I missed posting one for 2024, but alas it was a bit of a strange year for the design of the website (went a little maximalist for a while there), back to clean lines that have defined this site for 7 years (?!) now.

Also my first view of a Zamboni.

First hockey experience in Canada. I know long time coming but worth it.

I just got back from New York and still letting the whole experience unpack itself out of my brain. I’ve flown into Newark airport countless times but we would then head in the other direction towards Princeton. This time was different, we landed in Newark and headed east. As we approached the Manhattan Island, the landscape was a very familiar American highways construction. Looping freeways, lawyer billboards hugged the edges of the roads. The road twisted inbetween trees, that felt different to the ones we have in Canada, these were shorter in stature.

The first real signs of what was to come unveiled itself as we took the bend just before entering the Lincoln tunnel. I caught a glimpse of Bjarke Ingel’s VIA 57 West building (I had no idea what the thing was called but knew of the building). What I didn’t realise was that I was also looking at Hell’s Kitchen¹. The view lasted a split second. I tried to grab my phone and take a pick, but the moment was over as we quickly turned into the Lincoln tunnel.

When we emerged on the other side, the transition to a startling density came almost instantly. Looking outside the car window it took my eyes a little while to fully grasp what we were driving through. A hyper dense city where every block is fully occupied by a building structure from edge to edge. In front of the buildings a slender pavement wraps around the structure. The biggest shock however was the limited space between the roads. The streets could barely fit one car down the centre, with another car width on either side for drop offs and pick ups - or as was exceedingly common, construction.

As we made our way through the chaos, the logistics of making this place function in a reasonable manner began to present themselves in real time. Life here would require an understanding of consequences and compromises. We were instantly given a demonstration. Traffic was bumper to bumper, blocked on all sides. And then an ambulance siren was heard behind us. There was literally nowhere to go. Intersection crossings had to be respected but there was no flexibility to allow emergency vehicles to pass.

The Grid

What totally captured my imagination was the grid. Not only the audacity to create something like this, but also the ability to implement and maintain this grid. It created a space unlike anything I have ever seen. My mind has accepted that cities were messy, organic constructions. Roads wind around as we built things sometimes around the natural world that existed. Sometimes we would tame the land to suit our very specific needs. The common element was that there was no consistent order within them.

Here however was an island that seemed completely flat and where there was a complete embodiment of a grid that was then turned up to the max by building straight up. I have lived in dense areas in my life, but this order to density to scale was a unique combination.

Someone had to wrangle this defining city element into existence. I had to find out more. Thankfully The Museum of the City of New York has collected all this information to celebrate and educate on this very unique city design aspect.

General Observations

• Another defining element of what I imagined New York to be are all the elements that define a city. The yellow cabs were still there, but they did not occupy the same vibrancy I had previously imagined.
• The entrances to the subway stations were inconspicuous, and was missing it’s own identity. Unlike the Metros in Europe there was no unifying sign that invited you in and announced itself. Rather New York has green railing with signs attached to the railings. To my mind this was a missed opportunity.
• New York is a very live musical city. In the lobby of the hotel, on the short cruise boat that took us around, across Broadway avenue leading up to Time Square. Live music was everywhere.
• It’s very difficult to truly appreciate massive structures from up close. So in NY your viewing angles are limited.
• The body traffic was something I had not experienced since I was last in Asia.
• Walking north/south (so crossing streets) became a little annoying. It felt like I was always walking and hitting a red light. Every. Single. Time. Maybe that’s just being in New York for the first time and it feels like that for everyone?
• Its hard to explain, but this density and complete use of every portion of the available grid made it feel less real, made it feel like a theme park.
• There was a little bit of self-importance on display by the locals. ‘Greatest City on Earth’. ‘Mega exclusive club’. ‘Insanely expensive apartment’. This is the kind of language that I have experienced in nearly every city I have been to (apart from the greatest city on earth moniker, that is reserved for American arrogance).

The last time I bought Field Notes was 7 years ago. While I’ve been stocked up nicely, I have been hankering for a restock for a while. Should be good for another 2 years. See you in 2026.

I mean honestly, look at those colours.

It continues.

It’s begun.

Finally getting back to writing about the built environment.

The perfect scoop. Lemon meringue from Zuzus.

Last days of summer.

Summer in Ontario.

3 min from our house.

Power outage map for Toronto today was insane.

Not a bad way to start my Sunday.

Humidity brings out the best clouds.

Absolutely love the colours in Friday. There is a quiet elegance to the palette used that suits the story perfectly.

🪁 Kite flying.

Somehow, 6,666.

Today was all about the spring asparagus risotto.

Wish I had something like this growing up!

All the flowers.

I may have gone a little bit overboard at the library this week, but OMG, I am absolutely loving this!

Took 6 kids to the library and got them all excited about books. One of my favourite Saturday evenings in a long time.

I have two setups. One for the workweek and one for the weekend.

Action shot!

An easy example of what makes me in awe of the work of BWS. His narratives however are harder to align with (sometimes).

First signs of spring are beginning to sprout.

A Flag for Me

Emigrant: a person who leaves their own country in order to settle permanently in another.

This particular image of Pangea¹ image made the rounds over a decade ago and has always stuck with me as a powerful idea given form. A world that is seemingly freed from natural borders. Squint a little and you can almost completely imagine the manmade borders blending away into nothingness. This is the world that I wished existed with respect to allowing people a way to roam and discover and make better lives for themselves.

When everything is interconnected, there is no possible way for you to be able to patrol or even try and control borders. It would be a completely useless exercise, in the way that Europe discovered back in 2015.

How would this world have developed differently with these new proximities and new borders. Imagine having the opportunity to travel across Pangea. What an incredible tapestry of human discovery that would allow. Then imagine the connectivity that would be possible. Would the world feel smaller or larger? Would we feel more connected or distant to each other?

At this moment in our collective existence, Earth does not resemble Pangea. Earth is separated by oceans, rivers and mountains. Humanity broke through these barriers, first across the sea and then in the air. Sadly humanity then decided to build other barriers in their place. First in the form of barricades walls and more recently in the form of paperwork and immigration laws.

To create a sense of unity for a collection of people, boundaries were drawn on a map and a flag is drawn high in the air to help those feel further connected. It’s a strong and emotive piece of design that connects a culture and represents ideologies and shared histories. People rally around the flag because it helps them visualise something otherwise nebulous and difficult to explain. Us. This flag represents Us, not them.

As I have travelled the world, I have tried to experience Pangea in my own way. It’s seemingly not as smooth if all the bodies of water were connected but I have been allowed to roam. In that movement I have strayed increasingly further away from the flags (and cultures) of my childhood. For a while I hoped to adopt a flag from any one of the countries I have lived in, only to realise that this was ultimately a futile effort. As my time in each country drew to an end so did the flags glow in my life.

For years I have wanted a flag to rally around that I can take with me wherever I went. A flag for emigrants like myself. During the last decade, a couple of new flag designs have been released to great fanfare that ultimately did not fulfil this gap for me.

The Refugee Nation Flag

When it was released a few years ago, I thought that the refugee flag perfectly captured the essence of something that anyone escaping their country on a boat would forever relate to. Clearly however this particular flag was not something that really represented my pampered emigration lifestyle.

As much as I love this design and what it means, it is not my flag.

The International Flag of Planet Earth (IFPE)

I was excited for a while to see the International Flag for Planet Earth making the rounds several years ago. However the purpose of the flag, while novel and awesome, addressed a purpose I was not looking for. This is for a future Star Trek world that has moved beyond some of the very basic issues that we are currently grappling with back here on Earth.

I love the deep blue colour. The symbology in the middle however is a little lost on me. It’s not emotive enough to capture my imagination (in say the same way that the Olympic rings definitely do, although I certainly prefer the monochrome rings rather than the original coloured version).

This flag was also something that didn’t address my needs either.

The Flag of Pangea

From my own perspective, I have settled on the fact that I am a proud serial emigrant. A subtle nuance that likely nobody really cares about but one that I am more than happy to make and shout about.

And so, I challenged myself to create a flag that represents people like me. People who look to break through both natural and manmade boundaries and barriers that have been erected. A flag that represents people that move from one country boundary to the next. A flag that represents emigrants and those travelling the world as though it were Pangea.

This flag is not intended for a state with borders. This flag is meant to be flown by those of us who travel the Earth, emigrating from one place to another.

What does the flag stand for?

The flag itself is represented by 3 specific design elements:

1. The Colour
2. The Compass
3. The Angle

The Colour Blue

The colour blue signifies freedom. The freedom to move and the freedom to travel across the world.

The colour blue also signifies our planet. It signifies the blue seas and blue skies of travel that allow you to make significant moves as an emigrant.

Going for a blue colour was not a difficult decision. While I did play around with a few colour ideas, the only question in my mind was what shade of blue I would decide upon. I did consider playing around with gradients, but that would likely break a few vexillological rules. It’s not the first blue coloured flag in the world, and certainly not the first with white accents on it. I did flirt with the idea of having it a darker blue but felt it gave off too much of a Scotland vibe which is not what I was looking for.

In the end I decided to concentrate on the colours that calms me the most. The blue you see on a clear day. Not a cloud in the sky. The future beckoning you to explore the world that you live in.

The Compass

The pointed cross symbolises the 4 points on a compass, North, East, South and West, signifying the ability to choose your path and overall destinations.

An important consideration for the design was replicating iconic flags like the Swiss flag. It has a design element that is bold, strong and easy to identify from far away. Contrast plays an important role in helping define the design. The key element on the flag went through several iterations. Originally I was considering using a circle to identify the Earth itself with the angle (more on this in a bit) creating an interesting juxtaposition of shapes and colours.

The issue was this it just was not iconic in any way. It did not offer the same level of contrast. I quickly settled onto adding a compass element. Testing this out with an 8 point star, this felt busy. Keeping it to 4 points felt right, but at the same time, too simple. It did not bring with it enough of a story. This is where I combined the best of the original ideas with the new compass element and put the compass at an angle (I promise I’m getting there).

