very cute stop-motion paper-cut video telling the story of typographic evolution. enjoy!

i was escaping the early-season heat on the patio last night with a friend, when i realized that maybe it’s time i combine my love for making snacks and drinks and my love of patio sitting with friends into one thing: patio season!

here’s how it works. choose a morning coffee [10:30am] or evening happy hour [5:30pm] appointment, tuesday, wednesday or thursday. tell me when you’d like to meet and what you’d like to talk about. if it’s open, i’ll make the drinks & snacks, you come over and we chat. about design, about business, about ideas, about food stuff–whatever, up to 2 hours.

i’m interested in connecting with old friends, colleagues i don’t see often enough and meeting new people. we’ve got the shade of the loquat tree and a nice breeze. pick a slot and let’s hang!

The Quiet City: Winter in Paris from Andrew Julian on Vimeo.

so, i realize it’s not hardly winter anymore, but if you need a mini vacation to some stunning shots of quiet moments in paris, this is a great 4-minute getaway!

currently, we’re hard at work in development for a full product catalog with natural curiosities. since they exhibit regularly throughout the year, we were bound have to create a work-around for one of the shows while in production. to give them a colorful showcase piece in the interim, we worked with their ever-growing photography assets to produce this exhibition piece as a takeaway for attendees. the fun aspect of this z-fold piece is that it works as a back-to-front flyer when closed, but still works as a beautiful, long-format piece with call to action & contact info on both sides when fully-open.

click here for more natural curiosities projects.

if you have questions about exhibition collateral or different ways to make your products stand out, say hello!

just a friendly psa from peopleforbikes.org, it’s bike month, and LA bike week is coming up, so let’s all share the road in harmony! happy biking!

so, like i said, on sunday i took a condiment class at the poketo store as part of their new series of workshops. our instructor in the photo above, zach negin, is telling us about great books for homemade fermentations. he’s a co-founder at sono trading company whose product, the mustard, i was introduced to at my first artisanal LA event. so cool to see small, handmade food companies making success happen. zach talked about using only natural ingredients, cooking with lard, and highly recommended sandor katz’ books, so we are totally on the same page, food-wise.

we were 15 people, set up around 3 long tables covered with vinegars, syrups, herbs & spices. we had basic instructions and some mixing implements. yet, in a mere 3 hours, we flavored and blended our own mustards, chopped chilis and prepped sriracha to ferment for a week before finishing, seasoned and blended a lacto-fermented ketchup, and cooked up a vegan worcestershire sauce—all with time to spare for a tasting of some of sono trading’s “in development” creations with complimentary wurstkuche fries from next door. what a fun day!

i made a yellow mustard with lots of red flavors, including some red fruit vinegar, pomegranate molasses and cassis syrup. we all made notes about our flavor profiles so we could possibly try to recreate them again, or compare with future recipes. i can see that mustard on its own is a pretty exciting world of possibilities. i can’t wait to try some variations on my own, but i’ll try to eat this up first so i don’t end up with a fridge full of mustard.

poketo has a great write-up here. they were gracious hosts, keeping our equipment clean, visiting and saying hi to each of us, giving gift bags [!] and offering a discount on same-day shopping [of which i took advantage]. they announced that the next class will be about kimchi, so i know i’ll be watching the site to make sure to get in.

image: thedieline.com

this kind of student work is what i really think we need more of, especially in beverage packaging. so many liquors try to evoke something sultry and end up looking like cheap dates. this series of infused akvavit associates the flavors with swedish folktales while showcasing a very strong brand. great work! see more at designworklife.com.

image: thedieline.com

so, moonshine has been a thing for awhile, and it’s very appropriately in a jar. i love this simple packaging, with a logo looking like a streamlined version of a hand-carved stamp. see more at thedieline.com

image: thedieline.com

i think this packaging for pavan is something you either love or you don’t. to me, this color palette is a perfect representation of southern france, and very clearly evokes the flavor of this liqueur, which is described as muscat & orange blossom. this is the kind of bottle i’d keep as a vase after finishing the liqueur. the pavan web site is beautiful, too! see more at thedieline.com.

18 years ago, i met this kitten. she lived in my grandmother’s back yard. my mom and i went over and caught her. it was 1 month after i moved out of the house. she has been with me ever since.

motor has many special features, including 7 toes. sometimes she folds them very neatly, like this. i knew i wanted to name my next cat motor, because of the purring, but i didn’t realize i’d end up with a cat who was also a natural at very loud purring. it worked out pretty well.

she also has different-colored eyes. unfortunately, she lost her hearing sometime around when she was 3. this has caused her to be fearless of things like strangers or the vacuum, but also gotten her locked in neighbor’s trucks and apartments. she has a hankering for perimeter checks, she just walks right in. since she is cute and white, we try to give her a bath every year or so.

in addition to being cute, she is also does physical comedy. when these dishes i bought off ebay arrived with some broken pieces, and i couldn’t accept reality right away, she sat on them, leaned on them to lick her leg, and then napped on them. she sleeps a lot, in funny places, with her head hanging off things upside-down, she makes funny faces, begs for cheese, plays innocent while passive-aggressively sitting on our other cat, and she burps. when she’s done being funny, she goes back to sleep.

when you have an old cat, you spend a lot of time cuddling. it’s mostly what they like to do. when i found her, i used to think it would be amazing if she lived this long, but she is still relatively healthy and youthful for her age. happy birthday to you, motor, now let’s get you registered to vote!

with the month of april wrapping up tomorrow, i’m able to review how my first 1 tank / 300 miles per month challenge went. i’m happy to report i came in at 240 miles this month, and while i thought it would be lower, i did take some luxuries, and had some emergencies that reminded me every month is going to have ups & downs and not to worry about them. i’m already driving a lot less, and even doing errands far less frequently.

the two main things i’ve learned are these:

+ i subconsciously allow myself to run a bit late, and only when it’s too late for other options do i confront driving. when i didn’t have a car, i didn’t really do this, so this is the fine line i have to watch.

+ i don’t mind the act of driving, but negotiating with bad drivers is infuriating, and happens a lot more often than i realized before i scaled back. the main times i was irritated this month revolved around driving.

the main thing now is to keep it going, and find new and exciting excursions to take. i still used my guidelines for making errands walkable and my on-the-go lessons of carless travel to get by. i’ve learned to run for busses [you catch them more often than not] and check ahead on my metro app for which options are arriving when. currently, i’m working on utilizing the amtrak surfliner, which allows bike walk-ons, for trips to bike-friendly beach cities. we’ll see how it goes!

The Signs of Santa Monica Blvd from chris rubino on Vimeo.

i have seen and photographed so many of these over the years. great collection!