It's First Thursday!

Hello there!

It's First Thursday and time to get back into a new groove. Although I haven't been in the gallery much these past summer months (our big road trip to San Francisco and the Renegade Craft Fair, working from home so that I can also take care of my baby), with the cool September air signaling the end of summer, I'm eager to return on a more regular basis to my lovely studio and gallery space in Art Central.

Due to the overwhelming success of our recent open call for submissions "Feeling Bookish", I've put together an exhibition of over 40 of the best designs sent in from both professional book designers and our readers at large. The brief was to design a cover that is a self portrait of your life, and as you can see by my design above, it has been a round the clock juggling act between being a new mom and a publisher! (Thanks to Conan O'Brien for the title phrase.)

Please join us this Thursday evening from 5-9pm for this interesting and personal exhibition and other fun activities in Art Central.

Please come by and say hello, we've missed you!

And for all our UPPERCASE friends from near and far, there are some really exciting projects that I'll be announcing in the next week, so please stay tuned to the blog. Not to mention issue 7 of the magazine is off to print this week as well!

All the best,

—Janine

Creative Inc.

I'm happy to be part of the Creative Inc. blog tour organized by Chronicle Books. Co-written by Meg Mateo Ilasco and Joy Cho, Creative Inc. is a guidebook for setting up your own creative enterprise. With a friendly and encouraging voice, the book is a great resource for those just starting out as a freelancer (designer, illustrator, stylist, photographer and other creative fields).

Even if you've been around for a while (like me) you'll find inspiration and motivation to keep forging your own path. One of the toughest things as a freelancer and entrepreneur is to keep positive, keep working, keep striving. It is nice to have mentors such as Meg and Joy in whom you can find such encouragement.

Chronicle Books sent me a review copy and I read it cover to cover this past weekend. It is an excellent companion to Meg's Craft Inc. (Leave a comment and we'll do a draw for a giveaway for the book.)

I follow Joy's blog daily and so it is nice that we get to include her in the upcoming issue of UPPERCASE magazine. In the inaugural article for a new column entitled "Beginnings", Joy graciously found time in her busy schedule to speak with Erin Loechner (Design for Mankind) about how she got her start. It is an informative and entertaining read with even more great tips for creative business.

Please follow along on this virtual book tour:

8/23 Poppy Talk
8/24 Oh Happy Day
8/25 SFGirl By Bay
8/26 Mint Design
8/27 Wit + Delight
8/28 Cathy of California
8/29 Book By Its Cover
8/30 Not Martha
8/31 Frolic
9/01 UPPERCASE
9/02 Craft
9/03 Decor8
9/04 Kris Atomic
9/05 Grain Edit

Feeling Bookish...

I am so impressed! We have received about 60 submissions for the latest open call in which we ask our readers to interpret themselves as a book cover. This was a challenging concept, but you took me up on it and did an amazing job. The majority of them will be published in the forthcoming issue 7 of UPPERCASE magazine (alas, a few people forgot to follow our size requests or otherwise have unpublishable files—please note that when creating work that might be printed, it is important to build the file to the proper specifications: web resolution doesn't work for print. Print = 300dpi).

We invited some very talented professional book designers to participate as well, and I am thrilled with their work. I will be printing out the best of everyone's submissions for an impromptu exhibition in the gallery for the month of September, so please join us this First Thursday for the show!

Vancouver-based artist Andrea Armstrong did a great cover illustration and even made a mockup:

Andrea writes:

I am a picture book. Not too wordy; likes to hang out with kids; colourful but simple. The thing about a picture book is you can read the words quickly, but to get to know the story well, you have to keep coming back to it to spend time with its images.

I am a picture book about a girl and her chickens. The girl is an introvert; she would rather hang out with chickens than real people most of the time. She’s creative – now don’t laugh, but she invents songs to sing to them, and even wrote a poem about them once. She has a favorite chicken, whose name is, in fact, Favorite. And she’s a little bit odd (hello, she’s best friends with chickens and writes poetry for them.)

I am an autobiographical picture book about a girl and her chickens. True story.

There's a nice mix of illustrations, design and typography in the submissions. Great job, everyone!

By the way, check out Andrea's blog for some great depictions of a drawn version of herself interacting in the real world. Love it!