The final piece was moving away from an abstract compass, into something that was a little more explicit. Adding the internal elements of a compass was something that was subtle enough but provided the right amount of character to make it crystal clear what the design was representing.

The final piece of the puzzle was deciding on the size of the compass itself. My original thought was to split the entire flag in half, thus accentuating the angle itself. Making this smaller looked better, as it better expressed that the world can stretch in all directions.

23.4°

How do you encompass everyone on the planet and their cultures that differ to vastly? By including a 23.4° angle. This angle mirrors the Earth’s axial tilt. One of the most important elements of science in our world that gives us our seasons and many (most?) of our cultural ideas. The angle is a celebration of our Earth and importantly the culture that we have created based on the gifts that it has provided.

Use and Licenses

Ultimately I want this symbol to be used by a community of Emigrants, like myself. I imagine a time when I will be able to offer physical representations of this design that can be used proudly.

My intention is to release this under a Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

I will be sharing all the files soon with a set of ways to use it proudly and spark the conversation.

My ultimate wish is that maybe sometime in the future we can live in a world that while does not represent Pangea physically, at least is open for people to travel freely. A place that represents the ideals of this flag. A place where I can finally answer the question, ‘Where are you from?’, with the simple answer, ‘I’m from here. I’m from Earth.’

The best camera is the one you have on you.

Slow evolution of the flag. I put this one through the kids filter and seeing the compass was an important distinction that it just clicked (while the previous abstract version did not).

Working on something that’s been on my mind for years now.

Using the Astropad setup for the first time. One of the nice things is that there is an element of natural wriggle in the line. It is different.

Moon Racket! February 2024.

Working on the February strip. I am looking to add some backgrounds, so will try a few options to see what some regular elements might be.

Cooking points unlocked. Took me all week.

Meal prep for the week. I’m really loving creating a whole slew of dishes and sneaking a few portions as food for another time. The freezer has 4 different dishes ready to go. This is No.5 and I have another veggie dish tomorrow (soaking the lentils today).

Ready Chef!

There was diligence to his method, which resulted in a pretty uniform shaped sphere.

Testing digital inking only.

It’s been a while since I last played.

I think those geniuses at IKEA have finally cracked the loose tea steeper puzzle. How to make one that does not suck and is easy to clean. But wait, there’s more. The website reveals that it also it acts as a drip catcher! $3.99 (Canadian) for 2.

N.Cortolezzis & R.Giesen please take a bow. Well done.

First strip in 6 years maybe? Experimenting with a bunch of stuff at the moment, including hand lettering.

Trying something different. Digital ink. A completely stress free way of moving from my pencils into the final piece. Sure something might be lost, but actually a whole lot more is gained.

I wrote this introduction while in Tampa this summer and its great to finally share it because it captures my thoughts on this world I’ve created.

Moon Racket! is the story of two buddies living on the moon, making noise and eating cheese. It is also the story of my attempts at learning how to draw and write a comic series.

Comics as a medium has been a passion of mine since my early teens. Sadly I never really got around to the actual act of writing and drawing comics, rather spent time circling around the activity itself. And so it was that all of my previous attempts never amounted to any completed comic work - save a four page story for a Guardian/Observer newspaper comic competition called Coffee Beans. To help me fight through this inherent procrastination, the barrier for Moon Racket! was purposely set very low. The result was that for nearly a decade this world and it’s characters would be my main creative outlet. But lets start at the beginning.

At the start of 2010, I had a serious case of brain crack. Brain crack is a term coined by CGP Grey in an episode of the excellent podcast, Hello Internet, ‘…the longer we procrastinate on something we want to do, the more our brains build up expectations of how amazing it’s going to be. It’s like crack for your brain’. The project was based on an idea I had, after a hazy summer evening out in Athens when I was 21. I couldn’t let this idea go but I also couldn’t move it forward in a meaningful way either. Two events would enable me to break my brain free and allowed me to create my first real body of comic work.

Throughout the 2000s, my creative adventures had been spent developing and honing my web and graphic design skills. I had started life on the internet to help me publish my comic work, the issue was that I fell in love with the web itself. The web combined a lot of what I loved about comics in the first place, but in a vastly different format. The web in the early 2000s was an exciting place. I swam in this space for years until the internet landscape changed (which I attribute to Twitter and Facebook) and it stopped being exciting. Another piece of technology would also come out around this time that offered another creative avenue to explore, the iPhone. With the introduction of the iPhone 4, what was possible on this mini computer in your pocket was starting to expand. I decided that I would try and use this this $880 (the going rate with taxes) device to create a comic, each panel would be the size of the phone screen. While the idea was well conceived, it was beyond ambitious.

