettering helps it escape that fate, but the best hand lettering doesn't look "handmade," either. When someone compliments my lettering by saying that they "love the font," I consider it a job well done. I have focused increasingly on hand lettering in my work in the past few years, and I recently got a chance to put my skills into action for some larger projects.

In December, Red Kettle Records approached me about doing some lettering for the album artwork of the then-upcoming Youth Rescue Mission album. In the end my lettering made it onto not just the front cover, but also the back, for the track titles.

Another project that came up was for my friend Sarah Jurado. Having managed her husband Damien's career for some time, Sarah announced early this year that she would also be managing the band Viva Voce and launching Lightness Management to cover her managing duties. Sarah asked me to create a logo for this new venture, and I was more than happy to oblige. The end product is a little sleeker than the Youth Rescue Mission work, but they both started off as pencil sketches on paper. There's something deeply satisfying about that process, and I'm looking forward to doing more lettering like this on future projects.

inspiration: hum creative

There's a lot of talented design studios in Seattle, and one of my larger inspirations of late is Hum Creative. Kate Harmer has a style that is bright and clean and full of character, which translates well in both print and web. She has a serious flair for typography, and I think her work is showcased especially well when letterpress printed. Being a sucker for good typography and letterpress myself, it's no wonder she's a favorite.


Logo & business cards for Seattle photographer/creative manager Sarah Jurado


Wedding invitations for Ben Gibbard and Zooey Deschanel

Some of my favorite projects of Kate's are her interactive ones. What Comes To Mind? "in­structs view­ers to make con­nec­tions be­tween the image and the let­ter print­ed over it" via a series of photos removed from context. Each photo is juxtaposed with a letter of the alphabet and a lined card for viewers to write down their associations.



Another favorite interactive project is Methods Employed, a collaborative list of methods people have suggested for creative endeavors. It's full of (as the name would suggest) methods, advice, ideas, and general thoughts on the creative process. I enjoyed reading through the list and even added a few myself!

Kate's a talented illustrator too, and I fully recommend checking out her full portfolio.

inspiration: EF language programs

It's not terribly often that my interests in art/design and linguistics/language teaching overlap, but here's a case where they have quite beautifully. EF language programs put together a series of videos advertising their "live the language" approach to language learning. The entire team that worked on these did a stunning job - the photography on its own is gorgeous, but it's the typography here that really won me over. Type done well says more than many other aspects of design can do. Watch their video for French below, and be sure to check out their others for Spanish, English, and Chinese.

new vinyl pieces

Remember those maps I mentioned a few weeks ago? They're finally available! Take a peek below and go HERE for more info or to purchase them.

beautiful angle

I'm a longtime fan of anything letterpressed, and while I've been making posters and doing other design for years, there are a few tangible design mediums I haven't yet had a lot of experience with. Letterpress is one of those, and the other week I finally got a chance to see the process in person (and even help out a little bit!).



Beautiful Angle is a letterpress studio in Tacoma, WA run by Lance Kagey that's constantly turning out really wonderful stuff. Once a month, Lance and writer Tom Llewellyn (along with friends and collaborators) make a run of posters to put up around Tacoma. On top of the monthly Beautiful Angle posters, Lance often does posters for events in the area. I got a chance to look through the huge backlog of posters they've built up while we worked on pressing some posters for upcoming Wintergrass. I couldn't help grabbing a few photos while down there...


Some custom letters Lance designed himself.


The portion of the Wintergrass posters we were pressing that night.


Lance's gorgeous vintage letterpress.



Letterpress is an art that's tangible in a way that many things in our lives aren't anymore. In such a digital age I find it refreshing to work with my hands and it helps me really appreciate the physical result of such a time-tested craft. I'm looking forward to spending more time with this medium in the future.


Posters drying.

And here are just a few examples of the work Beautiful Angle has done: