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Stumbled upon this little site, it made me smile, so I had to share.

You may (but probably don’t) know that I have a knack for making up random band names. My latest is the classic metal styled graphic design group called RASTERIZER (spoken in growling voice). Since metal logos are by far the coolest ones going these days, I spent 15 minutes to see how a logo might look. I think I’ll refine it over the next couple of weeks and maybe ad some more harsh lines, maybe some grungy chrome looking fills or those scratchy root looking things that seem to look awesome and of course some 3d with shadow style effects. I think this one might be worthy of getting  few people together and recording a few songs. RASTERIZER!

People do significantly better in memory tests on rainy, cloudy days than they do on bright, sunny ones, according to new research that suggests raindrops falling on your head might make you brighter.

“This study is the first to show in a real-life setting that weather-induced mood can have a significant influence on people’s ability to remember casually observed scenes,” psychologists from the University of New South Wales report in the “Journal of Experimental Psychology.”

The theory is that people tend to be less focused on their surroundings when they’re happy and carefree. A positive mood makes us over-confident, we think we understand what’s going on, but in reality we’re making snap judgments and forget important things. In a negative mood, people think things through more thoroughly.

Typography plays a big role in what we do here at C&F (see the earlier discussion around Comic Sans). So to swing the conversation in the other direction, here are some great new fonts on the scene courtesy of typographica.com.

typographica.com – Our Favourite Fonts of 2008

Here’s a few ideas on ways to keep the earth happy, not just on Earth Day, but EVERYDAY.

1. Lower your thermostat

2. Reuse your water bottle.

3. Buy foods locally.

4. Ride a bike or walk to work

5. Go to your local library instead of buying new books.

6. Get off junk mail lists, place a red dot on your mail box.

7. Say no to plastic bags (Thrifty Foods and Ikea are banning plastic bags very soon!)

8. Use organic cleaning products like, vinegar, borax, and baking soda.

9. Wash clothes on the COLD cycle

10. Be paperless. You can read your newspaper and magazine subscriptions online. Switch to electronic banking and credit card payments

11.  Give away unwanted things and find new ones on craigslist or freecycle

12. Plant more flowers and trees to help grow our bee population, without bees, humans will suffer. Read more

Love your earth <3

A new site called “World Digital Library” launched today. It’s an international educational website with historic content going back to 8000 BC. The site has some neat interactivity and clean interface. Currently it’s available in 7 languages. Watch this to expand quite quickly as they pour in more content.

Launch site

It’s really hard to get a space to grow your own food in Vancouver. Easier than most big cities, but still a really tough task. Most existing garden plots you see have a waiting list at least 75 people deep. Lucky for me my ol’ chum Trevor has an abandoned plot in his backyard. So far I’ve got chives, garlic, leeks, radishes, kale, collards, peppermint and some mustard greens poking up. But the really good stuff (tomatoes and peppers!) are waiting on the window sill of my condo for a few more weeks before making the trip to their new garden home.

-dtm

The typeface called “fun, silly, and lazy” has inspired a movement to ban it.

Vincent Connare designed the ubiquitous, bubbly Comic Sans typeface, but he sympathizes with the world-wide movement to ban it.

Mr. Connare has looked on, alternately amused and mortified, as Comic Sans has spread from a software project at Microsoft Corp. 15 years ago to grade-school fliers and holiday newsletters, Disney ads and Beanie Baby tags, business emails, street signs, Bibles, porn sites, gravestones and hospital posters about bowel cancer.

The font, a casual script designed to look like comic-book lettering, is the bane of graphic designers, other aesthetes and Internet geeks. It is a punch line: “Comic Sans walks into a bar, bartender says, ‘We don’t serve your type.’” On social-messaging site Twitter, complaints about the font pop up every minute or two. An online comic strip shows a gang kicking and swearing at Mr. Connare.

The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web. The mission: “to eradicate this font” and the “evil of typographical ignorance.”

“If you love it, you don’t know much about typography,” Mr. Connare says. But, he adds, “if you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby.”

Read full article

It it’s spring time again. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and it is raining. A lot. I thought it might be a good idea to conquer this rainy weather with some green tips for when it’s raining outside.
1) Buy a rain barrel – Use the collected water to water your garden and grass! If you place the barrel under a downspout off your roof, you will collect even more water, and that is more money and water that you save.

2) Buy an ecofriendly rain coat – Patagonia Raincoats are around the same price as other high quality raincoats and they were made without any pesticide use, etc. Plus they are fashionable and last a long time. No more wasteful neon ugly ponchos for you!

3) Buy an eco-friendly umbrella for two and share – One Umbrella verses two umbrellas means less money and less wasteful packaging. Or use it to meet new people! If you are walking around with your big ecofriendly umbrella and you see someone who does not have one (especially if you are single and he/she is cute) then offer to share…you never know what might happen with your green purchase and good deed.
4) Turn off your sprinklers when it’s raining – This seems easy enough, but a lot of people have irrigation systems that automatically turn on during certain parts of the day. Some of these detect water levels…but it is not extremely accurate. So, if you see rain clouds or see it on the TV, just turn off your irrigation system. If it doesn’t happen to rain, it won’t kill your yard if it goes one day without water and if it does rain you will be saving water and money!
Comments, or tips you would like to share!

Look out for this awesome car! Our client, Som Visao Spa wrapped a mini cooper this past year, it can been seen zipping around the streets of Vancouver.