Special stuff on this one ladies and lumbergents! While on our cross country trip this summer we visited Morgan’s Nana’s cabin in the wonderful Fishtail Montana. We made loads of new friends and had awesome adventures. While prowling around on the cabin property I checked out the garage… It was a virtual treasure trove of awesome looking tools. With hungry eyes I snatched em up to immortalize them on the blog. I conferred with Nan and some of these tools belonged to her father, Bopo (dating them back to nearly 1940!). Look at how sturdy all the hatchets are. Check the awesome leafy embellishments on the saws. Behold the magnificent patina nearly 70 years has put on the tools. Get this sucker quick for yer’ desktop. By special request: room for your icons on the right! (You are welcome Mr. Rockwood)

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Hello, long lost friends! David and I have been having a GRAND time seeing the sights in Montana and Seattle…here are the first few days in a nutshell.

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The lumberfolk here at Hatchet Design LLC have decided to take their shop on the road and sow their wild oats on the great plains, tall mountains, and frigid Pacific Oceans of this fair country. We have embarked on a two and a half week excursion into the heartland and out to the opposite coast of our fine shop, working, seeing sights, and experiencing new things to keep us fresh. With an itinerary spanning the entire North American Continent we are sure to encounter many new things and cool ideas. We will post photos and inspiration from the journey here on our blog. STAY TUNED

In an attempt to create some friendly competition between those in Orlando’s creative community, Hatchet Design LLC and Raphsodic Cooperative Company are hosting Central Florida’s First Annual Designer Showdown! If you haven’t already been to Raphsodic, you are in for a treat (no pun intended…OK…you’re right. Totally intended). They are pretty dang rad, and vegan friendly to boot! They state in their vision “We will make “community” our cause, and seek to cultivate it,” and they are definitely a bakery of their word. (more…)

Ahhhhh fresh air.

It was so nice to go to North Carolina and take a little break from the usual. Its funny how my perspective has changed of the place I’ve been going to since I was very young. Since getting into the program in college, I see everything through design goggles. Driving through the mountains makes me wonder where the art of the hand-painted sign has gone? I wonder why we’ve lost the creativity that is required of living a country lifestyle. With all of the flashy neon and sell out advertising, it is nice to go to a place where there is no flash required and loyalty is a priority. It is less about having the newest, fanciest product and more about the relationship and experience of actually getting a product that will do the job just fine. Could I get a good greasy breakfast sandwich in Orlando? Yes. Could I go to a local breakfast joint and watch customers interact with such intimacy? No. Not in these here parts. The difference between here and there is the service, the history, the community, and the people. The simplicity I used to know of the country has now become a complex mecca of design and psychology.

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Last week, I had the privilege of creating some signage for the 2010 Fishtail Family Fun Day parade in Fishtail, Montana. The turn around time was pretty ridiculous (created Thursday night, printed Friday morning, picked up by the Unc on his way into town, and paraded around on Saturday!), but it was definitely worth it. Apparently, in part because of my Aunt’s insane marketing skills, the design will be painted all over the town. Whether it is or not doesn’t quite matter to me, I’m just glad I could be part of Fishtail Fun Day from 2,350 miles away. The sign was proudly displayed on the front of the (legally blind) 82 year old Grand Marshall’s four wheeler and carted down Main Street (in the photo above). Classic.

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This just keeps getting better. I just read article two, and it was just as amazing as the first one. This article was written by Amy Smith, an instructor and founder of D-Lab (Development through dialogue, design, and dissemination) at MIT, who writes about the Fuel from the Fields project. This project aims to find a solution to the need for healthy, renewable fuel that plagues the nearly “2.5 billion people using wood, charcoal, or dung for their cooking and heating needs.” Smith highlights the fact that “the leading cause of death in children between the ages of one and five is not malnutrition, diarrhea, or malaria, but respiratory illness caused in large part by breathing the smoke from indoor cooking fires.” Shocking, isn’t it?

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My wonderful Nana discovered I had a list of books/music I wanted on my Amazon.com Wish List, and she bought me a bunch of it for Christmas. One book didn’t come until a couple of weeks ago, and that was the Design for the Other 90% book I wanted. This book came out of an exhibition by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum of the same name (check it out here). The exhibition brought together designers and engineers from around the world designing for the “5.8 billion people, or 90%, [who] have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted…”
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You know when the first song on an R&B and Soul record starts out with “They call me Big Mama ‘cuz I weigh three hundred pounds,” its gonna be good.

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I love my job…never a dull moment. Yesterday evening David and I went to one of our favorite local joints, Austin’s Coffee, for a bite to eat. Little did we know, we were actually sent from the high heavens upon request from Jackie (owner + barista extraordinaire) to assist in the design for a poster for their I-4 Festival on July 4th. Jackie’s idea, an elephant on a bike, reminded me of the CD cover David did for Michael Claytor + His Friends incredibly catchy album titled We Have An Elephant (see it in our portfolio)…so of course I immediately loved it. David and I threw together a quick design and wanted to show it to the world (and of course endorse the show). They will have 26 bands on 2 stages, beer (free Magic Hat #9 during Alias Punch’s set), henna, tarot readings, live graffiti, and more! Definitely check it out on July 4th from 12pm-12am and see some live music!