The weather out­side today was fan­tas­tic so I grabbed my cam­era and headed out to the large moun­tain park in York, Maine, called Mount Aga­men­ti­cus. Lucky for me the sun was shin­ing brightly which meant this was a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to use my dig­i­tal Holga lens.

This lens is a plas­tic lens that mounts directly onto your DSLR cam­era body for instant toy cam­era and vignetting effects. I found mine at the amaz­ing pho­to­jojo store.

I had a lot of fun exper­i­ment­ing with close ups and land­scape views. I was able to cap­ture a cou­ple of “toy” pho­tos which I was tick­led with and the rest have nice col­or­ing and vignetting effects. On my hike I trav­eled from the Ring Trail to the Blue­berry Bluff Trail which takes you right to the peak. The trail is well marked and is a .3 mile, rocky, climb with a visual payoff.

If you are in the York area, or end up there this Spring this moun­tain is a per­fect excuse to get out in nature. The trails are about an hour in length to com­plete and well main­tained. I think next time I ven­ture into the woods I will bring my wide angle and macro lens adapter, exper­i­ment with the panoramic views and take close ups of the woody plants. For now, here are the Holga lens shots, I hope you enjoy them!

Just Do It. Thank you adver­tis­ing great Dan Wieden and Nike. A 3 word slo­gan so sim­ple but a mantra we often times forget.

This is what I’m telling my client that recently approached me for tips and inspi­ra­tion about writ­ing her first blog post on a site that my part­ner and I are cre­at­ing for her. When a client comes to us and asks a ques­tion about the web and every­thing that is related to it we are happy to impart our knowl­edge. This is when I real­ized that the infor­ma­tion I was about to gather may be just the med­i­cine I needed. So, here I am writ­ing to inspire not only first time blog­gers but to inspire myself to stop mak­ing excuses as to why I have not blogged in months and to sim­ply, Just Do It.

1. Pub­lish what you learn

How many times have you trav­eled for busi­ness or plea­sure and dis­cov­ered some­thing new. I recently went to the Baden-Württemberg region in Ger­many and I could not stop notic­ing the beau­ti­ful typog­ra­phy every­where — even the city sewer grates! Are you an expert in your field? Have you seen a movie that was so awe­some you couldn’t stop telling your friends about it? Well these are moments wor­thy of a blog post. Dur­ing these times of inspi­ra­tion, snap a pic or even a quick video to share in your post.

2. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Now that you have an idea of what you want to write about, don’t be afraid to make mis­takes. Shar­ing your knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence, research and inspi­ra­tion will give other peo­ple some­thing to con­tem­plate. Your read­ers may even be com­pelled to write a response. The poten­tial to engage read­ers if you choose to pub­lish your com­ments (you don’t have too) can add to the fun of shar­ing your experiences.

3. The more you write the bet­ter you’ll be at it.

It’s just like any­thing you want to improve upon, it takes time and lots of prac­tice. And just think what you’ll learn in the process by research­ing and artic­u­lat­ing your expe­ri­ences in writing.

4. Set real­is­tic writ­ing goals for yourself

If writ­ing a blog post is pos­si­ble every other week that’s great. More often? Even bet­ter. I would sug­gest (when you have a good sense of the time you can ded­i­cate to cre­at­ing your blog entries) block­ing out a por­tion of time on your cal­en­dar, where you can sit and write, uninterrupted.

5. You don’t have to write a novel

You’re sit­ting down to write a post so for 1. give your­self a pat on the back and 2. you can post a funny photo and write a para­graph about it. That’s it! You just made someone’s day by mak­ing them laugh. They may then send it to their friends and so on. No need to feel oblig­ated to write a novel every time.

