In hindsight, it’s fun and unnerving to discover that the everyday objects from your childhood are now pedestalled and spotlighted in a show on Canadian Modern design (see ROM.on.ca for details). Today’s highlights from the show: • Thermos Model 6402 | 1962 A smaller version of this orange canister fit inside my Snoopy lunchbox. Designed by Julian […]
Elsie de Wolfe
Originally published in November 2021 in Blog, Toronto Illustrators
Elsie de Wolfe on the shoulders of her French fitness instructor. Elsie was one of the great characters of the early 20th century. As they say, she was up for anything. Daughter of an American father and a Canadian mother, she ran a successful interior design firm on “Toity-toid” street in New York, […]
Coco and Diana
Originally published in March 2021 in Blog, Toronto Illustrators
Reading is my greatest joy. This exchange appeared in Amanda Mackenzie Stuart’s biography on Diana Vreeland called Empress of Fashion. Diana described the conversation in greater detail: “Coco [Chanel] was a nut on armholes. She never, ever got an armhole quite, quite perfect, the way she wanted it. She was always snipping and taking out […]
In the Spotlight: KBarlow Design
Originally published in December 2019 in Blog, Toronto Illustrators
Hand Drawings
Originally published in April 2019 in Blog, Toronto Illustrators
The push and pull of being vs doing. To me, hands are the ultimate doers, storytellers, get-shit-done human power tools. Not so for the copywriters at Elle magazine in 1967. Boy is it fun and weird leafing through back issues. Women’s magazines are the supreme handbooks on how to be, not do. There are times […]
Best in Class
Originally published in April 2019 in Blog, Canadian House and Home, Profile,
Anyone who knows me knows I like interviewing people who are best in their fields. I got to do that for the May issue of House & Home magazine. I sat down with Tony Round of blackLAB architects inc. and designer Cameron MacNeil to find out how they positioned, built, and appointed a modern farmhouse […]
Process Junkie
Originally published in March 2019 in Blog, Surface Design, Toronto Illustrators
7 things my customers taught me in 2018
Originally published in December 2018 in Blog, Gift Ideas, Illustration, Pen Jar Productions, Toronto Illustrators
Last summer, the initial delight I felt in seeing my sketchbook drawings on a digital pillow template inspired a new design business in 2018 called Pen Jar Productions. Now my quirky line drawings are on totes, tees, scarves, and, coming next month, enamel pins! (In these politically-charged times, more of us are wearing our values […]
Studio Tour of Pen Jar Productions
Originally published in November 2018 in Blog, Gift Ideas, Graphic Recorder, Graphic Visualizer, Illustration, Toronto Illustrators
Click on image to play my video greeting, or click here. An email I sent my contact list on November 1st: Top of the morning to my friends, family and work colleagues: For those of you who haven’t heard from me since high school, here’s what’s new: I cut my hair, became an art historian, unbecame […]
Milton Glaser
Originally published in June 2018 in Blog, Doodling, Illustration, Toronto Illustrators, Visual Storytelling
