Grain Edit is one of our favorite design blogs at Lifework, so we’re thrilled to present the Playlist of freelance illustrator and editor Grace Danico. Grace’s diverse range of endeavors also include graduate information science studies at Pratt, photo-cataloguing at the American Museum of Natural History, and a pop-up restaurant called The Baoery. Oh, and she DJs, too, so we’re in for a treat. Take a listen.
Here’s a Friday bonus: an extra playlist this week from Grain Edit founder (and Lifework contributor) Dave Cuzner. Start your weekend with the Oakland-based designer’s favorite tunes—a smart mix of jazz, old swing-y country, chill, and R&B/Soul (great with a glass of wine and dinner outside with friends).
What do you listen to while you work? I usually start the day off with an up-tempo bossa or funk cut. I need something with a thick groove to wake me up and get my day going. As I begin to dip into the day’s workload, I slow down the tempo and lower the volume. I’ll usually throw on a jazz album or listen to talk radio. At night, I log into Netflix and stream a movie while I answer emails.
How do you listen? Since I work from home, I can listen to my music out loud. I have a chubby little sub woofer and a speaker set plugged into my Macbook Pro. In the past I listened to records while I worked, but recently I find it too distracting to get up and flip the record each time it reaches the end of a side.
Do you have any favorite music websites/providers? Sure do. Here’s a few of my faves: Props radio, Soul Sides, KALX, and Quimsy’s Mumbo Jumbo.
DAVE’S PLAYLIST
Camino del Sol, Antena
InnerSpeaker (The whole darn album), Tame Impala
New Life, Sounds of Liberation
Egypt Strut, Salah Ragab & The Cairo Jazz Band
To Brother John, DJ Food
Lost Week-end, Wanda Jackson
Cloudy Shoes, Damien Jurado
Nothing But A Heartache, The Flirtations
Pearlie’s Swine, Monica Zetterlund
Buddah, Jazz Quintet
A Go Go, Dara Puspita
Opiniao, Zelia Barbosa
Nava, Lloyd Miller & The Heliocentrics
Images: Dave Cuzner
Jason Munn is the name behind the award winning one-man studio known as The Small Stakes. Jason’s work has been featured in many of the top design magazines and is part of the permanent collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jason’s client list includes Patagonia, Wired and New York Times magazine to name a few. He is also well known in the world of concert posters. Since 2003 he has been designing for indie rock’s hottest bands including The Pixies, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips and many more. Over 150 of these posters are featured in a book titled The Small Stakes-Music Posters which was recently released by Chronicle Books. Jason spoke to us about his home studio and the challenges he faced transitioning from a traditional office setting.
How long have you been working from home? I’ve been working from home full time for about the past seven years, before this I had been working in a couple different design studios. My first home/studio was a studio apartment, which became more and more challenging because there was not any type of separation between anything. Now we live in a two bedroom house, the second bedroom acts as my studio space
What challenges did you face transitioning from working in a design firm to a home based office? The biggest drawback for me about working from home versus in a design firm is the lack of communication or feedback while you are working on project. More and more I miss that aspect of a studio. Dirk Fowler, another designer and friend of mine who also works from home often send images of what we are working on back and forth to get feedback or advice from each other.
Working in a home setting, it’s easy to get distracted. Do you have any tips for staying focused on projects? I try to stick to a routine, but will be the first to admit I can have a hard time doing that. My wife has been back in school the last couple years, so she is often working late, so I’ll often do the same. When I’m stuck or in the thinking process during a project I tend to work in chunks of time and find myself walking around the block to take a break. I think the distractions of working in a firm versus working at home probably balance out, in the long run I feel I have less distractions. I do miss the commute to work a little bit, I used to walk to work and that was perfect for starting the day. Now if I have any errands or anything like that I typically do them first thing in the morning, so that becomes my commute.
Is there anything you would like to change in your workspace? As you can see I keep things pretty sparse and I often have the tendency to want to get rid of things rather than acquire them. I’m happy to have my own room to work out of versus having everything in the studio apartment. We also have a small room below the house that acts as the poster storage and shipping area, our shipping area used to be the kitchen in the studio apartment. I would like to try working from a space outside my house, maybe a shared space with a couple other designers. We’ll see, it hasn’t been a priority yet.
Dave over at Grain Edit just posted about a House Industries competition to win a tour of the Eames Case Study house in the Pacific Palisades. It marks the release of House Industries’ Eames Century Modern font collection. They will be drawing three names for the tour which will be hosted by Eames Demetrios and Lucia Atwood, grandson and granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames.
Date: March 11, 2010
Time: 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Location: The Eames House. Pacific Palisades, CA
To enter just follow this link, fill out the catalog form and type the words EAMES HOUSE into the COMMENTS box. The winners will be drawn on February 19.
We’ve had a great response to Dave Cuzner‘s interview with artist Matte Stephens so I’ve decided to share the work Matte did for Herman Miller’s ‘See’ magazine. Unfortunately we no longer publish ‘See’ and the story, which was about the Pacific Northwest, that Matte illustrated never saw the light of day. We’re thrilled now to share the images with you.