6. If you have a blog on your busi­ness web­site it doesn’t mean you should always be post­ing about your business.

Don’t feel con­strained to con­tent spe­cific to your busi­ness. For instance I own a design busi­ness and I love design but there are other aspects in my life that inspire me and broaden my tal­ents. Maybe I want to write about tak­ing a vaca­tion from work! For instance I recently expe­ri­enced vis­it­ing some of the Ice­landic coun­try­side and how it looked very much like a lunar land­scape. Being some­place new helps me to think clearly, as it does for many peo­ple, and often times I bring new ideas back to the stu­dio. Write about what inspires you to do your job better!

7. Mak­ing it big should come sec­ondary
Don’t be dis­cour­aged if you don’t see any posts on your blog right away. My rec­om­men­da­tion would be to keep shar­ing mean­ing­ful con­tent, be true to what you are writ­ing about and gen­uine every time you make a post. Use­ful and well writ­ten con­tent will draw peo­ple to your site. Talk about your blog and post it on social media net­works to help get your word out there.

Hope­fully these tips have helped. I know I feel more moti­vated to embrace the power of the web and share knowl­edge with oth­ers through blog­ging. If there is any hes­i­ta­tion to hit the pub­lish but­ton just remem­ber the mantra, Just Do It.

Keep being curi­ous and happy posting!

To read the arti­cle that helped add some fuel to this post visit Smash­ing Mag­a­zine.
Nike image from Wikipedia

The Orig­i­nal Ware­house, 2006

It all started, in 2006, with a very large vision and a 1920s post and beam ware­house nes­tled behind Wash­ing­ton Street near down­town Dover, New Hamp­shire. The struc­ture was a “per­fect” long box shape that could be trans­formed into a New Eng­land style, mod­ern home. The vision cer­tainly fit within the pages found in Dwell Mag­a­zine. Inspi­ra­tion included the (amaz­ing) orig­i­nal Dwell Home, designed by Res­o­lu­tion 4: Archi­tec­ture, the wee­House designed by Alchemy and the rise of pop­u­lar­ity of pre­fab mod­ern con­struc­tion. It is fun for me now, 6 years later, to remem­ber the enjoy­ment of explor­ing ideas for the ware­house, now trans­formed into a home.

I hope you enjoy the pics and find some inspi­ra­tion for your own home too!

The orig­i­nal foun­da­tion — con­crete buckets!

The inte­rior of the ware­house show­ing the exposed post and beam structure.

The Con­struc­tion Phase

The house, today

I headed down to Andover, MA, yes­ter­day, to visit The Museum of Print­ing. I had heard that they were hav­ing a one day, let­ter­press type, sale. I have a roman­tic notion that one of these days I am going to buy a small Kelsey table­top let­ter­press press. I don’t think that is real­is­ti­cally going to hap­pen but, any­way, I love type and the thought of see­ing draw­ers and boxes of cast metal type got me pretty excited. The museum is small but is packed full of let­ter­press presses (49 to be exact) along with engrav­ing, off­set (lith­o­graphic) presses and cylin­der presses. It was really cool to see a drum cylin­der news press that was circa 1896. Presses of this kind were used until the 1970s! Prior to 1884 the oper­a­tors were hand plac­ing type, one let­ter and one space at a time. Lino­type came in around 1884 which meant lines of type were cre­ated, thus cut­ting down a lot of time and labor — pretty amaz­ing. What a tes­ta­ment to today’s dig­i­tal print­ing tech­nolo­gies — wow have times changed!

The museum puts forth a valiant effort to address the changes in print­ing and pre-press tech­nol­ogy in another sec­tion of the museum. Here you will find Pho­to­type­set­ting com­put­ers, lino­type tele­type­set­ters, type­writ­ers, platemak­ing expo­sure machines and Apple com­put­ers with exter­nal floppy disk dri­ves — eye candy!

I would rec­om­mend vis­it­ing the museum when they have type sales or, to learn more about the his­tory of let­ter­press, visit when they are hav­ing guided tours. I have my eye out for when they have another Wood Type sale and that will be a con­ver­sa­tion for another day! I have attached a few images for a glimpse of the museum. You can visit the Museum’s web­site and on Face­book as well for more infor­ma­tion. Enjoy!