This entire series of characters was borne from a few images drawn on an iPhone 4 back in 2012. These were done using the crudest of styluses available at the time, which was a thin aluminium tube with a soft sponge attached to the end of it. The key elements of Corgan were there, the booties, long eyes and circles at all the joints. As I drew these characters, their world started to come into view for me. They lived on the moon. The moon was ostensibly made of cheese (and that would never run out of course). After realising that the little moon worm I had drawn was an organic being, he would need some form of air bubble around him to breathe (please don’t argue with my logic, it’s fragile). Very quickly however I hit technological limits. The combination of the crude stylus, the tiny screen and the poor feedback they both provided (when compared to my trusted Muji 0.38mm blank ink pen and Midori paper notebooks), would mean that I would stop this experiment early on. I count the experiment as a success, because it allowed me to create a new world to get lost in and finally shifted my attention to something different, setting my brain free.

In the early 2010s, my life was transitioning from being a single man, to a fiancé, then husband and finally a father. I was living in the Middle East during this time, which was also going through its own transition as a region, as part of the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring started of as a series of anti-government protests and uprisings that started off in Tunisia and would quickly spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Nearly a decade late, the chars of that movement are being felt in Syria which erupted into a civil war shortly after. I felt powerless to stop the strong humanitarian disaster that was unfolding around me, culminating in the image of Alan Kurdi washed up on the shore. An image which still haunts me to this day. My brain would retreat and search for a creative outlet to help me manage through this time.

I can’t even remember how or why I would end up calling the entire series Moon Racket!. What I do remember is that the form of logo was crystal clear in my head once I had settled on the name. From this word mark, I originally intended for the series to be filled with onomatopoeia (which is the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named). I don’t think it happened as often as I would have wanted, but that is certainly something I am looking to lean into more in the future.

Many decisions, that defined the Moon Racket! world would also arrive in a completely organic manner. It felt appropriate that the technology used throughout the series would be locked in the 1980s, while the architecture that was on display would be of the future. Strangely (even to me), the Moon and surrounding planets are characters themselves, complete with eyes, arms and hands.

In developing the the style of art, I went off what I felt looked right, a tactic laced with struggle and self doubt. It took a while to kick my propensity of cross-hatching and tried to create a vernacular that was is my own continues. Having never previously really spent any time developing a dynamic cartoony style of art before, the art would evolve the more I drew. My annoying perfectionism would take a back seat as I kept reminding myself that nobody was paying any attention, so it didn’t really matter. Keep moving. Keep drawing one strip after the other.

Even though he was the basis of the entire series, I struggled a great deal with the design of the Corgan character. In developing the shape of his body I would struggle with shape and form. I would keep adding new elements to his body, but would never feel truly comfortable in his depiction, until recently. By contrast Corgan’s third iteration, which has arrived years after I stopped drawing him in the manner he is presented in the this volume, now practically draws himself and rolls off my pencil.

Unsurprisingly the characters and this world, never really took off beyond a limited number of readers. This was expected, considering it would take me over a year to write and draw 20 strips. I didn’t publish nearly enough to build a habit with anyone, but mainly with myself. I ran out of energy, as things in my professional life started to take over and I need to focus a lot more on that side of my life. I decided to put the series on hiatus and capped it creatively, published in March 2017, with a movie poster style image capturing all the characters. The characters would come out of retirement briefly in 2021. I finally was able to fulfil my original vision of creating these on an electronic device. This time it was a 12.9” iPad Pro with an actual stylus (the Apple pencil). After I finally learnt how to draw and colour these characters, I ended up taking an extended break from them.

I could not imagine that these characters would stay with me as long as they have, but maybe that is down to the fact that I have not said all that I wanted to say. The next evolution of the Moon Racket! world is not in the artwork, rather it will be found in the type of topics that I would like to discuss. In defining the direction I want to take these characters in, I am reminded of my mother’s admiration for the political fables presented in Kalīla wa-Dimna, and using it as inspiration for future stories.

For now however, it feels good that the original groundwork for these characters and their world is collected in a single place.

Moon Racket! Ambient Hum is available to buy as a paperback.

Buy the paperback on Amazon ➔

The project for 2023 was the Moon Racket! collection, Ambient Hum. This one has been long in production. It’s nice to have a single place with all these stories collected.

Things have to move around a little once the final trade dress constraints come in. Book has been ready for several months, but needed to get this cover sorted first. Now time to pull it all together.

The cover is finally done! Lots to talk about, but just super happy that all the pieces of the book are now complete.

Trade dress coming along…

Cover is coming together.

So Zane did this yesterday and I am absolutely floored by what he’s created! The thing I am most impressed by is the storytelling. An essential part to any comic narrative and he’s done so well here.

First proper trick or treating since Dubai?!

Love this photo!

Lock Screen for autumn 2023.

Let the festivities begin.

I’ve been on a serious food nostalgia trip this weekend. Made Lebanese rice pudding. The only missing ingredient was mastic (which I’m sure I can find somewhere in Toronto, just haven’t found the place yet).

When shit gets bad, I tend to fall back onto these characters for support. The process is key.

Spanakopita turned out pretty good.

Saturday afternoon studio.

Ah, Le Beau!

