Jennie's Creativity Tips

I'm sure you've all had instances when you feel like your creativity has taken a hike. Sometimes my creativity sneaks off in the darkness of night and makes me feel like I am the least crafty person in the world. When I feel like I'll never have another good idea (and the world as I know it is coming to an end), these are the things I do for creative motivation. I hope they can help you as much as they help me!

1. Eat as much junk food as possible. I'm talkin' anything and everything you can get your hands on. Stale cookies? Perfect. Chocolate chips straight from the bag? Yes. Candies that you don't really like? Absolutely.
2. Sing songs very loudly and with the wrong lyrics. I prefer to do this when someone that is a real lyric stickler is in the room. Sing your heart out! Serenade that special someone.
3. Whatever you do, don't look up your successful classmates on any social media platform. Stay as far away from Facebook as possible.
4. Go to your spouse, friend, mom, or whoever is near you at the time. Whine and complain until they cave and start saying things that boost your ego.
5. If all else fails, curl up in the fetal position on the couch and watch television until your mind goes numb. Put off all your creative projects until tomorrow.

Some Good Stuff

Even the dogs found some good stuff this week! They have been so happy since they found this old, ratty frisbee in the yard. (We think it was thrown over by one of our neighbors, thanks neighbors.) All they want lately is to is be outside fighting over it.
Here's the good stuff we found:

-Ever wonder what the insides of a flower look like?
-We wish we could find something this cool in our attic!
-The awesome Megan Mulally.
-Hard to beat Kodachrome.
-Which brings to mind that we need to see this sometime.
-In case you need something to help with your Downton Abbey withdrawl.

The Jennie Sans

You may know the feeling: cycling through a list of fonts in your preferred design program, trying to find the perfect one. Eventually, your eyes cross and words lose all meaning. Many designers solve this by sticking to a handful of dependable typefaces. I've certainly been moving in that direction, favoring the classic transitional serif Baskerville, which I find is both elegant and versatile. Helvetica is popular for a reason, and I count myself among its admirers. Still, certain projects require a deviation from the stand-bys. Developing the identity for Terrier Mountain is one such instance.

I knew I wanted to strike a casual, handmade feeling with the type, but I am often let down by handwriting fonts. I played with a slab serif for a while (the ubiquitous Archer, known as the Martha Stewart Living font, is a slab serif), which was nice. But I wanted something different. One day, I asked Jennie, whose handwriting I've always envied, to draw some letterforms for me. The result is a work-in-progress typeface I'm calling, fittingly enough, "Jennie Sans."



I like where it's heading, and though there's refining to be done, I'm going to live with it for a while, try it in various layouts, and see how it all comes together. I want to maintain some of the quirky forms, so it's never going to be perfectly polished. I'm always up for constructive criticism, here or at Flickr, where I post works-in-progress.

One of my greatest pleasures in going back to school has been the opportunity to dive head-first into the history of typography and develop a deeper appreciation for the myriad styles that have evolved over the last half-millennium. It's fun to discern subtle variations in typefaces and see how they play out in practice. And it's always exciting to find a type that clicks into a design to make it come alive and more strongly communicate its message. I think Jennie Sans does the trick here!

Tuesday Tunes

This song has become our jam lately for some reason. Go ahead and have a listen and bust out a dougie or two. Also there is the added bonus of Barack Obama doing the dougie on Ellen (faked, of course). Full disclosure: David and I have stolen all of our best dance moves from the Obamas.

Maple Syrup Festival 2012

This weekend, Jennie and I sojourned across the hills of southern Indiana to the outskirts of Salem, where the Goering family hosts an annual Maple Syrup Festival. This was our fifth visit since moving to Bloomington in 2004. This was the first year I was able to find it without asking for directions, though we had our new androids at the ready if I got turned around in Salem.


The line of hungry festival goers trying to decide between pancakes, waffles, barbecue chicken, or pulled pork.

Though the fest's popularity has increased since we first went, it's still a family-run operation. They've tightened up a few things to accommodate the larger crowds. It's not all you can eat anymore - but how many times do you need to get a refill on waffles or pancakes loaded with syrup, ice cream, whipped cream and fruit? The popular tomahawk throw is also adequately supervised now.


A view of the grounds from the creek running beside them.

The festival takes place right next to the sugarbush where Leanne and Michael Goering produce their syrup, which is a dark, rich flavor due to the high mineral content in the soil. It's a little less sweet than lighter syrups, but I think it makes it even better. Seriously, once you get a taste of the real thing, you cannot go back to the "maple flavored" stuff. Jennie and I  are really frugal people, but we've found that willingness to spend a bit more on things like maple syrup or spices improves the quality of our meals exponentially.

