Pasted up on the base of a light pole, framed by silver steel, is this hand painted flower. Quick and dirty, alive with the rush of creation. The magenta center dot is the only thing that feels considered. The rest is all organic and emotion. The sticker addition is also quite respectful. It’s not a signature, but a comment, in context, but not the focus of the conversation.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Oh to be nineteen again. Oh wait, nineteen and angry? Maybe not. There’s a bit of 1950’s nostalgia in this character. The line work in the eyes and nose remind me of those “learn to draw comics” advertisements with a reference guide to facial expressions. I do appreciate the stylized (and accessible!) numeral one as well. There’s a fluidity to the numbers that is almost an italic form.

Midtown, Manhattan.

I’m not sure if it’s a New York thing or not, but I love that small business owners have artists paint the sides of their trucks with absolutely outlandish graffiti scenes. These panel trucks roam the city with just some hand applied vinyl lettering on the cab doors with the business name, address and phone number. (No website, never.) Meanwhile, the rest of the truck is completely covered in an unrelated piece of art. I like to imagine a giant nigh time parking lot filled with a gallery of panel truck masterpieces quietly sleeping. Upon waking they bump and stumble out to spread across the city, double parking for brief moments of revelation.

As to why this phenomenon occurs, I’m guessing this the old school tactic of embracing the “vandals” rather than fighting them. Just give the kids a chance already. And honestly, it’s a much better form of advertising. Home made, personal and unique.

Midtown, Manhattan.

A message from the street to add a bit of perspective to our lives. Is the message trite? Perhaps, but a reminder is often necessary when the world narrows our vision. The traffic cone adds a new level of context as “under construction” is often a permanent condition.

Chelsea, Manhattan.

A wonderful example of taking cues from the environment to tell a story. Seeing what others may miss and expressing it in a new way. We tell our stories every day and leave them open to interpretation. I’m choosing to see this one as inspirational. Don’t give up!

Chelsea, Manhattan.

A small worn sticker found stuck to a railing on the west side. It’s almost invisible with the silver metallic base on the metal railing. The blend kind of echoes the all lowercase sans serif lettering and rounded corners. It is unimposing in its presentation and quietly powerful in its message.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Here’s a piece I’ve been trying to capture for a while, but it’s been obscured. They finally moved all the construction materials and it was revealed in the spring sun. Striking colors with the gradient and dots adding detail and personality. Plus the highlights adding shine make it a top notch piece of work.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Found this beautiful old paste up from Dylan Egon that strikes so many chords with me. Which chords? It’s black and white with simple, clean lines. It’s full of small symbolic details that many will not understand. It’s political and cultural. It’s provocative, but the edge is offset by her calm expression. The Latin on the gun seems to have gotten overlapped when the sheet was applied, but it reads, “silentium est aureum” or “silence is golden”. This is a piece I wish I had drawn and now, I wish was on my wall.

Based on the handwritten graffiti, it also strikes a reaction in others as well.

Midtown, Manhattan.

As any self respecting cigar or pipe smoker knows, the best way to light up is by using a wooden match. As such, I’ve got a boxes of wooden matches stashed all over the house, garage, pockets and car. It is one of those items that you never really think about too hard though. There’s no real reason to think about them beyond “does it work as advertised?” — in this case, does it light? Or did it break?

Recently, though, I picked up a box at the supermarket and noticed they had changed vendors. No longer was…whatever brand they previously sold. Now they upgraded to offer Diamond matches. It’s not an item that I would even notice usually, but as a designer I was immediately struck by the packaging. I have some vague memory of the brand, but it seems as though they’ve gone through a redesign. And I love it. It’s clean with a touch of vintage and really stands out on a shelf.

Digging a little deeper, it seems like the brand has be tossed around by various holding companies and private equity firms which makes it seem a bit less glamorous than America’s leading producer of matches.

But those graphics! The design! The style! What’s a poor designer to do, but start drawing?

Here’s a couple of versions of the single and crossed match illustrations and because it’s one of my favorite techniques, there’s also animated versions. Dropping a <style> tag inside the SVG with @keyframe animations is a great way to sneak an animation past a content management system. Just be sure you nest the animation inside a prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference media query.

The animation itself is just a combination of scale, translate and rotate transformations. The one nice one is the ability to flip the flame by using a negative value on the X axis of a scale transformation.

transform: scaleX(-1);

I did consider doing a more elaborate animation, but…discretion is the better part of valor as they say. It quickly became clear that going down that path was leading further and further away from the inspiration point. Clean, crisp and iconic, thank you very much.

Tangentially, I do like the concept of a matched pair, burning together. Makes me think of my wife.

Need a light? You can download them here.

And the dark humor that sustains us.

Back in 2016, a video game came out that was somewhat prescient — Tom Clancy’s The Division. Maybe prescience is easy when the humanity is so predictably set on self-destruction, glorifies ignorance and revels in ineptitude. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, I know.

It’s a great game and my wife and I pre-ordered it mostly due to it being based in NYC. A triple A game with highly detailed, open world maps of Manhattan? And a Tom Clancy based story? Yes, please.

And it’s a great game! We had a ton of fun running around all the neighborhoods we know and love. My wife would join friends online and point out our apartment or my office. We note differences between fiction and reality as we worked through missions.

And that’s where this little guy comes in. I think it was in the Brooklyn section of the game and in an alley, it was a large graffiti on the wall. This was also when I was drawing the symbols from Destiny ultimately leading to the Symbology project. Naturally, I was immediately drawn to this cool illustration, a symbol of sorts, a smiling wink and a nod, a thumb in the eye of authority in the face of disaster.

Flash forward to 2020 and there’s an actual global pandemic. And there are refrigerator trucks on the streets of Manhattan trying to hold all the dead bodies. Sorry, that’s a bit harsh, I know.

As it wasn’t part of the Symbology project, this illustration never had a home. Now it does. If you need a symbol for a bit of “screw you,” please take it. We need more signs. We need more humor. We need more ways to laugh at our despair.

You can download a version in JPG and SVG format here.