Over the last year I have really leaned into the Pentel Energel as my go to pen of choice. As was inevitable, I started looking around to see the best option for a machined pen for this refill. The 36 Click Pen by Autmog is that pen (when Brian makes it into a 0.5mm version), but getting something bespoke for this refill on such an elegant looking pen has now gone top of my list.

Summer is nearly and truly over.

I’m really loving how these chapter break pages came together for the Moon Racket! collection. I have been struggling with how to make these pages more visually interesting.

I tried using inverted images, but they just looked odd. Sometimes an idea just pops into your head and it just works.

The most Toronto picture I could take.

Ordered the copy today. The cover needs to be sorted but great to see 120 pages of Moon Racket! loveliness coming together.

It’s a Moon Racket! kinda morning.

My America haul so far.

Alright. Found my Florida DIPA. Smooth, with the right amount of kick at the end.

Someone from Florida has to explain this to me. What’s the deal with the scales as you enter and leave a supermarket?

That’s what I’m talking about.

Editing mode.

Been practicing my chess using the wonderful Chessmate. It’s like the iA Writer of chess games.

It’s photos like this that make me lament not having a better camera on me. I am ‘due’ an upgrade this year as I’m on an iPhone 11.

But weirdly I don’t give a shit about the app ecosystem anymore. What I actually care about is whether I can get the best camera. Is that an iPhone Pro or is it a Sony something something…

Present from Peter and Carlos.

Two little dudes.

Basil grown by the kids. Oh yeah.

Hello old friend.

Mclaren are now into the scooter business? For $2000…steep for my liking, but it does look pretty good.

The Family Crest. My favourite ‘new’ band. A ‘new’ band being anything I discovered and loved post 1999.

Too much juice in the glazing. Top tip next time is drizzle it in slowly.

Sunday evening Pimms. Can totally get used to that.

Father’s Day banana bread.

Patio coffee time.

The editing process begins.

Feeling inspired to revisit these characters. I’ve not drawn them in years.

I’ve always loved the sentiment.

Trying to explain the concept to the kids was fun.

Tuna samich on a ridiculously fresh baguette.

TCAF 2023. Soo packed. Can’t say it was an elegant experience (not that I was expecting one), but hoped for a little bit more…space. Having said that the Toronto Reference Library is a good venue, just too many people.

Really looking forward to my first TCAF this weekend.

Cluny at the Distillery District. Wonderful ambiance. Food was decidedly meh. Post pandemic I am increasingly more critical about restaurant food.

First signs.

🍕 Pizza night tonight. Nailed it!

Totally inspired by Mendo’s post, finished off the KAA typeface and did a little comic about it.

Its taken a really long time but very nearly there with KAA-regular (and KAA-bold).

Bye bye Florida.

An advise / idea for comic artists: make your handwriting and font.
I created my own font family based in my handwriting, with the invaluable help of Type-ø-tones heroes Laura Meseguer and Josema Urós. Some of you had already spotted the typeface use in my comics and asked, so here’s your answer.

Wonderful post and idea. I would also add that you can do this yourself (I’m using ifontmaker on the iPad) but it takes time.

Something is very, very different with these beans. Good times ahead.

Working on something…

By far one of the most awesome displays at the match was the black and white flags from the Newcastle United fans.

The kids absolutely loved it. Zane as the mega fan was soo happy.

Kids going tobogganing for the first time.

Toronto by night.

The boys had their first concert.

This one is a little late but there is a story there.

I knew I needed to have something ready to go for this year. A way to track my No-S Diet and also how often I worked on all things Stet.Build. The aim being to rebuild habits that I developed several years ago and that have no fallen away from me because relocating your life to a whole new country is major disruption.

I did most of the design work, but then lost steam when I bought a bunch of calendars from Muji. My thought process was that I won’t need this particular calendar anymore. The Muji ones were more than enough. And yet I found out that they were not enough. They allow me to see the month, but this Actions Calendar gives me so much more information and appreciation of my goals across 12 months.

Available in 2 printer friendly configurations. The Letter edition (for all the North Americans) and the A4 edition (for the rest of the world?). I’ve included a small ‘manual’ in there to describe the design decisions behind the calendar.

I’m also using Gumroad to distribute all things digital come from the site.

Download 2023 Actions Calendar ➔

So I ended up buying Toot! This little detail highlighting interactions is wonderful. If you replied and if you got replies. I honestly can’t wait to see what the developer community creates in the social space over the coming years.

The new Sony Walkman music player looks amazing. Digital music has somewhat ruined my appreciation of albums. Maybe a dedicated player would help me on the road to recovery - music was always such a big part of my life, much less so for the last decade.

Some weird-ass sculptures here in Toronto. Ah-thank-you. I’m here all week.

It’s been soo damn long that something in the theatre space has gotten through to me, but this Elephant and Piggie play is right up my alley. The Mo Willems books have been a revalation. Zane does the reading, with Ryan following intently along. And they both can’t stop laughing.

About to embark on some classic Miyazaki.

Love the humour in the Civivi lifetime warranty.

🎄End of the day detox.

Greektown.

First update to the monogram in 5 years.

Christmas mug is out.

