Adventureson
After releasing music under my own name for almost a decade, I'm giving myself a band name. There's no reason for this other than I want to publish …
After releasing music under my own name for almost a decade, I'm giving myself a band name. There's no reason for this other than I want to publish …
I grew up in Maine and was fortunate enough to have parents who taught me and my sister how to ski at a very young age (2!). We lived about 45 …
2020 is over and I'm not even close to "recovered." I admit that the year went easy on my family. I am grateful. We're almost four weeks into 2021 …
Don't worry, everything is fine with our pup Yoshi, this isn't a dog memorial note! In fact, I'm publishing this a week ahead of the third …
You didn't come here for a hot take on a 20 year old album but that's what this is. Yesterday I saw a tweet, and it made me anxious. Because I'm …
Once a month I'll inevitably get an email from Paypal saying that "a nice dafont visitor" threw a couple bucks my way. Almost always $5. It's awesome …
Well, RBG died tonight and America is literally on fire. Metaphorically too, but not in a rad way. So, perfect timing for me to rebuild this blog …
I've been working on revisions to seven ETC typefaces for almost eight months now. Before that, I had high hopes for a little project called Public …
I haven’t mentioned this on my website but on January 1st I began a 52 week long project. The goal? Record one song every seven days. All year. It …
What better way to start a quarantine/lockdown than with semi-ominous instrumental music, right? These six ambient tracks span three years of …
I didn’t think I’d be writing a “love letter” to a certain device today, but here I am. The last time I did this was about my favorite ebook reader, …
It's been five years since I blogged photos from the New York State Fair, and you know what? We still hit the same spots and eat the same food. Fewer …
I'm writing this on a Monday, but the title comes from the fact that I spent many hours yesterday finalizing on improvements made to League Mono and …
This blog post started as a silly note on my phone. Less than a note really, just a list of every digital camera I've owned and used and loved and …
I just finished downloading all of my content from Flickr. It amounts to 21 ZIP files that Flickr prepared when I requested my archive, totaling …
This is a quick (relatively, it's 18 minutes long) video tutorial on converting an existing single style font to a multiple master/variable …
For the past few months I have been working on converting my typeface League Mono from eight weights (up from 5 when it launched) to a variable …
Kingston to Negril and back, with a mountain adventure in between. March-April, 2018. Allison rented a car for us that I had the pleasure to drive …
I recently made a quick (15 minute) video tutorial on introductory letter making in Glyphs Mini 2 . I think it is an improvement over my previous …
This is a follow up to last year's running infographic. I'll just let this thing do the talking for now, and get down to some of the details after. …
The world has more free fonts than ever, at a higher quality than I can handle (in a good way). I'm not going to make this a regular Friday thing, …
It has never been a better time to be a graphic designer in Ithaca. I write this as someone who has made a living here doing just that since 2006. We …
I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking about how I get by. Many of those years I was an employee with a salary. Some years were 100% …
I packed a microphone for my annual trip to Maine. You can see it in the photo above, very small, in almost the exact center of the frame. Aside from …
I began work on League Mono at the end of 2016, and had the bulk of it in a usable form in March of this year. Why? I had been looking through the …
This isn't a race recap as much as it's my experience as a bystander, but here we go. The date: Saturday, May 13th. Location: Philly's Pennypack …
Create Upstate is a great design event that has lived in Syracuse, NY for the past three years. It was wonderful there, but this year the organizers …
I'm not the first person to write something like this and given how much I love my Nook, I probably won't be the last, either. So I'll keep this …
In September of 2015 I quickly and quietly launched New O'Clock , a website that publishes and tweets an interesting, true fact every day at two …
I still have a soft spot for Gluten, now more than ever. Literally. Figuratively. In food, especially, but I'm talking about my font. I've recently …
My friend Josh returned home to record his third album at Wilburland . He invited me to the studio to document some of the process. I showed up with …
I’m writing this on a bus to New York City. A last minute getaway with my wife. After admiring the winter scene that also distracts me when I’m …
I’m going to try something new with upcoming typeface releases: overdramatic fake movie posters. So I set out to make a simple design and realized …
I was late to join my local (Upstate NY) AIGA chapter, and even later to hop on the chapter’s Slack list. Deplorable, I know, but I tried to make up …
I ran a lot over the past 12 months. More than ever, which was a surprise to me. I didn't have a goal of running over 100 miles each month for a year …
I visit a used book store in Ithaca’s Commons at least once a week. It’s called Autumn Leaves and sits on the ground level above a record/cd store, …
The Rio Summer Olympics kicks off tonight and even though I don’t often watch sports, hit the track, or the road if I can help it, I look forward to …
The Planetary Society (a non-profit with thousands of dues-paying members) needed a few different print pieces created. An advocacy pamphlet, the …
In the fall of 2015 I created a birdfeeder using a single sheet of 24″ x 12″ birch plywood. I designed the three dimensional object in two dimensions …
Yesterday after my son (age 10 at this posting) and I finished up some collaborative Portal 2 levels he went up to his room. He came down about 10 …
A few years ago I had an idea to create ambient music from classic literature. The concept was simple: choose a piece of writing, remove every bit of …
As I always say, if you want one of your fonts on a book cover, you’ve got to do it yourself. Okay I don’t say that, and honestly I’ve seen my stuff …
