A few of my photos made it into RRR.002. I’m stoked! Images below:

artwork: contributers | cover

artwork: Mike Perry | Ed Fladung

artwork: Various | Ed Fladung

Lines Converge: Manuel C. Caro’s Prismatic Path

Interview: Andrew Smith
M.Caro Portrait: Jay Watson
Shaping Bay photos and Art Direction: Ed Fladung
Hand drawn type: Beth Fladung

Drift has a new feature up, Andrew Smith interviews Manuel Caro of Mandala Custom Shapes and it’s a barn burner. Amazing read. Mani Caro simply and beautifully illustrates how the dharmic knowledge of handmade surfboards is silently transferred from older generations to new generations of shapers, ensuring that surfing retains its soul and karmic traditions. If you have any interest in surf culture beyond potato chips and competition results, click on over and read Mani’s piece.

Concept Crafts
Ryan Lovelace of Point Concept Surfboards adds a chapter to the Santa Barbara shaping tradition.

Words: Chris Preston
Photos: Morgan Maassen
Art Direction: Ed Fladung

Ryan Lovelace makes beautiful boards, he’s been specializing lately in hull making. His hulls have been making a lot of waves, lately. Chris Preston did an amazing job on the interview, it’s in-depth, entertaining and really gets in to what Ryan is doing, and how different that is. Morgan Maassen’s photos speak for themselves (kid has skillzzzz). And well, me? I just tried to make everyone look their best, like a nice jacket and tie. The pull-quote color blobs are a derivative of Ryan’s shaper mark, that appears on all his boards.

Smashing Magazine have an interesting new series of articles called “Global Web Design”, where Smashing takes a look at web design across boundaries:

Throughout this series we’ll be covering various continents, featuring web developers and web designs from different countries of the world and taking a close look of what’s happening in the web design scene worldwide.

And whatdayaknow, they included my site as an example from Mexico. Pretty Cool! Go peep the article.

Incidentally, Mexico has a thriving design culture. Since I’m out in the boonies (whereby “boonies” I mean anywhere in Mexico that isn’t DF, Guadalajara or Monterrey), I feel a bit disconnected from it, but I see beautiful, vibrant design all over the place. Mexico have a really warm, organic take on modernism and post-modernism that is wholly derived from popular culture and folkloric traditions. Modernism is not dead in Mexico. It is very much alive.

¡Arriba Mexico!

I was recently interviewed on Liquid Salt Mag, a newish online mag created by Glenn Sakamoto. Liquid Salt profiles surfers, shapers and artists from all sides of surf culture. Great site!