First time out with the winter boots. Novelty I’m sure will wear off, but there is something serene walking around on fresh snow. Love the quiet crunch.

Its coming back after a 4 year hiatus.

I totally procrastinated about getting a gooseneck kettle. Big mistake. Along with the scales an essential tool in your coffee making arsenal.

Gifts from our awesome new landlords. Amazing.

🍁 All the colours.

I’m sure others share the same frustration.

📚 Currently reading Craft Coffee: a Manual by Jessica Easto. I typically hate books on cooking (cooking via YouTube is game changing), but this page on coffee harvest times showed it was going to be an education.

The Stuart & Lau Cary Briefcase single is a real beauty. The only ding against it is that is leans on the larger side.

⚾️ Softball in the park. At some point it will feel normal, for now it feels incredibly quaint.

First burger in Toronto. Seriously excellent. Gonna definitely try all the different options.

Read the plaque.

Toronto does murals really well. Much more inviting than random rubbish graffiti.

Lamb burger topped with tzatziki, spinach, tomato & onions.

First purchase in Canada.
You do not go to The Beguiling and leave empty handed. No you do not.

Ryan’s attention to detail does not fail to surprise me, “Daddy, why is there a sign for girls, boys and grandmothers?”

Easily the most American thing I have ever seen 😂.

Since my digital detox from 2 years ago, I have been looking for a good source of ‘news’. Most news websites don’t offer the type of coverage that I crave and never in the form that I want it. I subscribed to The Economist for a few months but the regularity meant I could read nothing more. What I wanted was a dense version published less frequently that let me get into a specific topic more than superficially. Turns out form factor and package matters.

Yesterday we went to a bookstore. In this post pandemic world that is a novelty and something many members of the my family have not done. It wasn’t the largest bookstore I have been to but it was several orders bigger than anything in Copenhagen. I unabashedly fell in love. I could have spent the whole day there.

Because of our imminent move to Canada, I refrained from buying more than a single paperback tome of American Affairs, and with it I think I have found my source of ‘news’ and commentary in a vessel that I can absolutely get behind. Put together like a novel, the ‘magazine’ is 99.5% text (with the occasional graph or image). The articles are dense and let you delve into the subject. The paper is emasculate. The cover stock is sublime. The typography outstanding.

Best of all, it’s quarterly. One of the instant subscriptions when I get a permanent place in Canada.

Summertime.

Easily one of my favourite little packages this trip. It’s small. It’s memorable. And it’s a little bit of Americana in a pencil shaped tube.

Turned out really good. The ingredients in North America are a little different to what we got in Europe (which is to be expected). Spices are great. Coconut milk is great. Chicken is great. Water is not hard in this city either. It all adds up.

‘Florida Man’ IPA by Cigar City Brewing.

The clouds in Florida have been nothing short of spectacular. Coming from a pretty grey city like Copenhagen it’s strange to get excited about clouds (which were the enemy for years).

Being in the U.S. means you have to sample some of the things that are decidedly American. I decided to begin this journey with some American pencils from Musgrave.

Channeling a bit of Pearl Jam.

Last night in a completely empty house. The boys channeling their inner Steve Jobs.

My last To Øl in Denmark.

Dropped off the modem at the store then decided to take a short stroll back to work take in the Danish architecture.

Last days in Copenhagen.

Its not every day that two of my favourite interests are combined, watches and coffee. This Brew Watches Metric Retro has so many awesome details (beyond the coffee bean logo on the dial and case back). Only bad thing is the fact you can’t buy one right now.

Totally missed the Bellroy range of sling & cross-body bags. For years I have mainly relied on my Ona camera bag. While I like it, I know there is a better option. Can easily see myself with a couple of size options.

Several years in the making. Super excited to finally have some copies in my hand. Will go on sale next week.

Seems fitting to be leaving Canada while listening to the new Arcade Fire album.

Gonna miss this little guy, can’t see us needing/taking this to Toronto.

Issue 061 of my newsletter In Abeyance is now out. Been on a roll with the new format and schedule and have been enjoying the diversity of topics I’m covering.

First spotted blossoms of the year.

Love this graphic on languages.

First Greek style Xoriatiki I’ve ever made. 5 ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt & olive oil). Baking it was different (in a pot and lid).

A follow-up on my presentation, another great indie typographer that I love and follow is Mika Melvas. Today he dropped a wonderful sans serif typeface, Nietos. I have used Melvas' work on Stet (notably when you sign up to the newsletter).

The full version of issue 053 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, Extreme Environmental Design. This one was actually meant to be published in The Prepared newsletter (this one didn’t quite fit), but I really enjoyed how this came out.

🍿 Just finished watching Turning Red. We’ve not had a family movie in a good long while. This was excellent in that it was completely different to just about every Pixar movie before it, in the best possible way.

Issue 053 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out. No link to the issue yet (but you can sign up), because I am doing something a little bit different with how I publish things going forward (which I need to write about).

All the colour palettes I’ve used for my newsletter In Abeyance along with the latest colour for 2022.

You can grab a freshly minted copy of my first book the Built Environment Compendium Vol.01. If you are actively curious about the built environment, this book is for you.