Today, friend, illus­tra­tor and designer Aaron Wood brought up on a Face­book chat — had I seen his social media pro­pa­ganda posters yet? As a designer I am always clam­or­ing for a good visual — I pur­sued the link in front of me. I was pleas­antly rewarded by the bold visu­als nes­tled into the Design Milk post. I just had to get more infor­ma­tion which leads me to our Q and A.

Amy: Hi Aaron, I am really excited to chat with you about your social media pro­pa­ganda posters!

Aaron: Hi Amy! It’s great to “sit down” with you and answer some ques­tions that you have.

Amy: Your poster style reminds me of a few design­ers we learned about in our design his­tory classes at A.I.B. (The Art Insti­tute of Boston). What will always stay with me are posters like El Lissitzky’s “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge”  and the Swiss designer Her­bert Mat­ter who designed a series of travel posters using his sig­na­ture pho­tomon­tage style.

Was there a par­tic­u­lar poster artist that cre­ated pro­pa­ganda posters from the early 1900s that was the source of your inspiration?

Aaron: To be hon­est, “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” came up on my radar again about a month before I did my designs. That image def­i­nitely influ­enced the first Google+ poster that I did. The first Face­book and Twit­ter images and ver­biage came to me out of gen­eral war pro­pa­ganda posters that I’ve seen through­out the years. The imagery of planes fly­ing over head, talk­ing about doing all you can for the war effort, majes­tic eagles and help­ing out your allies all came together for me. I decided to throw a lit­tle humor in my first set with the Face­book poster’s ref­er­ence for their “Far­mville” type games. For Twit­ter it was play­ing upon the short­ness of the posts you can make there; being lim­ited to only 140 char­ac­ters. Finally, Google+ encour­ages a higher level of social inter­ac­tion with peo­ple “shar­ing” ideas and posts with the share option. This aspect def­i­nitely drummed up the feel­ings of Com­mu­nism and shar­ing every­thing with the community.

Amy: You men­tioned you cre­ated these on your free time. Was cre­at­ing these out of the sheer cre­ative drive or was your inten­tion to make a statement?

Aaron: I cre­ated these mainly from the posts I saw peo­ple mak­ing on a daily basis on Google+ talk­ing about how G+ was in a “war” with Face­book and Twit­ter. Who would win the bat­tle? Who’d come out on top and crush the other two? Which was bet­ter and should war­rant the major­ity of your time?

These sen­ti­ments weighed heav­ily on me, which led me to cre­ate this graphic: https://plus.google.com/114468593663912084118/posts/736MaHGgqom

When I saw that a few weeks later peo­ple were still going at it, I dreamt up the fic­ti­tious “war” posters that these var­i­ous social media net­works would use to drum up sup­port for their side.

I’d say then that the first set is pure state­ment. The fol­low­ing two sets were done out of cre­ativ­ity. How could I build on my orig­i­nal idea? How could I keep the images fresh and still engage people’s imaginations?

Amy: What social media site caught wind of your poster designs first?

Aaron: Once I posted the orig­i­nal set on Google+ they took off. I had the for­tune of hav­ing two peo­ple who are fol­lowed by a LOT of peo­ple share my designs.

Amy: So, who do you think will win the social media “war”?

Aaron: In my opin­ion, I think there won’t be a real clear cut win­ner in this “war.” I think each site offers it’s advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. Since Google+ is the new­comer and has only been around about a month and still isn’t open to the gen­eral pub­lic, it’s much too early to pre­dict how well it will do in six months, a year, or five years. I see each site as a tool to get my design work out there, although I use Face­book the most to keep in touch with my clos­est and old­est friends.

Aaron’s posters are avail­able for pur­chase on Etsy. You can also find Aaron via Google+.