Retail Nightmares
I did this illustration for one of my favourite podcasts, Retail Nightmares. They have already sold out of them, which is a testament to how great they are!
This is their Patreon page. I did another illustration for them as well and I think it’ll might show up there. Have you worked customer service? You’re gonna relate.
TOPYS
I did this design for TOPYS in China for a New Year’s money envelope. It’s the year of the dog coming up and the theme was “kiss”, which is what it says in gold. You can get it here (shop and site in Chinese).
They also did a short interview with me (translated into Chinese here) which I’ve pasted beneath. Wax poetic!
Thanks TOPYS, happy new year.
We visited your website and found some fantastic posts in your blog, for example, some interesting ideas from sandwiches. So we would like to invite you to share 6-8 kinds of food inspiration or funny food metaphors in your life and works.
Food can represent many facets of consumption and sustainability but I think it depicts people’s fears and desires best of all. Our experiences in life are taken in through our senses and food can describe or act as a metaphor for every human interaction.
Recently I started making fake condiments packets and other small items that combine different drugs with different foods. Just an exaggeration of how processed food works. Here are 6 ingredients, additives, or foods that keep my curiosity.
Vanilla – Spices can surprise your expectations and change the chemistry of your idea, if you’re willing to take the occasional risk. Balance requires experimentation and restraint. I think that holds true for most things: whatever you do is more about the small choices you make while doing it and less about your initial idea or the end product. You are the process and not the product, the result is just the end of the cycle.
Vanilla is a fruit pod from an orchid and the smell of vanilla is so successful that most of what we use is fake. The commercial food world is covered with this approximation of a plant part’s smell and taste. Possibly because of its similarity to mother’s milk. It’s a fascinating circumstance.
Mayonnaise – Some people don’t like mayonnaise but I think it improves a whole number of foods. I don’t see what’s not to like: it’s tangy fat. With french fries or fried chicken? It’s the best.
Fat is stored energy. If you’re adding fat you’re adding potential. That’s what people look for.
Vinegar – Rot is the most interesting thing. Even the foods we don’t think of as having rotten starts, processed cheese, breads, beers, chocolate, etc., came from the process of rot at some point. Not to mention soy sauce, yogurt, kimchi, wine… the list goes on.
White vinegar is the best thing to clean your house with and it’s also very good in some soups. Really opens the nose.
Cola – I have a book of short essays in which I use cola as a metaphor for the connection between mind and body. That the head of foam represents habitual thinking (bubbles of memories and projections colliding together) and sits on the substance that is the body (the vehicle for the head, the mysterious knowledge of the physical world). What I really love about cola is the combination of neroli, cinnamon, vanilla, lime, nutmeg, and coriander. I love Coca Cola so much I don’t drink it anymore because I can’t stop. The first sip is the best. It burns all the way down. It’s like a drinkable acid that strips your insides clean.
Honey – Lasts forever. Found in Egyptian tombs. Made by social insects. That are all dying. Clover honey is the best.
Chocolate – Chocolate is hard bean paste with sugar. Isn’t that weird? The history of chocolate is thick and complicated, just like how the taste is thick and complicated. It was a currency, ritual, religion, medicine, then a symbol of international trade and power, war, slavery, now a highly refined product whose raw material is outpacing the price of gold. All of that makes a candy.
I grew up watching my dad learn to work with chocolate, a long trial and error process of complicated variables, to become highly skilled. If you love it it’s worth doing–and that legacy is just a story. That’s what chocolate taught me.
1. What‘s your understanding of cool ?
At best: observational, honed, galvanizing, crisp, natural. At worst: detached, ineffective, egotistical, mushy, impulsive.
2. Use three words to describe your design style.
Flexible. Even. Bright.
3. Describe a typical work-day of you and non-work day of you.
My work and non-work days are very similar these days: sketchbook, study, play, exploration, reprimands.