I’ve written about how the idea behind Stet.Build came to me. I quickly set about developing the ideas on my study wall. Never shared this photo but easily one of my favourite exercises when brain storming. In the top right hand corner you can see the original sketch for what I wanted the covers to look like. Also its interesting to see my thoughts on pricing which have evolved since then.

The last year has been all about editing and polishing the script and thankfully had Mike Summers, who was the perfect editor, because he cares about the English languages and its nuances. He pushed and he prodded. He questioned and he commented. We did it all using Pages. Technology has evolved to remove incredible amounts of friction and this has been a perfect example of this. Right there baked into my phone and iPad.

Buy the digital edition of the BEC Vol.01

Creating a book for the digital age brings with it a different set of parameters to consider. The book cover is no longer a tall rectangle. Feeling good about the final book. Woo!

For prosperity. My Wordle stats for an entire month of play. Had created a bookmark on my Home Screen, which now doesn’t fully work because of the redirect to the New York Times website.

This weekend was centred around food. Cooked the kids souvlaki yesterday (home made pita, tzatziki and beefteki). A vegan sweet potato pie (which was excellent) and then topped off with an Aloo Gobi.

☕️ All this for a cup of coffee…

Symmetry.

A ‘postcard’ of all the covers from my newsletter In Abeyance for 2021. Complete archive of all 52 issues can be found here.

Issue 052 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, ‘White Elephants’. This is the second from last major thing I wanted to get done this holiday. This is also the last issue that uses the orange colour as we move onto the lime green for 2022.

I’m not going to lie this thing turned out great. The secret (that I have somewhat avoided, unconsciously) is sesame oil in the chicken marinade. The only ingredient I was missing was some broccoli. Next time for sure.

As has become a bit of a tradition on this site, slightly new colour scheme for 2022. I’ve now settled on my sensible default backgrounds and in the future will look to only change the accent colours. For 2022 I’ve gone for lime green.

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

Every 2 years I crack open a new Nanami Cafe Note. 2021 has not been great year for the daily journaling practice. Am determined to rekindle this in 2022. Hobonichi calls their planners ‘Lifebooks’. Any book can have this title and everyone should have one.

♟Game on.

Some baking just before Christmas. This thing turned out perfectly. Hats off to Chef Jack - the man has excellent taste in food.

It’s a small change but one that leans into the whole publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere, updated my footer to offer all the options (6 excluding the website) that are currently supported.

It has been years since I designed a completely new website. My toolbox of tricks has remained mostly the same - still using Skeleton, which I absolutely love. What has been fascinating is the scope a modern website now needs to serve. Now you have to effectively design four websites in one - desktop, tablet, mobile and dark mode.

Desktop

Version 2.0 of Stet.Build, which has seen very little love since it was launched 3 years ago, is a huge leap forward. I’m glad I took the time to make this the best it can be. I always recognised this was a major project and this has taken me around 6 months to complete (not full time of course).

The mock-ups were done in Affinity Designer - probably over a decade since I have used a vector app to design a website. For the most part I was able to replicate these. The annoying part was loosing some of the mock-ups half way through the design process due to some random name saving error. Top tip, save your work outside the Affinity system.

One of my favourite features of the new site, is the archive feature. A little bit of javascript and filtering the table like magic.

Mobile

When it came to the mobile version, I left it to serendipity and let the pieces fall. I could have spent a little time on this during the mockup stage, however I think that it worked out well in the end.

Dark Mode

This was (and remains) the biggest hurdle. This issue was that the individual artwork looked completely out of place in its native form with the bright white background. The only way around this is to recreate 51 drawings that are more suited to the darker background. This is going to be a work in progress as it is not a top priority - but will get to it all eventually. Issue 50 shows where I am heading with this.

Coding

Finished the mock ups months ago but needed the space (mentally) to dive into the coding. Certainly rusty, I leant into my constraints. My primary machine is my iPad Pro. I lost my MacBook a couple of years ago, and due to all the Apple laptop keyboard fiasco I never pressed the button. I began coding this on the iPad, but it really was an exercise in misery. Forget what they say, the iPad does not have the versatility for something like web production. Until Apple bring the Dev tools over with Safari, its all counterproductive.

The overall Blot system also made it super easy to work on the site while everything else was live. Probably the best setup for developing a website I have ever worked one. Local files that I save and see the impact direct on the site. Genius implementation.

A fun little logo I worked on last night for the upcoming Micro.blog baked-in newsletter for this site. I’ve been sitting on the kaa-pow name for a while (using it mainly as a username when kaa is not there).

Winter has truly arrived in Denmark. I will say that 2 years in, my body has become accustomed to the cold now - still truly hate the wind when it smacks in your face.

Got my Soundcore Q30s today and you can colour me super impressed. For 1/3 the price of what I paid for my Sony pair, 4 years ago, I get great sound, multiple device connectivity, ANC, an app with all the settings. Insane value. Now I just need the equivalent earbuds.

