We’re continuing to develop the partnership we’ve been working on with Chef Minh Phan of porridge + puffs that we talked about a few months back.

In our research + development phase, we’d been perfecting the design and brand of PINCH—Minh’s line of savory jams + sauces—while she perfected the recipe and variations in flavor. Our first iterations on labeling followed the visual theme we’d established—ingredients-based patterns within a grid system that plays off of porridge + puffs’ graph paper imagery—with brightly-colored, hand-printed and -cut labels.

Leading up to Minh’s final summer appearance at Smorgasburg LA this past weekend, we worked with her to have a series of glass containers screen printed at a nearby glass printing specialist using a new pattern that celebrates the local ingredients the products rely on and the state they’re from. Minh sold the savory jams in their new jars publicly for the first time this weekend and we’re hoping to line up some permanent selling points in Los Angeles that we should be able to announce in the fall.

Stay tuned.

Below, a shot Minh took using the jars at a colorful pickling session for the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project.

the result: #pickles in jars designed by @ravenandcrow for #PINCHbyporridgeandpuffs #silkscreened #collectorsitem #californiasun #madeinLA

A photo posted by minh phan (@mignardisesla) on Jul 5, 2016 at 10:00pm PDT

The new video for Jamie xx’s “GOSH”—the first track off of his 2015, totally misspelled debut, In Colour—is nothing short of mesmerizing.

Shot in a Chinese town that’s a semi-abandoned replica of Paris, the whole thing gives off a eerily cool, post-apocalyptic feel that’s the perfect accompaniment for the song, especially when the massive extra choreography kicks in. What makes it even more impressive—the Romain Gavras-directed mini-film was evidently shot free of any special effects.

Way to make us care about a song that’s over a year old again, Mr. xx (but, really, Gavras).

PS—As of writing, In Colour‘s on sale for the random low price of $3.54 over at iTunes; if you don’t have it already, you really should.

Get creeped out below.

Jamie xx photo by Emma Swann.

We’re starting this week off with some positivity, creative inspiration, and a little escapism all via our July monthly mixtape entry for this year.

The mix opens with a beautiful track that we’ve spoken about on these pages rather recently—Maggie Rogers‘ now-mastered and released “Alaska,” the song that took the words away from both us and (more internet-buzz-worthily) Pharrell.

Following that impressive intro, we’ve got a wealth of tracks that range from skitteringly glitchy to soaringly anthemic to cooly contemplative from the likes of Brooklyn electro pop mistress Psychic Twin; experimental electronic solo artist Nick Leng; masters of the pop hook, London’s Honne (featuring Izzy Bizu); Montreal + Björk’s One Little Indian‘s FOXTROTT; some exciting returns from songstress Bat for Lashes and Australian duo Big Scary, and a lot more really great music from some really great artists.

Sit back and enjoy.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thanks to our friend, Ella, for the quote; photo, NASA.

Peace to you all.

It’s difficult this week to think about or talk about or write about anything other than the the back-to-back, well-documented deaths of black men by police officers and the visceral reaction so many of us are having—and have had leading up to these deaths, in such an already violent, tragic year.

I’ve had the ‘black lives matter vs all lives matter’ discussion before. Many people have. Every time I come back to a breakdown presented almost a year ago by Reddit user (first seen by me via Mic) that I feel is worth sharing and worth being seen by anyone who has already seen it.

The full discussion is below, but Mic author Aaron Morrison did a wonderful job boiling it down:

On Reddit, user GeekAesthete broke it down with a perfect analogy:

Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say, “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “Everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — Indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!

The user continues:

The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share,” which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.

Then, the kicker:

Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: It’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

As Morrison explains, the reaction online was powerful (again, read the original Mic article to see more). But more to the point, I feel like this explains what seems to be such a difficult-to-grasp concept so elegantly. And I feel it may be of use to some of us in the coming days, weeks, months.

Very much related—an essay by Sally Kohn: “This is what white people can do to support #BlackLivesMatter.”

Let’s hope for better times and peace.

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images.

Yes, you read that subtitle correctly.

Mad Pambazos is indeed a Mad Max-themed, with suitably named sandwiches and salads, a food truck they’ve dubbed the “war rig,” and an in-character backstory to support it all.

We’d seen it around the corner from our studio over the past few weeks but had no idea what a pambazo was. Though we had every intention of looking it up, Eater LA saved us the trouble by posting a piece on the apocalyptic food truck this morning.

Turns out, a pambazo is “a delicious sandwich from Mexico City, dipped in salsa and pressed until hot and crisp” (MP’s words) and it is indeed delicious (and not nearly as messy as you’d think). It also turns out that Mad Pambazo was again parked a stone’s throw from our office, so what better to do for lunch than give it a shot.

A lot of the menu is pretty animal-meat-centric, like the Toecutter, Silvertongue’s Chicken, and the Lord Humungus Pastor, but they do offer a vegetarian option—the People Eater—that they speedily assured us they could easily do vegan via Twitter. The result is a beautifully hot (and spicy) mess of thick-sliced smoked potato, equally thick-sliced red chili butternut squash, salsa verde, cabbage salad, and pickled jalapeño between two excellent pieces of bolillo-style bread (like a Mexican sourdough) that have been dipped and pressed crisp. Truly, truly excellent. We don’t have a formal Best Sandwiches in Los Angeles list, but if we did, this would be near the top…along with Mohawk Bend’s BBQ Chickpea Cutlet, Dune’s Green Falafel, Little Pine’s Sausage + Fennel Sandwich, and Blue Window’s Vegan Cheddar Melt. …Huh. I guess we do have a formal Best Sandwiches of Los Angeles list.

We also grabbed a guac tostada with habanero mango salsa (one of up to three daily guacamoles they offer), a giant, $4 tub of housemade pickles, and a selection of their complimentary housemade salsas (our favorite was the black, slightly sweet, not-as-hot-as-it-sounds charred habanero).

You can check Mad Pambazos’ schedule on their site (looks like they’ll be at Downtown LA Artwalk + Night Market next week) and follow them on Twitter for up-to-date info.

Since last spring, we’ve been hard at work creating a new identity for new non-profit client.

Winrock International works in social, environmental, and agricultural issue areas with the goal of combining scientific and technical expertise with entrepreneurial innovation to improve lives around the world.

Winrock approached us with the primary goal of redesigning their then-out-of-date and far from user-friendly site. Working closely with them, we took some well-planned steps back from the overall project to realize the scope was far larger than first thought. The result was a total restructuring of the way Winrock thought about itself as an organization and a complete re-telling of their story to their audience.

We walked them through a rebranding, focusing first on the group’s overall presentation, logo, and brand so that we could then take that work, develop it, and grow it to apply not only to a fully rebuilt site, but also print and digital collateral, including field reports, educational handouts, email newsletters, event presentations, iconography, business card and letterhead suites, and much more.

You can see more in our portfolio entries for Winrock’s site + logo and visit the organization’s site.

Happy birthday, America. Best of luck on your 240th year of existence—looks like it might be a doozy of one.

You’re on notice, Los Angeles—Blue Window‘s current pop-up menu, Junk, has merely one month left before it—poof—disappears forever.

In case you don’t recall, Blue Window is the pop-up concept of Chef Kajsa Alger and is attached to Mud Hen Tavern (née Street), and it features a single rotating menu for six months before switching over. All items are a flat $7 and all items can (and should, I’d say) be made vegan.

The first menu was Asian-inspired, the second and current menu is Junk—decadent, satisfying selections like falafel onion rings with black olive agave (below), tangy artichoke po’ boys, chili cheese Frito tamales, and cheddar melt sandwiches (above), which started out being mock-meat based in the vegan version and moved to a more purely plant-based recipe, employing crispy fried sun chokes in the current iteration.

Blue Window’s open weekly Monday through Friday, noon to 10PM, Saturday, 11AM-3PM, but they’ll be closed for the holiday Monday.

Nashville-based, candle + fragrance mainstay Paddywax has a new series of candles we’re digging which they’ve dubbed the Urban line—hand-poured, USA-made soy wax candles in “city-inspired concrete vessels”.

The scents are subtle + sophisticated and, maybe more importantly, they look damn good in our home and in our design studio. We’re fans of the geometric gold foil branding on the line’s tags too.

We picked ours up at Atwater’s Individual Medley, but you can look for other stores and shop online at Paddywax’s site.