4. Share your own ways of collecting inspiration.
Friends and mentors, going to specialty grocery or kitchen supply stores, anything that’s been outside a long time, and birds.
5. What’s your favorite work conditions?
Evening time to late night: low noise and low light.
6. When it comes to designwho influence you the most?
Shiro Yamada (my grandfather), Morris Louis, Shigeo Fukuda, Art Spiegelmen, Jack Davis…
7. Please recommend one of your favorite books, songs and movies.
Book: The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt. We use it so much it’s filthy.
Song: According to iTunes the song I’ve played the most is Your Gold Teeth by Steely Dan
Movie: Style Wars
8. Next, what do you want to try the most?
Unfamiliar fruit.
Quattro Stagioni
I finished up this illustration for Luppolo Brewing’s new Quattro Stagioni membership program during the weekend and learned up to six Italian words. Turns out that Quattro Stagioni is more than just a species of pizza too.
I did think about pizza when sketching this out, with the year being sliced up into delicious quarters. Spent too long looking at pictures of the Malfa coast while trying to figure out how to distill it.
Listening Post
“…And gather sea shells and drift-wood And know the thrill of loneliness And lose all sense of time And be free.” I love this album.
11/1: In the Pool
11/1*, Vol 18: In the Pool
#2: What is always worth the price?
Experimenting new things! Both in your life and in your work.
#3: You have unlimited space and unlimited resources. What will you make?
We would build a big open-space with all the materials we need to work with all our friend and of course, a giant swimming pool!
#4: It’s not working: try something new or persist?
There is few exceptions but most of time, when you’re persisting on something not working, it’s just because it’s not the right solution.
#5: In general; start from chaos and reduce or start from silence and add?
We start from chaos and we reduce. We are a bit hysteric at the beginning, we think about a lot of stuff and then we calm down and chose the most relevant idea for us.
#6. When does a piece fail? When does a piece succeed?
For us, a piece succeed when everybody can understand your project and not just graphic designers…
#7. Pasta or sushi?
One of us is half italian, so the answer is pretty clear.
#9. What two things must be together to satisfy you?
Work and pleasure, simply !
#13. What famous artwork do you like least of all?
Jeff Koons work in general. Mostly because we consider him as a commercial and not an artist. We don’t like his approach !
#14. What work of yours is the favourite?
Our thesis project for both of us : it has been the biggest/longest project we did freely and without constraint. (DJ set for Louise & Frank for Géraldine)
#15. What is the one thing you fear about your work?
Being boring and ordinary.
#16. What habit have you had the longest?
Drinking wine… Is it too French to say that ?
#19. What is the most important thing you’ve learned in the past month?
Always be suspicious with people, especially if they’re really enthusiastic about your work.
#20. You can spend an hour any place and at any time. Where and when?
In the city of Tokyo, at midnight.
#22. What is your favorite type of bread?
We are French ! So don’t test us…
*I’m sending 23 questions to artists, designers and musicians and asking them to answer 11. I think these questions give revealing answers, especially regarding creative work. Here are their responses. As these are interviews I’m publishing their answers as they are, fully appreciating that English may not be their first or preferred written language. Thanks to all the participants.
11/1: Jorden & David Doody
11/1*, Vol 17: Jorden and David Doody
Jorden & David Doody are Two Artists, they live and work in Montreal, Canada.
#1: Twelve hours of the perfect day or twelve hours of the perfect night?
