MacBookSnuggie

Chris bought me a new MacBook a few weeks ago and Im in love, he really knows how to make a girl swoon. Only one problem, we have three dusty dogs and I wanted to protect my new love from the elements, so I made a little MacSnuggie/cooling pad/mousepad. Yes, it has multiple uses. I made the MacSnuggie out of avocado-colored soft vinyl (water resistant) and the inside is a chocolate brown microfiber suede, so it slides in and out smoothly. I left the end open so I can still be able to charge it while it's not in use. I'm thinking about making another one, this time with handles.

PHXDW Overview

I think I might be feeling back to normal after the last few weeks which were a whirlwind. So I've finally found a little time to write up my thoughts on Design Week. I'll start with the exhibits, which were held Tuesday night - Friday. I acted as Director of Exhibits and I think they turned out pretty dang good. The receptions at both Santy and Terralever were a success with around a hundred people at each. Everyone loved the designers work, and actually Terralever might purchase one of the designers installations to keep there.

The first exhibit of the week was at Kitchen Sink Studios in downtown Phoenix on Tuesday night. I LOVE their office. They held the student poster exhibit which got a great turnout.

Wednesday night was the Santy exhibit, Jenny Messerly, Liz Magura, Tammy LePham worked really hard with me to get the installs up. It took about seven hours to set up the poster contest and "REJECTED" logos exhibits which included 25 printed posters, a window projection and over 40 "REJECTED" logos.

The individual designers who set up at Santy for design week were Daniel Davis of Steamcrow, Jon Ashcroft (awesome prints), Jeremy Smith displayed his typeface Karmaform and Drew Dulap with his MSCED exhibit.

The Terralever reception was just as successful with Tiphani Brooke's Heart Condition, Miro Chun's Wirework install, the Pulpture exhibit, which we successfully got one entry for :) and the Phoenix Layers Competition exhibit, all of the Quarter Finals matches were printed and Andrew Coppola also put together a movie of the entire season.

So that's a quick summary of the exhibits, which ran through Friday. Friday night Punchcut showed the Typofile Film Festival which was amazing and which we got a fantastic turnout for, over 200 people! You can see a preview of the film on Vimeo.

The conference which spanned Saturday and Sunday was a huge success. It was almost flawless. Saturday kicked off with the opening titles, which if you look closely you'll spot myself and my little dog too. Then I attended the "Where is the Valley Going" and "Evolution of the Agency" panels which we got some interesting insight from some large and small agency and business owners around Phoenix.

Saturday afternoon was Debbie Millman's presentation, she is a fantastic speaker, and I love that she talks about science (and the brain) and how it relates to design. After that I checked out Eric Torres and Daniel Davis' discussion about the life of a professional illustrator. Even though I am not an illustrator, I still found what they were talking about to be relative and true for some of the things I run into in my work-life also. Then I attended Jared Benson's (of Punchcut) preso about Mobile Design, which I found to be immensely interesting, I learned new words like "biomimicry" and love the idea of "digital ecosystems".

Sunday morning kicked off with Bennet Peji, an energetic start to the day, which was great. He spoke about branding cities which I found really interesting since last year I worked on rebranding one of the cities around Phoenix. The "State of Phoenix's Creative Class" debate was after, which was fitting. After lunch I thought that Robert Neal's "UX Design and the Mind" sounded interesting, and I was right. Robert spoke about psychology and UX Design and I loved it.

Sadly the week had to end and Chaz Maviyane-Davies "the guerrilla of graphic design" ended by discussing and showing many of his social, controversial and environmental pieces of work.

Phoenix Design Week was an overall success, I am proud to have been a part of making it happen. It was a lot of work and sleepless nights for many, but well worth it. If you didn't make it out this year, I hope to see you next year, where I have heard rumors that it will be even bigger and better. I better rest up now.

Check out more photos on flickr and sign-up to be part of making next years events!

PHX Layers Quarter Finals Weekend!

Yesterday's match was between myself and Safwat Saleem. He's a tough competitor, but it was a good match. The new format allows all of the images to come together in the end and create one large image of the match, pretty awesome idea. Voting is now open.

The other competitions were between Tiphani Brook vs Pricilla Gomez, Jon Ashcroft vs Sean Cornwall and Elliot Fuller vs Luz Galusha-Luna (in that order). Some amazing design going on this weekend.

Check out the PHX Layers exhibit durning Phoenix Design Week

Five Tier Shelves

This fun shelf has been neglected and stuck in a dark closet for years. We have been working on her self esteem and believe she is ready to come out of the darkness and shine. Can't you picture this cute little shelf in the window of a boutique downtown?

Check out on Etsy.

Phoenix Design Week

As you may know, I've been involved with the creation of Phoenix Design Week and I'm super excited about it! It's been an awesome opportunity to work with some great creatives around the valley and pretty cool to be part of this revolution in the local design community. I hope you can make it out, there are some really cool speakers, exhibits, films and lots of fun parties planned. Oh and speaking of exhibits, that's kinda my sector, if you're interested in submitting design work to show during the week, or create something for one of the exhibits we've created, check out the Exhibits Page. Hope to see you there!

Photoshop Layers Match

Saturday's PHX Layers match was myself versus Victor Vasquez. Basically what happens in a Layer match is first, a coin toss, and whoever wins has 30 minutes to come up with a design in Photoshop. After their time is up they then pass it off to their competition who has another 30 minutes to manipulate the file keeping some element(s) from the previous design. This goes on for three rounds. It's tough, thirty minutes is not a lot of time once you get started. 

It's kinda strange because I think I'm becoming addicted to this competition, it's fun, I even get butterflies right before it begins.  Check out PHXLayers.com to see all the matches. 

