This is the first post.

Do I have a lot to say at the moment? I guess I have a lot to say at any given moment. But the point of this post isn't to say much other than: We're here. It is October 29, 2011, and my wife Jennie and I are starting up a little design shop. This blog is going to share our inspirations, our process, and a fair amount of shameless promotion for our wares.

I am a first year MFA student in graphic design at Indiana University. I've got about three years of experience designing book covers in the wild west of self-publishing behind me. I love dinosaurs (including their living descendants, of course). I could go on and on about how I like to design, but hopefully the work I share here will do a better job of that.

As for Jennie, she's as whip-smart and sassy a lady as you're ever likely to find. We've been looking forward to doing something like this for a long time, and it's a lot of fun to work with her. I suppose my bias is showing. It's weird to try to write a bio for your wife! It's like, yeah, we know, dude. You kind of have to say awesome things about her. So I'll end there and let her decide if she feels like spilling any more information about herself. I will say that she's working on a set of linoleum blocks based on her cursive writing, which I'm really stoked about.

The name of our shop, Terrier Mountain Studio, came about in a brainstorming session a week or so ago. We live with a Cairn Terrier named Gregory and a terrier-chihuahua mix named Mitzie. We also live on a little hill. "Terrier Mountain" just seemed to work. Since my portfolio site is called Orogenic, which means "mountain building," it also tied the two sites together a bit more. Plus, Terrier Mountain is a bit friendlier to the tongue than "orogenic," which is a bonus.


Gregory and Mitzie

How to end the first post? I'll share a sneak peak of an item we'll have in the shop pretty soon. Juncos are some of my favorite birds, and with winter approaching more quickly than I'd like to admit, I'll be seeing little gangs of them at our feeders pretty soon. I've done a bit of refining on this illustration, so we'll just consider this a peek at a work-in-progress.



Thanks for reading! You can follow Jennie and me at Twitter, or follow the shop itself.