I love Madmen.

(Click to make bigger — via Fader)

I can’t remember where I found these wonderful paper foodstuffs, but I stumbled across them while cleaning out one of my harddrives today and had to share:

Or, “I don’t have OCD” (Just kidding. I really, really do)

I was cleaning my house today, so I decided to make a pile of all the lists I’ve made this term. This led naturally to the counting and classification of the aforementioned lists, and the results were a little scary—even to the List Queen herself. Let me share the breakdown:

First, I should tell you that there are three different kinds of lists that occur in nature three different places. Macro to micro, if you will.

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The Category I list is the one we know and love from Making Lists The Amelia Way. These are legal-sized weekly lists, with an overview of what’s due for the next week.

They are often very general, and opposing colors of Prismacolor markers are absolutely integral to the success of the list.

This term I made 36 Category I lists.

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The next level of list is Category II, naturally. These lists take place in my school notebook, which anyone who has a class with me has seen schlepped around for the last three terms.

These lists are often written during lulls in my class participation / interest / attention span, and are usually made two or three times a week. They consist of every part of every project due the following week, with length and complexity based on what I know of the week’s assignments so far.

Category II lists will usually just have classwork, in no particular order, and school related errands.

This term I made 42 Category II lists.

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Category III lists have the highest level of detail and occur in a small Moleskine notebook that I have with me at all times.

(Full Moleskines from the last three years)

These lists are the final frontier of list making, and tend to include everything from task management by-the-minute, to sub categories and sub sub sub categories. I will often make multiple Category III lists a day, usually consisting of the same exact content, multiple times, in different classifications and hierarchy breakdowns (for instance, one list may just be about getting each task on paper by class, while one is about breaking down the days in which each thing needs to be completed, and yet another includes the order in which each should occur).

This term I made 83 Category III lists, using up two and a half Moleskines.

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That’s 161 lists in total.

(Maybe it’s time to see a doctor)

(Do they have list doctors?)

(Am I the list doctor?)

Today Lila and I were talking about still life / product photography for a project she’s doing. I was sending her some of my favorite quirky things I’ve found and saved, when she pointed me to David Sykes. I’ve seen a few of his pieces before, but never had a name or website to attach to the work. Seeing the rest got me into a conversation with Kelsey about how I like really GRAPHIC photography, and she, naturally, feels the same way about illustration.

So, I decided to share some of today’s inspiration:

The Art Center Burnout™ is a cold hard fact of life. From the innocent and naive view of a first termer, two and a half years straight through is a cake walk. For anyone not familiar with the system, Art Center goes by 14 week terms, year round. In the very beginning they tell you it takes 8 to graduate—three terms a year equals two and a half years of creatively stimulated bliss. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

As it turns out, everyone is lying to you through their teeth. Pesky little things like car crashes and needing to sleep every once in a while seem to make this task nearly impossible (although a few have done it). After the traumas of last term there was no question about my particular level of burnout. But this term was supposed to be better. With the theme of Just Make it Pretty, I set it up so that I wouldn’t have too many classes that required me to go on a brainbender. But alas, my work has still been mediocre, forced, and probably pretty boring. When did design become like pulling teeth?

I thought I was a design machine—that sleep was unnecessary and having to do it made me weak. Things like going to bed or taking the afternoon off are simply unacceptable, and when I inevitably succumb to one of these earthling tasks I beat myself up. The problem is, when you live with this attitude for too long, your body will eventually start to hate you. Everyone has a breaking point, and mine seems to be right around now. I took an internship after my fourth term, and planned to do another one in the fall as “breaks”. You would think that I would understand at 40 hours a week working in Beverly Hills or New York City isn’t exactly R&R, but remember, I’m a design machine.

Let it be known here and now, I am not a machine. Turns out, something had to give, and it was looking a lot like my sanity was going to be the first casualty. With two terms of classes left to graduate, boring and mediocre just don’t cut it. I need inspiration, rejuvenation, and little bit of sleep god dammit—or my graduating portfolio is going to look just as tired as I do.

So, here’s the plan:

I’m going to spend my summer term living in this:

Working for these people (two Art Center alums) on a little project called HOERAG (more on that later), doing an independent study (including a lot of photography and writing) with this guy, and maybe eating a few of these:

Edison, Washington is a town of 133 people (yes, that’s even less than my alma mater, the world’s smallest highschool) where my parents own 40 acres of farmland. It’s a quirky artist’s enclave surrounded by miles and miles of agriculture. It doesn’t get much more rural than Skagit County (population density 59 people per square mile). They have promised me a few chickens, a few farm responsibilities, and all the peace and quiet I can possibly handle. I’m even going to trade work for vegetables and ride my bike everywhere. How much more idyllic and quaint can life possibly be?

Now if I can just survive the next three weeks…

For this weary traveler (metaphoric, of course–I haven’t left this area code for weeks), happiness is a homemade grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup (although ph’o has come in as a close second on the comfort food list lately). After a long day in the saddle and a wonderful 3×3 lecture, I came home and made myself the ultimate treat.

Extra sharp cheddar cheese, sour rye bread, pure delight.

This song / video is making me really happy right now.

When I work on executing the grunt-work portion of my projects, I often watch television. Recently I started watching Dexter, from Showtime. The title sequence, designed by Digital Kitchen, is absolutely genius and I just had to share.

Dexter is a show about a serial killer who kills serial killers. The prior of the killers happens to work for the Miami Metro Police Department as a blood spatter analyst. The genius is in the implication and anticipation of violence, when in fact Dexter is simply getting ready for work.

Way back in first term–knee high to a grasshopper as I was–we were assigned in Communication Design 1 to make a magazine cover for Architectural News using the idea of “fused metaphors.” We were told to make lists of each of the things to be represented (in our case America and architecture), and find a way to combine them metaphorically. Our reference material was a series of such covers, inspiring at the time, but not memorable in my over-stimulated mind.

This term, in the same class (which I now TA), Sean is showing presentations of noteworthy designers each week. My job is to compile images and make a slideshow to share with the kiddies and help them with their visual literacy. When we chose Alvin Lustig and Ivan Chermayeff, I was excited to do the research, but I wasn’t expecting to find so many ingenious examples of this “fused metaphor” business. In my further inspection of the Architectural News covers by Chermayeff & Geismar that I hadn’t seen since first term, I found new inspiration in the simple yet intelligent solutions.

“Interiors” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1964

“The Architecture of Storage” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1967

“American Institute of Architects in Washington” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1965

“American Institute of Architects in Denver” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1966

Communication and Control in Buildings 1966

“Building Systems” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1967

“Building Performance and Architect’s Responsibilities” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1965

“Joints” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1964

“Hospitals” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1965

“Load Baring Masonry” Architectural News, Chermayeff & Geismar, 1964

Scanwiches is a site that encompasses all my favorite things: food, photography (in a sense), and combining two words to make a new word (Lila knows what I mean). Seems kinda messy though.