Here is my final "volley" from Saturday's match. 

PHX Layers Competition - Qualifiers

A couple months ago I invited my friend Elliot to a Photoshop tennis challenge, being called Phoenix Layers. It's a chance for local Phoenix designers to show off their skills and will eventually be  part of the Phoenix Design Week. It is being done tournament style, I think there will be an elimination every week or so, then the top two will go head-to-head live during the Design Week Conference at the end of October. Elliot and I both qualified to be in the tournament, here is the first challenge between us.

Elliot started the challenge with an image of his new devil-baby, Cash.

Next, I had a little trick up my sleeve for Elliot...or should we call him "bunny"?

Dazed and confused, Elliot didn't know what "bunny" meant, but he fell for the trap and kept the "bunny" theme going. 

Little did he know, that, wham! I found a picture of him, dressed like a cute lil pink bunny. 

He tried to make himself look like a badass in a bunnysuit, by going the "look at me, I'm crazy" route. 

So I took his crazy eye and turned it into a happy ending. 

Thanks Ell, it was fun! 

Hopefully I'll make it to round two, I'll post when that happens!

Andy's "Friend" - Rehabilitated

Can you believe he went from this sad, rundown, pea-soup-lookin' old man...to this new and improved awesome guy (plus entourage)? It's like he saw the God of Style and couldn't help but be reformed.

What a turnaround, and I couldn't have done it without help from Sally "The Slayer Seamstress " Hauser. I first started by stripping the green layer, and found that, woohoo, there was another layer beneath it! I thought about leaving it, for padding, and I tried shampooing it, but seriously, it was dirty. So, I stripped the orange layer as well. This guy has had a colorful past.

Okay, so next step, pull out nails (pulling out twenty of these 5-inch, thirty-year-old nails reminds me that I should probably get a tetanus shot soon). I am now left with a box, some springs, wooden feet, metal plates and buttons that will need to be recovered.

After staining the wooden feet a dark, chocolaty brown and painting the brass to silver, I drag all the remaining parts over to "The Seamstress Slayer's" house. She is a vetted reupholsterer and I'm hoping she can help me out with the piping around the top ledge. Of course she does, plus much more. But I have to beware because she is the dangerous type and does "accidentally" shoot me with the staple gun, though I should be lucky that it's not a rattlesnake this time.

After my near-death experience, we covered the wooden box and springs with new batting and muslin so it's nice and clean. Sally suspects that, because of the style of the orange fabric, that this ottoman may have originated in the 1930's or 40's. So it is probably a good thing that I decided to replace it rather than cleaning this 80-year-old (wow) fabric.

I am pretty happy with how he turned out. Clean and off the red chicken. 

I had some leftover pieces and I'm not about to throw away this awesome fabric. So pillows to go on the couch where the ottoman will be is just what needs to be done to pull everything together.

Little details, it's what I'm all about. This is the custom tag that I tacked to the bottom. 

Number One - Rehabilitated

So this is actually the first chair (hence the name) that I rehabilitated. But I wasn't crazy about the fabric I chose the first time. I AM really happy with the ebony stain and stainless steel plates around the bottom of the legs, and after searching I finally found this fun, bright pattern that lights up a room.

Camping '09 Polaroid Photobook

In complete contrast to the two beautiful, clean-styled books I have completed in the last month, this little camping memoir is small and grungy. Chris and I took the dogs camping this weekend and I brought along one of my favorite toys, my polaroid camera. We managed to become incredibly filthy so I thought this book should reflect that. It turned out pretty cool especially since polaroids also have the reputation for being mucky, perfect!

Magazine Table - Rehabilitated

Maybe you remember from a few posts ago that we recently acquired this guy into our rehab program. He used to have a good job as a top magazine holder, but then the internet came along and his job was outsourced to a computer. After a few years out of work, he ended up living in some guys garage, but we believe that there is still some work out there for a magazine holder/table, and have high hopes for him.



After a good scrub down with the electric sander, fixing up a few little bruises and a fresh coat of paint, we are going to send him out into the real world again.

Thanks to ReadyMade Magazine for posting this project on their blog.

Catch me also on Twitter @rehabilitated
For more information, dimensions, color samples or how to get your hands on one of these pieces, email me at catchatori [at] gmail dot com.

Gorgeous Portfolio Book

I started working on this book back in January, so six months of consulting with the client, gathering images and copy, it's finally completed and printed! Kim at Good-Stock.com was a pleasure to work with and crafted a gorgeous portfolio. The leather cover is so soft, I want to take a nap on it. 

The printing turned out fantastic, the divider pages, which are Tizziano hand-made italian paper with debossed foil stamping are a highlight of the craftsmanship of the book. It really turned out nice. 

Meet The Twins - Rehabilitated

Look at these two, just gorgeous.
Sadly, they were not always this way.

When they were accepted into our rehab program, they were beat up, cigarette burns and wine stains on their seats, a broken back, a little wobbly (most likely from alcohol abuse) and it looks like one of them was involved in some sort of criminal activity.



Luckily we saw hope...

After some time in our facility, the twins turned themselves around. We worked on their exterior and stripped them down to the basics. Then we got them some new kicks, new threads and accessories. They decided on a lovely all-over mahogany color with red highlights.

We are very proud of these two, they are now stable, healthy and beautiful.

Detail of the radiant fabric used to cover the newly re-cushioned seats.

Detail of the of the matching red highlights that accent the backrests.

Here is our newest patient, updates will be coming shortly.



For more information, dimensions, color samples or how to get your hands on one of these pieces, email me at catchatori [at] gmail dot com.