David: I’m gonna go for sun set to sun rise … And the location would be preferably equatorial… in order to give a even 12/12 day night split … I’m imagining a thick, salty, and star filled sky, a night lit under the promise of giant Cheshire Cat grin moon… a pale blue light reflecting up off warm wet white sands… an endless beach framed by slender silhouettes of swaying palms. A perfect night spent in perfect company. A perfect night book-ended in the magic of mauve, orange and red… And maybe there is an epic beach rave too… With tiki torches… fire breathing hippies and vision distorting heavy bass… And maybe giant trampoline, and a trapeze, … And maybe a fresh water water-fall… with a hidden cave, And maybe a rope swing… And maybe a mid night surf, and a chance encounter with a speaking dolphin… And maybe a bed of midnight blooming tropical roses… And a fuzzy family of friendly miniature nocturnal primates … with huuuuuge yellow eyes… and maybe soft little pink fingers and with well kept finger nails…And definitely some kind of wonderland cake or biscuit or little vile that would allow time to drastically slow or perception to radically speed so that each and every single experience would open up endlessly into nuance and beauty… each moment somehow how cheating just a little more life out of the 12 hour trip limit.
Jorden: Well, I’m pretty sure David said it all there! Im not sure if I can imagine anything more magical than that… assuming that I am the “perfect company” of course 😉
#2. What is always worth the price?
David: A good sleep.
Jorden: Plus the taxi fare to get your sorry ass home after you missed the last train.
#3. You have unlimited space and unlimited resources. What will you make?
David: A parade. And totally not a lame contemporary capitalist knock off… I mean a real fucking extravaganza. Each float a testament to the synergetic poetical of imaginative ingenuity… Unlimited resources right ? Yeah definitely a parade. a really cool one, an event that is sooo super uber fantastic that only has to happen once… ever.
Jorden: Ummm, excuse me…. I’m pretty sure that was my dream idea?! But I’m glad you agree.
#5. In general; start from chaos and reduce or start from silence and add?
David: Start from almost nothing and make and collect as much chaos as possible and then reduce it just a little bit.
Jorden: Chaos is like glitter in the air, it looks really pretty until it lands in your eye. So, it is important wear protective goggles at all times.
#6. When does a piece fail? When does a piece succeed?
David: As a maker… A piece fails once it’s finished and it succeeds for as long as it remains in that state of ‘ becoming ‘ … That’s sounds kinda cheesy but kinda totally true, kinda.
Jorden: I also believe that the success is in the making. But I don’t believe that art can actually fail, only challenge.
#9. What two things must be together to satisfy you?
David: Jorden and I.
Jorden: <3 or chocolate and peanut butter
David: or how bout were are recently reformed cannibals made out of chocolate… and while tripping through the primordial jungle we find ourselves trapped in a quick sand pool of peanut butter… and realizing there is no escape from the sticky salty mess we decide to go out with a bang and just eat each other to death.
Jorden: David, I love that you are really excited about answering these questions together…, but seriously… you might be overdoing it 😉 Which, i guess is kinda perfect really… you always make me laugh in disbelief at the possibilities that flash through your imagination at a speed that most cannot possibly conceive. No wonder your eyes are so bright and sparkly ::)) you got magic in between them ears. xo
#10. What is your favourite machine?
David: The invisible, post internet, post colonial machine of late capital… Because of its promise of total global unification , albeit through domination … A future unified in exile and exploitation and consumption and entertainment.
Jorden: Yikes?! Machines in general wouldn’t normally be on my list of favourite things but… I’ll say my ’87 VW bus that is painted like a great big blue and pink neon stripe hammer head shark. That’s pretty cool I guess.
#11. What incredibly useful thing doesn’t exist yet?
Jorden: The “Replicator” from Star Trek of course!! Geez…
David: the first thing i would replicate is jorden… but only so she could take turns listening to me talk shit incessantly and take twice as long to get tiered of hearing it…
Jorden: Hahaha! Omg. Lol. Wtf!? Srsly? Too f#$%ing funny. What is this Ex Machina?? Don’t creep me out.
#12. You own a store that only sells one type of object. What is it?
David: Fantasy swords. Like all of them… Like how cool would it be to have a store that was filled floor to ceiling with glass shelves and mirrored walls…. and sold Every single fantasy sword ever birthed into the collective conscious !?! With tv monitors, video projections, and animated tri colored smoke holograms playing out the whole gammit of reference clips and illustrations. (Or a store that sold tropical plants.)
