Welcome Home | with apologies to Richard Hamilton.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 6, 2015
Jun 26, 2015
R.I.P. - 51 Camden Street, Toronto
51 Camden Street in Toronto's old garment district was the home of Reactor Art + Design from 1982 to 2014. And for 19 years before that, home to Camden Cooper Garments, my dad Nathan's schmatta business. Nathan and his partner Sam Warner bought the building in April 1963 for $53,500.
Throughout my teenage years, I spent summers and weekends working for my dad, hauling rolls of textiles up to the third floor, and helping to lay down hundreds of layers of cloth on the long cutting table, to be cut into the pattern pieces for the stretchy slacks and ski jackets that were the mainstay of the business.
In 1982, upon my dad's retirement, I took over the second floor space where Bill Grigsby and I started Reactor Art + Design. I was Reactor's creative director for 13 years until 1995 when I decided to pursue life as a freelance designer/art director/illustrator. Through up-sizing and down-sizing, Reactor was a tenant in the building for over 30 years until it was sold in 2014.
Top photo: sometime in the 1990s.
Bottom photo taken June 25, 2015
Apr 18, 2015
ADIM 15 - Shakespeare Upon the Sea
I've been attending Russell Brown's ADIM Conference for many years, and always find it energizing and inspiring. Each year there is a theme, and the class of 75 or so art directors, designers, illustrators and photographers is given a project to complete in three days. The projects often employ cutting-edge output options like lenticular printing, computer-assisted embroidery, fabric printing and laser cutting and engraving.
This year's theme was Shakespeare Upon the Sea, and the project was to design a six page book (printed on an amazing Epson large-format printer) and a laser-engraved and cut wooden cover/case. I chose to continue with the theme I'd started with the "Complete Plays of William Shakespeare" type poster that Russell asked me to design for the event, and created a book of selected quotes from the plays, with each quote rendered in a different font and accompanied by an appropriate image.
Below is a photo of the laser-cut and engraved wooden cover. Click to view a PDF of the interior pages.
Apr 6, 2015
The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare
A type-chart style poster featuring all of William Shakespeare's plays, using 33 different fonts.
Designed for Russell Brown's ADIM 15 conference taking place April 12-15 in Pacific Grove, CA.
This year's theme is "Shakespeare Upon the Sea".
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