That land being Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is a land of speakeasies and social clubs, of hand-made hard candy and hand-pressed hard cider, of grizzled beards and gently worn fedoras. It is a land that looks a lot like this lovely project by Jennifer Causey. And it feels a lot like, say, small-town Iowa in the […]
And the name of this album is—well, you can see it for yourself here. Scroll down a wee bit. But this post could have been about any number of similar attempts to be exceedingly simple and direct in communication. Like, for example, the homepage of this fine young gentleman. Or the homepage of our neighbors […]
My wife went to New York last weekend and happened to see Madeleine Albright at the Sephora in Columbus Circle. She has zero interest in Madeleine Albright; yet this was one of the first things she told me when she got back. Three thoughts: > She said Madeleine Albright looks smaller in real life. It’s […]
A friend brought me to the illustrator Martha Rich. I love pretty much everything she’s doing. The maps, the sketchbooks, the one-a-day projects, the post-it note project–it all feels liberating. She makes art look like actual labor that actual people might actually enjoy and/or find some use for. Which makes this passage in her artist […]
Great artists steal. Who said that? Picasso? E.M. Forster? I’ve forgotten. Some thieving genius. Anyway, I would like to steal this idea for a video series. Love the attention given to a single (and singular) moment; love the silence. Those are the things I’d want to steal.
I’d like to strike two phrases from higher education: “value proposition” and “return on investment.” Institutions have become obsessed with trying to craft marketing campaigns that make a financial case. The impulse is understandable, but, too often, hollow. I was prompted to write because of a series of ongoing articles about the attainment of higher […]
Fifty-two pairs of Tom’s shoes. I saw 52 pairs of the same shoes in a recent visit to an independent school dining hall. Not to be confused with the L.L. Bean cult shoes, the Blucher Moccasin—a staple from 1986—the shoes I saw apparently matter. They matter because of the One for One concept, a philanthropic endeavor that delivers […]
Hello, three videos we produced for Bates! You look so lovely. These were shot and edited by Joe; conceived and re-conceived by most of us. On a related note, Joe was turning around a new set of videos for another client recently, and doing so in his usual superhuman way, and I said to Mary, […]
A little while ago I saw a documentary called Linotype: The Film. It’s about the rise and fall of linotype, the first line-casting metal type machine. Albert Einstein once called the machine the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ because of how easy and cheap it made the process of mass-producing printed material. It dominated the printing world from the late 1800s until […]
Joe Tomcho moved into our office yesterday. He’s a terrific filmmaker (proof is here). He’s got his own life and his own practice, but we’ve been working with him a lot (videos for Bates, Wellesley, Wheaton), and it seemed like a good fit. Communal workspace! Creative exchange! We’re living the dream. Jenn, please remember to […]