rainy day

court tv

I saw this court tv advertising campgain today in print magazine and wanted to share. It was done by Trollback + Company in NY. It's very simple and only uses text, I love the use of outdoor advertising. There was also a paper bag that said "THE STASH" and wild postings that said "THE COVER UP"

Soundmap [audio walks of London]

I received my Daily Candy-London this morning to find the link to this website. [Yes, I signed up for the London email because I still want to be there.] I wish I had seen this before we went this past summer on our study abraod trip, it would have been so much fun, such a cool thing to do for tours of the small little places we went to. I will definitely pass this onto the juniors though. I am definitely going to listen to them and pretend as if I was there, and get all sad that I'm not.

I just posted this and realized that I didn't explain more specifically what Soundmap is... "Soundmap produces downloadable audio walks of London using narrators like Robert Elms and Irma Kurtz as tour guides, along with music, sound effects and interviews with locals to create informative, off-beat walks. Tours of the Kings Road, Camden Town and Soho come with instructions about where to start and end, and what to look at along the way. You’ll learn plenty; it’s like employing a physical tour guide, without needing to follow a pack of camera-wielding, besneakered piddlers (sorry, tourists) like a sheep."

vintage heart pill box

I found these vintage heart pill boxes on Etsy. The seller is EpochBeads and she put vintage decal stickers onto vintage pill boxes. I would really like to replace my blue plactic pill case with one of these, I think I would choose the green onein the bottom right corner. She even includes charms inside the pillbox from her store.

a dress

I found this dress on Shiny Squirrel and I love it. It looks surprisingly wearable for a high fashion dress on the runway. It's from Alexander McQueen's spring 2008 collection. I really want to start wearing all my cute fall clothes now, but this weather in the 90's is rediculous and a dress is somehow still practical!

rachelstuartdesign.com

rachelstuartdesign.com is mine! I finally built up the courage and bought my domain name. It had to be rachelstuartdesign instead of just rachelstuart because rachelstuart.com is a page about a kindergartener and her friends, no fair :( but its okay. I am going to try and have the site up ASAP in hopes of getting a kickass internship for this winter!!! EEK. I've been working on the design in Illustrator and preparing my work for the web, just need to get dreamweaver down and do the damn thing. I'm currently taking a Web Design class and that is what we are working on for our midterm, so it's nice that the projects go hand in hand.

Michael Perry

how cool would it be to live in an "A"

I came across Mike Perry on Random Inspiration. This guy has such playful type and illustrations. You can feel how much fun he is having in his work (or at least it appears that way to me), which makes it that much better. I enjoy his editorial spreads, they really come to life. He has a book out called "Hand Job" with all sorts of hand drawn type, definitely inspiration to do your own type and not download someone elses!

International Spy Museum

A can shaped 35mm spy camera available in their gift shop.

I came home this weekend in hopes of being super duper productive. So, it's friday night and I am sitting at home with my parents trying to do work and watching Giada's Weekend Getaways on Food Network, very exciting life of a college student (only 3.5 more weeks until I am 21 and my life gets better again because I will be able to join my friends at the bar). Giada is in DC and visited the International Spy Museum, which looks totally cool. They have this exhibit called Operation Spy where you schedule a time for a 1 hour "thrilling adventure." They give you a mission and you have to solve it, the intense experience combines live-action, themed environments, special effects, and hands-on activities like cracking a safe and conducting a polygraph test of a suspect agent. It looked like so much fun and to add to the coolness, you had to figure out how to get into it. They had this random keypad on the side of the wall that you had to enter numbers into to open the door.
Operation Spy at the International Spy Museum.

NYC on thursday!

Thursday was our first NY trip of the year and a pretty good one at that. Last minute, Rosie, Jessie, Alex, Laurel and I got invited to the juniors visit to see JP Williams at Design MW (YAY!). All of their work was very smart and very detailed, everything was thought about down to the littlest touches (for example having red edges of the pages on a six feet under book). I think 2 huge things that I would learn from being at a place like that is paper choice and type. I still have so much to learn about everything, but those two things alone make their work wonderfully wonderful. JP Williams talked about his creative process, which is always interesting to hear how people work. He said he starts with images and visuals and also by looking in the dictionary. At the end of the talk he mentioned that we could contact him to critique our work...might have to take him up on that offer! (...and then rework everything I've ever done).
We had the rest of the day free to do as we please! I went to Pearl River Market with the girls and it was totally inspiring. It was perfect for the sushi project that I have been working on. I ended up buying a sushi making kit, wooden chopsticks, and some really nice oriental patterned brown paper. Next on the list was some fashion inspiration at forever 21, where I got 2 new shirts and a pair of earrings. Rosie and I really wanted to get our hair cut next, I was totally ready to chop off my hair that I have been growing for over a year! It didn't work out because everywhere we ran into was completely booked or cost like $200 (which we weren't exactly prepared to do). We also stopped in Sephora for some packaging inspiration (and to test out their makeup and perfume, of course). The one thing I knew I wanted to do ahead of time in the city was go to the paper stores, I was in desperate need of nice paper! I ran out of the paper I bought in the city last semester and have been dieing to get more. Rosie and I trekked up to 18th street to Paper Access, where I wanted to buy THEE ENTIRE STORE! anyways, Rosie and I bought some paper and decided we would split white and off white because we couldn't decide. I also got these clear labels that I had been asking my brother to get for me from Virginia Tech because that's the only place I had ever seen them before. We were pretty close to where the bus picks us up and didn't feel like heading back downtown again, so we stopped in one last hair place and asked where we could grab some food and drink. We had some oktoberfest and had our first experience of sliders! (they were mini burgers, can you believe that? we thought they were a drink special).
All in all it was a very good, cheap day in new york (minus the paper purchase).