John Skelton, Typographer

More free stuff? Why not, it’s the future, copyleft, share alike, all that stuff. Bonus; this typography is gorgeous.

Portland is a happy home for designer John Skelton, who shares all his typefaces with the world on his site. My favorite is the black and white number, called Pinpressions.

John Skelton | Afrojet (where you can download each of these fonts + others)

Coast Modern + Build

Build has created this limited edition poster for the film Coast Modern (trailer below). Sized at 33 1/8″ x 23 7/16″ and printed on 100lb Topkote stock in Pantone 806, it is a complete slice of the west coast of the US + Vancouver, Canada. What a color choice, what a coastline. I’m proud to be on this coast, in one of the little blips where the Columbia River slices into the Oregon territory. The poster is a limited edition, though there may still be some left here. I think it’s drop-dead gorgeous, but I have a weakness for cartography.

Check out the trailer to the film:

Blue Hole Free Dive

The second largest blue hole in the world is in the Bahamas, and people free dive it. Crazy people, people who clearly want to die, and look awesome while doing it. Blue holes are basically underwater sinkholes, like the one we recently saw in Guatemala, associated with rainwater infiltrating bedrock in the Pleistocene era.

This particular Blue Hole is called Dean’s Blue Hole, and is 663 feet straight down, as if it were drilled with a huge drill bit. Guillaume Nery dove it with no tanks, no fins, in a perfectly weighted suit. Not only does he look like a super hero, but he is probably one of the more fearless men I could ever imagine. Well, almost as fearless as Julie Gautier, who filmed the dive, also tankless!

This is a no-no. I couldn’t EVER. First of all swimming in the ocean is sketch. Swimming in water where you can’t see/don’t know where the bottom is makes me so jumpy I can hardly type about it, and most of all, a black hole?! But it does look incredible. Like he’s on another planet in super slow-mo. Take a look:

Jared Milam

Jared Milam is a designer living here in Portland whose work I have seen all over the place without realizing it was all coming from him. His Kilkenny logos are SO DELICIOUS, makes me just want to smack my lips. He is skilled enough, however to flip it around and switch styles with his identity for “id”—a branding strategy that kills when it comes to the variety of business cards he allows. I’m pretty sure some instructors have used some of these as examples in classes at the University here.

I just couldn’t stop finding work of his that is gorgeous, so this post ended up image-heavy. Is he an alcoholic? I see a serious level of affection for hooch here. I’ve been trying to be an alcoholic for years, so props to you Mr. Milam. Fight the good fight.

Jared Milam | on thedieline | on logopond

H.M.C.S. Vancouver

I LOVE Canada. I will not hold it in anymore. I have Canadian pride. You guys are awesome. Great politics, you take care of the least of yours, you elect aboriginal peoples & immigrants into leadership, you have an incredible landscape far more epic than ours, and you still have territories and forts.

So imagine my delight when I saw Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship Vancouver parked near the studio, in the brown waters of the Willamette! My family and I took a tour this morning. Awesome. I love that there were an equal amount of female officers to males, I didn’t see ANY ladies on the U.S. ships parked behind HMCS Vancouver.

To express my love, here are the lyrics to Canada’s unofficial national anthem, The Maple Leaf Forever:

O, land of blue unending skies,
Mountains strong and sparkling snow,
A scent of freedom in the wind,
O’er the emerald fields below.

To thee we brought our hopes, our dreams,
For thee we stand together,
Our land of peace, where proudly flies,
The Maple Leaf forever.

Chorus:
Long may it wave, and grace our own,
Blue skies and stormy weather,
Within my heart, above my home,
The Maple Leaf forever!

From East and West, our heroes came,
Through icy fields and frozen bays,
Who conquered fear, and cold, and hate,
And their ancient wisdom says:

Protect the weak, defend your rights,
And build this land together,
Above which shine the Northern Lights,
And the Maple Leaf forever!

Alright that’s my spiel. I’ve got lots more love for you where that came from, Canada. We may have a future together in your incredible Vancouver.

On weekends perhaps I’ll spin up to NWT in a twin otter: