calendar mania
Cindy from Favorite just delivered the bulk of Eun-Ha's 2008 Milky Elephant Postcard Calendar and we are super excited about them! The full-color is awesome and everything looks amazing. The postcards really tear out and the binding works, which is such a relief because you never quite know for sure when you're thinking of things theoretically. Eun-Ha did such a great job with it that I just wanted to preserve it as a book so it was hard to bring myself to tear a page out, but I had to make sure it worked and it was made to be used, so I just kind of had to remind myself of that. Luckily we have the liberty (i.e., inventory) that will allow me to save one and use one. Hooray for being the publisher!
Cindy also dropped off sample pages of John P's 2008 Gordon the Fox calendar (which is on its way to get spiral bound and will hopefully be ready at the beginning of next week) which was quite a thrill in itself. It's going to be a fun calendar and mini-book (we designed it so that you cut off the dates once the year is over to have a little "book" of Gordon going through the year) and I'm pretty stoked with the way the colors came out (not to pat my own back--although they do look pretty nice--but more like "phew! I didn't mess it up!"). At any rate, the pages looked really good and we can't wait to have it bound and in-hand.
On top of our four fabulous 2008 calendars, we're going to be adding one more to the mix. Well, it's a bit different. Lart drew the reference calendars for 2008-2010 for her Come Along planner (which will be done soon!) three times, which is a crazy crazy amount of work! She showed me one of the unused ones on our subway ride in from JFK and it was so cool that it would have been a waste not to do something with it. Jeremy concurred once we got back to SF and so the plan to print it was set in motion. Of course there are always snags and it had to be rescanned when Lart got back to Berlin, but it's finally ready to go to the printer. It's going to be like a small poster of color pencil extravaganza that will be great for an office or desk. We're also making some new bookmarks by Lart, Simon Evans, and Scott Barry, as well as our first artist print in celebration of LO50 (wow, can't believe we've made so much stuff already!), which is an amazingly detailed drawing by Lart. You will be awestruck by what she has done with a Micron. Insanity.
Speaking of insanity, I'll be going to another trade show at the end of the month. But it's going to be ten times more fun than the Stationery Show (besides Lart not being there and the joy that is Manhattan vegan eats) because we'll be sharing a booth with our pals from McSweeney's! So come visit us at booth A510 at Pool, August 27th-29th. Let me know if you have any food tips for me in Las Vegas/Henderson. I hear there are vegan Boston cream donuts...
On a non-work note, I must mention that we are so happy that one of the greatest tv shows ever, Twitch City, is now on DVD. Even though the quality of the images and the extras are lacking and Mark McKinney is not nearly as good as Bruce McCulloch in the role of Rex Reilly, Twitch City is still a remarkable show that you must see if you have any sense of humor. We heart Don McKellar. And hey, even though the late night shows have been saturated by promotion for it, Superbad still looks awesome.