A simple thought popped into my brain during a run in the rainy woods today: replace the word “fight” in key quotes from the movie Fight Club with …
If only everyone had paid 50¢ per download It feels like not too long ago I wrote a similar blog post about hitting 1,000,000 free font downloads. A …
Things I'm Over India Pale Ales Higher education Apps “Entrepreneurs” Google Chrome Coffee that costs more than $2 Reddit Road races Seeing social …
This isn’t science, it’s personal. I don’t drink a lot. That is to say, when I enjoy a grown-up beverage, I do so in moderation. There are three …
In a flurry of awesomeness and dollars flying everywhere, the first expansion deck for Assumptions is here. After finding, hiring, loving Louie Chin …
I’ve never met Lauren Baker But back in February she emailed in response to my tweet looking for character illustrators for an upcoming project. In …
I got sucked into a bit of a 90s black hole when /r/typography shared a link to screenshots of every title shot from the show Seinfeld …
Sometimes all it takes to find great talent is a tweet asking for exactly that. Looking for the first expansion pack artist led me to Louie Chin, a …
When my friends at Adjacent asked me to take a few photos of their freshly updated space, I was happy to say "absolutely" and wise enough to bring …
I used to love bright, busy, vibrant wallpaper/background on my phone. They were fun but made the locked view/home screen busy, especially at night, …
In 2012 I put out an instrumental album called The Return Voyage of Christopher Mackenzie (TRVOCM). The music is kind of wacky, but it is exactly …
Jonah and I have been going to the Maritime Aquarium of Norwalk ever since my sister moved to that area over five years ago. My favorite room/exhibit …
There was a lot going on in town yesterday, but I was able to stop by Singlebrook's latest hackathon (hosted at their place, sponsored by many other …
My kid busted out a brand new hoodie recently. Not one he bought but one that he designed! He is still slightly obsessed with frogs, which I think is …
A few days ago I saw this and got really excited: #twithaca this friday, come make paper creations on the laser cutter @IthacaGen …
A lot of times I try to zoom out, or step back from something, to gain perspective. In this case I got in a close as I could. Closer than possible …
My kid is getting bigger, smarter, faster, older. Summer is gone. Even our schedule is completely opposite what it has been for the past 5 years. Our …
I've used Southpaw quite a bit since Allison and I brought it to life earlier this year. Almost every day, at the Beer co. actually. In fact, it is …
The fairgrounds are in Syracuse, just over an hour away from our home. It hosts the Great New York State Fair, an annual celebration of epic …
We've left Ithaca, barely, but it feels like a wonderful new world. Actually, we’ve been out of “the city” for almost two months now, but that time …
It isn’t new but it is hugely popular, and I’m using it these days in place of Rockwell Extra Bold (which is lovely, but not Chunk). I’ve also been …
That’s right, I made these three pixel fonts in 2007. Flash was a big thing that I seemed to spend a bit of time with, and tiny text was huge (lol). …
Had it been a clear day this view 👇would have included Mount Washington and the beast we hiked on the exact same day last year, Mount Madison. But …
For the second time in my life I was treated to a Lips experience that stimulated every sense and also left me more inspired than I could have …
Last week I received an email from someone asking about a specific usage and style stuff for one of my fonts blah blah blah. I linked them to the …
An Adirondack High Peak Adventure I packed light, aside from the dog, and pitched a tent near the trail as the sun went down. Thunder and lightning …
So when I do manage to get off the ground I find myself amazed at the experience. Luckily I’ve been able to share the past few trips with my son (who …
It’s rare for me to write about concert experiences. Over the past few years I’ve enjoyed MIA, Flaming Lips, Phoenix, and Fiona Apple (among others), …
One day at AWP I took a few hours to conceptualize and design a new kind of text overlay app. I started with the concept, a simple interface, and …
My sister has lived within an hour of New York City for a few years now. I'm not a city guy, but I can certainly love it for brief periods. How …
We went to find scarred landscape. I needed to see the environmental catastrophe that everyone around here has been talking about, trying to prevent. …
Metroid has been on my mind lately. It started when my kiddo obtained Nintendo Land / WiiU and found the Metroid level, which begins with the …
My friend Keith lives in a pretty sweet spot in New Hampshire. So the day after Christmas, while we were all in the same area, my life long friends …
Last month Adam Baker had a very impressive photo show in town. Having only seen his work as large as my browser window would allow I was blown away …
Seriously. Justin James Muir takes a good photo. When he sent me a few sample portraits for his beard book, titled A Book of Beards, my (bearded) jaw …
“Also known by the Algonquin name Tahawus, meaning Cloud-Splitter” I'm not really hiking all 46 Adirondack high peaks and it seems like cheating a …
Each year at the end of May all of Ithaca seems to come out for the Ithaca Festival parade! Sometimes it rains but this year we had beautiful …
I’m standing on what used to be Route 61, the now closed off southern path into Centralia, Pennsylvania. Underneath the road, and much of the old …
I recently released an instrumental album that tells the story of a spaceman (whose ancestors originated on Earth) returning home. I, for better or …
I posted this on Vimeo . I’ve been holding on to it for too long and putting off making the video, but here it is. This is in my opinion Radiohead’s …
2020 is over and I'm not even close to "recovered." I admit that the year went easy on my family. I am grateful. We're almost four weeks into 2021 and I'm finally done editing photos from the past 12 months. I took a lot of pictures, and this post is going to show some of my favorite photos/moments from a surprisingly quiet year.
