Pardon my french, but damn… It has been more than three months since the last post (which was also the last time I took the Koga for a spin) and I sure as hell doesn’t feel like that. Me moving to Cologne wasn’t really stressy, or weird for me, but the last few months have been. My new job is making me getting out of my comfortzone and that is a really, really good thing. I am learning new things all the time, but that also maybe because of the fact that I can be like a sponge when it comes to new things. I want to learn it, do it, practice it and get better at it. That is, when I like doing it of course.

I somehow losttouch with printed graphic design over the last few years, all though that is what I really like. Getting back into sites like Behance.net, Fontblog.de, Typolution.de Typografie.info and the like makes me getting back on track with all that. I felt a bit like a fat kid in a candy store when I saw the previews of a magazin called Typojournal. I bought myself the last two (and the only one available) issues and they arrived today. Man is that some nice reading material. Issue two is all about wayfinding and signage and number three is all about the letter ‘ß’. Sometimes called German B, but in Germany it’s called “Eszet” (pronounced: as|tset, with emphasis on the ‘as’-part). Now I only have to find the time to read it, but that’s why I’ll keep this post short!

Last week was a blast. I started my new job as an art director over at Milk. Very different from where I worked in the Netherlands before. First of all I don’t have to remember 75 names of my colleagues, 15 will do for now and I can finally ride my bike to work again! If that wasn’t enough I went for a nice 75 kilometer long ride last weekend as Sunday turned out to be dry ánd sunny. It was a bit cold and I got some comments on the fact that I was wearing shorts, but “they are just a bit cold the first 3 kilometers”. This time I didn’t forget my camera and took some nice pictures in Staatsforst Ville near Hackenbroich.

PS: You know what’s the result of bad kerning? It’s called keming ;)

I’ll post up a nice list of all the parts later, for now you’ll just have to do with this gallery.

I am currently bussy disassembling the whole bike and all its parts, make a list of all the parts brands, models and year of manufacturing. After that they get cleaned, polished and the whole bike will be put back together!

PS: Dutch readers may notice the reference in the title to the Dutch 1999 National Song Festival entry, for everyone who doesn’t: Double Date – An e-mail to Berlin.

Great documentary about intellectual property, remixing and what happens when you put those two together… Sit back and enjoy!

Untill I received a comment from Mr. Dekker. He told me he was just starting to take his Gent’s Touring (GT) from 1978 apart and asked me if I was interested in the spec sheet. Of course I was! He mailed me some scans that I put together in 1 PDF-document. It can be downloaded below (and also shows the Road Mixed and the Silver Ace):

1978 Koga Miyata Gent’s Touring Specifications Sheet

I also asked him to mail me scans from the complete booklet so that it can be added to the Koga website, but I haven’t heard from him since. Mr. Dekker in case you read this would you be so kind to mail me those scans? Thanks a lot!

Click the picture below to go to www.itsbetterinthewind.com.

One of the things I really like in the field of graphic design is typografy. What is even better, is handmade typografy! I came across this beautiful project via Little Paper Planes (on Facebook) called “‘The’ Project”. Robb Ogle from houndofthe.com already has some impressive font designs in his portfolio, but he used wordmarks from a private stock of predigital lettering scoured from low resolution archives and turn it into clean, straigh bezier curves. He only extracted the word ‘the’, hence the name of the project for use by today’s graphic designers who appreciate the wonky shapes of yesteryear. That’s me!

Make sure you go have a look over at the special website he created for this project www.thetheproject.com!

Damn. Getting a new job is tougher than I anticipated… Just wanted to keep this blog alive so I’ll just show off the result of my procrastination.

Ow, and big news; I added my portfolio to the About-page. You can go there now or you can just download it here directly. It’s just a simple PDF (2,6 MB) with some of my works and a resumé. It is in German, allthough this blog is in English. I tend to write easier in English than in German, but on the other hand, when applying for jobs in the Cologne area I can’t send out a resumé in English, now can I? ;)