The festival grounds are sprinkled with tents where vendors sell locally made foodstuffs (we bought a jar of amazing spicy mustard from Localfolks Foods and it's raised our veggie burger game a lot), candles, baskets and the like. A local ranch also brings out angola goats and an alpaca who gamely puts up with the gawkers and photographers.



A local member of the Wyandotte tribe, Crooked Paw, is on hand to give demonstrations of the "stone age method" of making maple sugar, using a radically scaled-down version of a pre-Columbian sugar-producing operation (he uses a small log rather than a titanic forty- or fifty-footer a tribe would need to provide for everyone). He fills a cavity in the log with hot maple sap, partially cooked down to speed up the process, and proceeds to boil it down using large chunks of granite which have been heated in a fire.
Crooked Paw fills the log with sap.


Granite is heated in a fire to boil the sap.


Crooked Paw deftly immerses the stone in the sap.


The sap starts to bubblin'...


...and steamin'...


...until the stones are removed and the sugar crystallizes. Alternately, Crooked Paw said that sphagnum moss can be used to scoop out sap.

Taking place the last weekend of February and first weekend in March, there are some wild cards. Weather can be iffy - even this year, when La Niña gave us an unseasonably warm February, last Saturday was really chilly. But luckily, the ground wasn't soggy with snowmelt or rain this year. But the remoteness of the spot and the cold weather only add to the experience. This festival just wouldn't be the same in middle of summer. You need to be bundled up against the chill to really appreciate that warm syrup, and it makes you feel some small bit of empathy for the Native Americans, pioneers, and farmers for whom maple sugar must have been an even more precious treat.

One thing we've learned is that when we go to the festival, we're not going to be super-productive later in the day. After gorging on mapley goodness and driving an hour and a half back to Bloomington, it's nap-time, so it's best to not expect to get work done. But once that's over, it's time to start figuring out how we want to use up that pint of Grade B Dark syrup throughout the year.

Some Good Stuff



David and I have a big weekend ahead of us. There will hopefully be lots of printing, waffle eating, and unsupervised tomahawk throwing. If you don't have an exciting weekend planned, we've collected a few links for your internet browsing pleasure.

-If you're looking for the creepiest cat pictures on the internet, I think we can help you out.

-Or maybe a tipsy cat?

-Dirk does not have the touch. Sorry Dirk, you just don't. What I'm saying is, you're a crummy singer.

-A cool ad for that staple of the lunchpail, good ol' white bread.
-Project Gutenberg, bless your heart.
-I really hope Aziz Ansari treated himself on his birthday this week! And ate plenty of chicky chicky parm parm.

New Design: Exploring Portland's Natural Areas

This was a fun project. After following his blog for some months, I got to meet science historian Michael Barton at the ScienceOnline 2011 conference. He's a really nice fellow, and we keep in touch via Facebook and Twitter. It's easy to see how dedicated a parent he is by following along with the outdoor adventures he has with his son, Patrick, at his blog Exploring Portland's Natural Areas. As a fellow evolution geek, I also appreciate his work on Darwin scholarship at the Dispersal of Darwin.

Michael and I had a brief email exchange last fall in which he wrote about some graphic ideas he had to promote the Nature Play movement. Bringing children into nature is something I wholeheartedly believe in, so I was thrilled to design something for him. After much hemming, hawing, and doodling, a strong graphic idea hit me. Many of my own memorable moments in nature had to do with little things: finding a beautiful fungus, coming face to face with a box turtle when cresting a ridge in Morgan-Monroe State Forest. Or the time I was captivated by a brilliant blue ribbon winding through blades of grass, followed it, and welcomed a Five-Lined Skink into the palm of my hand. One of Michael's ideas was a child with a magnifying glass, but none of my attempts in this direction worked. That day with that skink was stuck in my mind, though, so I decided to bring focus tightly on the connection between child and environment.



Since Michael writes about his local adventures, I placed the silhouette within the shape of the state of Oregon. You can see it in his blog header, which incorporates the classic typeface Clarendon to evoke the signage of the National Park Service. I had strong memories of visiting parks as a child. Since starting my studies, I've taken every chance I can to hone my ability to communicate efficiently: designs that work well with a minimum number of elements. This was one of the most satisfying projects I've done in the last year, and the fact that it's for a good cause, well, that's the mashed potatoes and the gravy.