This is the only photo of my son in this set. He was actually eager to get outside and see the weird combination of a snow covered field and thick fog. Even this was considered normal and he was in school. But not for long.
It was a weird year to be raising an even smaller kid who was learning how to walk/eat/everything. She tagged along with one of us for every adventure and every mundane task, usually without complaint. This was taken the day New York State basically shut everything down.
Spring didn't really happen. April was brutal and it snowed in early May. So when the weather got nice, it just turned straight to summer. This probably happens every other year, to be honest. The warmer weather gave us a little optimism for the pandemic, and socializing. We had friends and family in our yard around this fire at a safe distance on more than one occasion. But that feels like ancient history, now.
By June/July my wife and I figured out how to stay productive and not become burned out as a parent. Even before the pandemic we both often worked from home, but with a teenager and toddler, that became tricky. We decided to split up the day (this isn't a groundbreaking concept) where I would parent the one year old from breakfast until noon–when a nap usually happened–and Allison would take over from after the nap until dinner. It became a routine that we're still using.
Trips became rare. And with the new schedule I would go downtown almost exclusively in the mornings with a 20 pound kid in my arms. We would quickly grab coffee and a muffin from the only coffee shop in operation (with wide open windows and doors). It was sad. It still is sad.
Our chickens have been with us for over two years. We lost a few over that time period, but gained two from our farmer friend this year. And those newest hens (the red red ones) became my daughters favorites, probably because she could just pick them up–or try, at least–any time she wanted. The days got hot, so we made sure to feed them early in the day.
Of course we found ourselves here on our anniversary. Allison and I were married at this spot in 2016 and it never fails to be a beautiful day. Usually we don't have the farmers market to ourselves, but it was a nice treat this year.
To our south is a field that becomes hay bales. To our north is another field that also becomes hay bales. For the majority of the year the fields are foreground elements in a beautiful landscape that I'm lucky to call home. But every now and then we hear the rumble of the tractors and various accessories that transform the terrain. It's a useful reminder that the land here has value beyond aesthetics and home owning. Our house sits on 1.6 acres and each year we section off a new portion of that to just let go wild. We mow half of the grass that used to be cut short. Aspen trees are coming up on their own in one patch. We've planted a dozen other trees in various spots, maple, pine, and willow.
One of my favorite things about the warm, long days is that I get to go for a walk after dinner with my son. That on its own is enough of a reason to love these times. But because it's in the last hour or so of sunlight we're usually able to witness some beautiful skies. This particular photo was taken just as we got home from our walk and only a few minutes before a storm obliterated our hilltop.
And like that summer bled into fall. I'm always eager for this change. I wilt, not unlike our yard. My parents visited but stayed in a hotel, hanging out with us outside or for short periods inside with all the windows open. Our usual trip to Maine–where they're from and where I grew up–was cancelled. If you're going to be stuck somewhere for fall, though, Ithaca isn't a bad place. In the day there's lots of evidence of deer, bunnies, and migrating birds. Some nights we fall asleep to the sound of coyotes.
On Allison's birthday we drove all over town stopping at some favorite places (before this we were at a plant shop). Ithaca closed one block of Aurora Street which happens to be where most of the local restaurants are. It's nickname is restaurant row, so when closed it became the Aurora Streatery. Anyway, my tiny human loved having the wide open road to herself.
I want late October and early November to last forever. It's perfect for running, sleeping, basically anything except swimming, which I didn't even do this year. This October I left Instagram, stopped playing video games, biked indoors on rainy days, and starting writing a novel. I knew that the transition to winter would be rough so I tried to prepare a little in advance.
Our dog Yoshi puts up with a lot. She gets crawled on, but she also gets a lot of floor scraps (thanks to her best friend, the toddler). We've been experimenting with off camera flash at home for a few different photo sessions. This one just happened to involve putting my dog in a hoodie, which has happened successfully and without fuss on multiple occasions. Yoshi gets delicious treats after, and the whole world gets these photos after. Win/win.
These two kept our house sane and also very messy. Seriously, we would clean daily and it would last for only a few hours. But we ended December optimistic that Biden/Harris and the Democrats will turn things around in 2021. We didn't drink our way through the year although it was a tempting idea. I, however, ate my way through 2020. I'll do it again too, even if the pandemic lets up. When the pandemic lets up.
Most of these photos were taken with a Fujfilm XF10 which should be a consideration for anyone who wants photos better than their phone but doesn't want to dent their bank account. I found mine used on Ebay for under $400. Just sayin.
📍Ithaca, New York
Currently I'm designing new type for Google Fonts through ETC👍I also maintain upstate.design, New O'Clock, and You Think This Is A Game.