I’m still in love with Cynthia Warren’s menus, which I emailed them to submit to the site!

Very useful if you’re a freelancer, and even if you don’t work for yourself, there are some really useful little bits of advice that are relevant no matter your job, and they’re just made more interesting (and credible) by the fact that they were given by people who have successfully gone solo.

So, I decided to share all of it with you (or at least, a lot of it). His brand identity and graphic design work is just so spot on. Classic and authentic looking, like the brands could have been around for decades, and yet unique and interesting. And he seems to have a lot of the same obsessions that I do… things that look like old tickets, twine, airmail envelopes, ampersands, luggage tags…

Here are a few of his poster designs…

Oh! And he has a project in his porftolio called Fairly Well Made Co.– clearly a play on Best Made Co., the axe brand that I developed a serious fascination and love/hate relationship with– that makes scythes instead of axes and is hilarious. Here it is:

[And here, here, and here are past posts on Best Made Co if you missed them.]

Check out the gallery for lots more work…

PS- AND, he lives in Atlanta!  Atl represent!

They all have a wonderful handmade and/or cheeky slant to them and are a far cry from the cheesy e-greetings you may be recalling from 1999 when people first got into the idea of e-cards. Click here to send your own e-Valentine’s!

Here are a few of my favorites this year…

Valentine’s at top are by Julia Rothman and Alice Lam.

Here’s what Tezak says about the project:

“Lately I’ve been working a lot with icons. Trying to capture the essence of an object or idea with only a few lines and at the same time maintaining its elegance is pretty much design in a nutshell. That’s what is so great about icons, they’re tiny poems. I decided it would be a fun project to attempt to sum up some of my favorite books, movies, historical events, anything, with just four icons; the meat and potatoes.”

All of that to say, I think this new project called 50 and 50, where a graphic designer from each state will illustrate their state’s motto, creating a “designers’ atlas,” may be my ticket to finally at least mastering our own 50 states.

So far, there are only six finished, but they are pretty enough that I spent time checking out each one, and if something is visually interesting, I have a far better chance of learning it…

PS- Did you know that California’s state motto is “I have found it! (Eureka)”? How awesome and (so California) is that? All of the other ones sound very formal and heavily wrought and then there’s California’s. And incidentally, as a California transplant, I talk almost every day about how I feel like I’ve discovered the best place on earth, so I can see why CA’s state motto-authors were unable to write anything other than something simply reflecting their joy at having found this state.

Not to mention the most well-styled and art-directed skateboarding short I’ve ever seen and an interview with Banksy…