Jorden: Wow. Spoken like a true man. A multi dimensional room of mystic phallic objects ready to blow your mind or chop your head off from every angle, at any moment. Perfect.
I personally would own a Hassle Shop, that solely sold heavily hung tasseled tapestries depicting only the finest of the Hoff’s best poses. #Legit.
#19. What is the most important thing you’ve learned in the past month?
Jorden: Change is inevitable… So put on a clean shirt.
David: although I feel like I’ve learned it every month for the past 15 years… Jorden is always right. I should probably change my shirt.
#20. You can spend an hour any place and at any time. Where and when?
Jorden: Paris in the spring, during the belle époque!
David: im gonna go for the first hour of time after the big bang… and i wanna be exactly 53 minutes away from ground zero… i wanna spend my first 53 minutes of my hour looking right at the wave of “universal becoming” barreling right at me… and the last 7 being carried off by it.
Jorden: Where do you come up with this shit?? Like??!!! You make me wanna rewrite ALL of my answers… dang!
#21. What is your favourite plant?
David: Maybe a mango tree or a giant cedar.
Jorden: Ha! David doesn’t actually really like plants. He just pretends he does. He comes home with hundreds of dollars worth of shrubbery hanging from his limbs with the biggest smile on his face. He’s like the proud father of houseplantery. Then, within a few months, he is panicked at the sight of his emaciating plants and goes from room to room shouting blasphemies, as his blames and shames grow louder, and considerably more direct, while he waggles his disapproving finger in the air as he passes by. And I’m thinking to myself (or probably out loud), “have you ever even watered your precious little pants?? Like, what did you expect… ME to do it?? Gawd.” I personally like raspberry bushes. They are wild and free and full of tasty treats.
David: Hah! they were all gifts… for you!! living breathing symbols of our love… and you were supposed to nurture them and make them wana grow little fruits and shit… and its like easier for you…your way taller and have a ballers reach, you don’t even need to get a stool out or nothin to water them…
*I’m sending 23 questions to artists, designers and musicians and asking them to answer 11. I think these questions give revealing answers, especially regarding creative work. Here are their responses. As these are interviews I’m publishing their answers as they are, fully appreciating that English may not be their first or preferred written language. Thanks to all the participants.
11/1: Dean Placzek
11/1*, Vol 16: Dean Placzek
Dean Placzek (aka Razzy D) is a dancer based in Vancouver, Canada. He’s a member of Filthee Feet and Ouro Collective.
#3. You have unlimited space and unlimited resources. What will you make?
Movement that stands the test of time either solo or with a group.
#6. When does a piece fail? When does a piece succeed?
When I feel proud of it and want to share what it with the world regardless of praise or money or anything like that.
#7. Pasta or sushi?
Pastas good…but I can’t deny my Asian roots.
#8. You can bring one thing with you when you go (interpret that how you will), it must be inanimate. What is it?
Music.
#9. What two things must be together to satisfy you?
Fun and an open mind.
#10. What is your favourite machine?
Super Nintendo.
#15. What is the one thing you fear about your work?
Not being able to do it anymore.
#17. What about yourself can you not trust?
To be honest, myself. I second guess myself all the time.
#19. What is the most important thing you’ve learned in the past month?
Don’t wait for something to happen or for someone else to do something for you. If you really want to do it or get it down, do it yourself.
#21. What is your favourite plant?
Anything that gives us air to breathe.
#22. What is your favourite type of bread?
Does rice count?
#23. What object or tool is perfect?
Nothing is perfect. That’s what’s perfect about it.
*I’m sending 23 questions to artists, designers and musicians and asking them to answer 11. I think these questions give revealing answers, especially regarding creative work. Here are their responses. As these are interviews I’m publishing their answers as they are, fully appreciating that English may not be their first or preferred written language. Thanks to all the participants.
Try it