Sylvane was right. It is pretty easy to make good Asian food. You just need a great teacher (Chef Jack is the man to follow).

My coffee education continues. This time at Impact Roasters, an Ethiopian micro-roaster 10 min from my house…wait what? Kinda annoyed I only found out about this now, but also it is good timing because I can now hopefully appreciate it all the more.

✊ Impact Roasters

First time I carve a pumpkin. Happy Halloween everyone.

🍳 Chef Jack Ovens has become an staple in my house. I love his videos because they are incredibly instructional. This creamy Thai soup transported me to my happy place. I replaced a couple of ingredients (no bean sprouts in the supermarket). Asian comfort food on a Sunday evening.

When you are currently lost for words, might as well upload photos.

After raining all week we finally got some blue skies and a bit of sun. Shame about the wind.

What was meant to be a glorious day out began in abject disaster. A flat tyre. Apparently pretty common on new Babboe bikes as they put thin puncture prone tyres by default. Soo stupid.

Issue 050 of my newsletter In Abeyance is now out. Special issue as it doesn’t dive into a specific topic, rather it provides a loose taxonomy of the built environment and categorises all the articles so far within this taxonomy.

🚲 I believe this makes us officially Danish (even though it’s a Dutch product).

Issue 049 of my newsletter In Abeyance is out, and focuses on biomimicry. This one was harder to write and finish - probably because I have not regained my rhythm since my whole iPad debacle. I also experimented a little bit, veering more on opinion than just facts and analysis.

I have really come to appreciate the Mikkeller brand of beer. Pricey but buttery smooth.

First day of school for Zane. He was so excited to get there and be part of this new world. His younger brother is certainly feeling the absence but as with all things he will learn to get used to it. On the positive he gains more attention from myself and Yasmine.

🖋 Back to school prep.

Perfect day out at the zoo.

Remiseparken.

Issue 048 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is late, a first in the 2½ years of publishing. It’s hard to write when your main and then your backup work machines both fail. This knocked my writing, researching and publishing rhythm off its axis. So I took a month off. This month its all about nuclear power, Olympic beds and Muji horology.

Zane street art.

It took me a year and a half of working at home before I decided to invest bigly in a screen for my desk. Learning from my previous mistake of not buying the largest television screen available (some 6 years ago), I decided to go all out with my latest purchase, the AOC U32P2, a name that flows of the tongue I know. The real estate is incredible. I’m reminded of this classic photo of Steve Jobs in his office. When I first saw it I thought, ‘Don’t care much for everything in this office, but what an incredible size for a screen’.

Sunday morning reading view.

It’s been nearly 2 years without MacOS. iOS has served me reasonably well, although somethings should not be this difficult to do. More importantly my machine is in the shop to get fixed (again!). Brings me to Windows 11. Throughout all of this Windows has remained my work machine. This update looks to make my daily experience that much better.

Random and surprising.

Started working on a typeface based on my handwriting 2 years ago. Its not baked yet - because it really isn’t a priority - but it was fun to remind myself where it stands right now.

The new ‘Reading Ruler’ setting on the Kindle app is a subtle but wonderful addition to a reading app. Wish web browsers had this feature.

Slowly been amassing this beautiful range of freely available printed material across a wide range of subjects.

Issue 047 of In Abeyance is out. This issue is about Brutalism, a subject with seemingly infinite avenues to explore. Also in this issue, Art Gensler and Dieter Rams.

Not sure how this happened, but apparently I have read on my kindle every single week for a little over a year now. This is the kind of metric tracking that I can really get behind - until a couple of weeks ago I had no idea this feature existed. Looking through the log, there were a couple of weeks where I read only once. In fact the 17 day streak is a far cry from my longest streak of 89 consecutive days. That is now clearly in my crosshairs.

Summertime and start to the weekend.

So been looking for some Middle Eastern ingredients (you won’t find much of this stuff at the plethora of local supermarkets). This little shop has saved the day. Pomegranate molasses! Zaatar! Foul Memdamas!

When I set to work on Stet.Build, I knew that this was a longterm project. That the many pieces that I was putting in place would not really find their complete form until many years later.

Now three years later I am edging closer and can finally share some of the very original ideas that got me excited so long ago. The very first book, the Built Environment Compendium Vol.1 is complete and is now ready for pre-ordering. I am still in conversations with my editor for final edits to the text, which should hopefully be done within the month.

This is the first time I use Gumroad and I am actually pretty excited to see what this platform has to offer to digital content creators. Overall I like the simplicity of the platform.

All the greens.

Spring has finally sprung in Denmark. It feels completely overdue but totally welcome.

Can’t wait for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and the other networks to send me some stickers and a handwritten card. Aaaaannny minute now I’m sure. Not that I needed a reason to be on Micro.blog. A wonderful reminder that you are dealing with real people. Thanks @jean and @manton

More WIP details.

It’s been years since I worked on a website design in vector format (why waste my time when I can just code what is in my head). This one is different and needs a little more care and attention.

Been wanting a photo that I can use online for a while now. Thanks to my wife and a lot of patience, have a few that don’t suck.