and on the seventh day…

I was recently asked to design a four-page flyer for the Progressive Jewish Alliance, a social justice organization. It was a project by Erin Tarica, a Jeremiah Fellow at the PJA, about enhancing the meaning of shabbat and social justice work, intended for rabbis and other leaders.

I’m glad I took this project in. It’s been fun working with Erin, it’s interesting material to work with, and it’s been good to learn about this organization. Here’s the shabbat_insert for downloading.

city of san rafael: summer 2008 newsletter

fun with fonts

I discovered this fun font - Antic - while working on a logo…. perfect for this holiday.

cool user interface for print layout - thanks PSPrint

I just received the new summer schedule for classes at Turtle Island Yoga back from the printer – turtleislandyogaschedule2008. Great results, and very reasonably priced, and local! PSPrint in nearby Oakland.

And I LOVE this 3-D front/back image of the card used for approval purposes - couldn’t be clearer in making sure the job’s arranged right, centered, etc. Thank you PSPrint for your groovy user interface!

latest libeskind & buff bikers

I visited the brand new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco yesterday. Nicely done. (So much nicer than Libeskind’s Toronto ROM addition…. what a relief!). Great William Steig collection. And a “yod” room - what a delight! …. they’ve started to get some hebrew letter musical presentations together. Interesting concept. It would be fun to hold an Otiyot Chayyot class in there sometime! (Hebrew letter body movements, loosely based on Tai Chi). I only wish the museum curators would be more careful with their explanations…. with typos in the hebrew/english translation - can’t they find someone (me!) to proofread this stuff?

I’m including another photo here, you might have to look carefully… there was a mostly-nude biking group heading down mission street and into Yerba Buena Gardens…. a kind of surprising scene - as interesting to watch bystanders’ expressions as the bikers…. not sure what point they were trying to make, but as a performance piece, since for me it was an art outing, it was perfect.

shavuot – a new graphic for this holiday, while I work on some Judaica designs

jacques brel is alive and well & living in marin

I just saw the most wonderful performance of Jacques Brel is Alive & Well and Living in Paris at the Marin Theater Company, in Mill Valley. I highly recommend this fantastic production. The singers/actors did a fantastic job of conveying the depth of emotion inherent in Brel’s songs, in virtuoso performances.

Since this is a design-oriented blog, I’ll make a note here about the great graphics the Marin Theater Company uses for the posters - on a very consistent basis, for example, their current season, here. They always have spot-on graphics - both appropriate to the content, and tremendously attractive - these have been an ongoing inspiration. This production took me back to my youth in Toronto, where I was first exposed to this wonderful music – when this music was first introduced to the English-speaking world.

yoga design

I’ve been creating graphics for my local yoga studio, turtle island yoga, for years - and thought I’d include some images here, for example, the recent schedule. And a series of ads I did a while back for Yogi Times.

the successful nature of failure

That’s the surprising title of a new DVD – a film featuring Rabbi Gershon Winkler and Ravi Miriam Maron – whose wrap I had the pleasure of designing very recently. What fun it was to see this for sale at Reb Gershon’s recent teaching at Chochmat Halev, along with his new book, The Judeo-Christian Fiction, which I assisted in preparation for publication on lulu.com, and Miriam’s newest CD…. so much fun to see my work out “there,” in the real world, i.e. outside of my computer monitor and studio walls. Reb Gershon’s teachings and schedule can be found at walkingstick.org, along with his many, many books and CD’s. It’s an honor to be involved in the design and production of Gershon and Miriam’s deeply thoughtful and evocative work.

more images from israel