Type Tuesday: Curious and... crazy!

This image was posted on design*sponge so you've likely already seen it making the rounds, but these pencil tip sculptures by Dalton Ghetti are crazy amazing.

Do you know of other artists, designers and craftspeople who work in miniature? Let us know by leaving suggestions and links in the comments—we are compiling ideas for a future issue.

Type Tuesday: "Do Lectures"

The Do Lectures is a non-profit organisation based in West Wales in the UK. The lectures are all about getting a handful of speakers together in one place, in the hope that they may inspire you to go Do something. To give you the tools and the desire to change the things you care about. To raise funds, Anthony Burrill has designed a poster printed using woodblock by Adams of Rye on A1, 100% recycled, colorset paper.

"Once a year we provide a stage, in a tent in a field, down here in a magical part of West Wales, for inspirational people from all over the world to share their ideas, to challenge convention, to rewrite business models, to change entire industries, to invent better ways of doing things for a world with limited resources. These inspirational talks are then filmed and distributed online free to the world. That's what we Do."

Time to renew!

My dear readers,

Now that we have surpassed our first year, one of the regular tasks of running the magazine is keeping up with subscription renewals. It is really vital that the magazine keeps its subscriber base strong; the hard costs of printing, distribution and mailing are supported by our amazing subscribers. We also pay our regular contributors, illustrators and photographers honorariums for their submissions. Not to mention rent, promotions and advertising costs! It all adds up to be quite an expensive production.

I'm confident that you will see the value in each quarterly issue; everyone involved really provides their very best work each and every time. The funny thing about creating such a high quality production is that sometimes people assume that it is funded and created by some lavish publishing empire. In fact, I am the only full time person involved: as publisher, editor, art director/designer, marketer, distributor and more, I am fully dedicated to making the magazine a sustainable publication.

Vital members of the team are editor-at-large Deidre Martin and subscription/shop manager Jenny Tzanakos. My husband Glen is also taking on more roles as the magazine grows. I am so grateful for all their hard work.

I have just sent off renewal invoices to those whose subscription ended with issue 6. In an attempt to find a more effective and streamlined method of renewal, I have sent these notices as Paypal invoices. In the past, I have sent off reminder emails, but the response rate hasn't always been great since folks forget to go to the online shop or lose the email in their full inboxes. With an invoice, you just have to click and respond to the one message. The other benefit is that we pay less in transaction fees which means that more of the subscription money goes to paying the print bill!

So I hope you don't mind the impersonality of the Paypal renewal method, but please know that I personally see all the renewals and plan on thanking each of you individually for your continued support.

If your subscription has lapsed, you can always renew and catch up with back issues, too!

If you've purchased a single copy or have been curious about the magazine, we invite you to join our family of subscribers.

We love our subscribers and readers and I hope you can see that in every magazine we make. Speaking of which, lucky issue 7 is in the design phase and will be going to print in September. I'll keep you posted of its progress; it's going to be a hearty fall issue! I'm really excited about our cover illustrator, but I'll keep you in suspense a while longer...

again, thank you.

-Janine

Emily and Josh's home

We all love to peek inside other people's homes, don't we? Thanks to Apartment Therapy, we can tour the lovely home of Emily (Orange Beautiful, UPPERCASE stockist) and Josh (Sidedown Audio). Look for a great article about Specimen Products by Josh in issue 7.

Pattern print

I like the quilt-effect of this design by Joe Kievitt available on 20x200.

Studio envy: Jane Foster

I'd love to sew in this bright white space! I love how the fabric colours pop against the whiteness. This is the creative space of UK-based illustrator entrepreneur Jane Foster who excels at retro and Scandinavian-inspired motifs as well as making things with vintage fabrics.

Featured Stockist: Center Diamond Fabrics

I purchased some beautiful fabrics while staying in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Center Diamond Fabrics was an unexpected find—such a luscious selection of fabrics! I will have to photograph my stash and show you all. I was so taken with the shop that I returned a second time to drop off a copy of UPPERCASE magazine. It was mutual admiration and the lovely shop owner Julie bought a selection of the current and back issues right then and there to sell in her shop! So nice.

They have just launched a web store, so you can peruse a selection of their fabrics and notions.