We came across this vintage print ad for the Peace Corps yesterday at the Long Beach Antique Market. It was in a 1968 issue of Life magazine—seven years after the creation of the program—and I found it impressive and intriguing, both from the perspective of someone in the advertising business and as an returning Peace Corps Volunteer myself.

From a marketing perspective, it’s got the simple, elegant visual hook of the text and glass, playing with the magnified perspective the rounded glass provides and its tone compels the audience with an emotional hook. It says “Hey, this isn’t for everyone, but if this positive messaging appeals to you, maybe it is for you,” without quite stepping over the line of condescension.

And coming at it as a former volunteer, it’s just nice—in an admittedly romanticized way—to see the positivity that I honestly do feel remains at the root of the program to this day worn on the agency’s sleeve and touted so loudly early on.

Plus how awesome that the call to action was to write a letter…to street address-free government agency.

You have to love old school social media.

Paired TV spot below. The campaign was done in partnership with the Ad Council. If anyone knows anything else about it, please do contact us; we’d love to know more.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Flipping through an old notebook in the studio, I came across this concept sketch for a logo we created for Brooklyn-based interior design, furnishings, and construction company Ted K Design and was surprised at how closely it came to the final mark. Sometimes it takes a wealth of different concepts and endless rounds of edits, sometimes…it doesn’t.

We got this most adorable painted geometric wooden block airplant planter from what might be the most adorable shop in the world—Ojai‘s Summer Camp (pictured below).

Summer Camp’s one of those home goods, vintage, and lifestyle stores that’s really tough not to walk into and buy a million things…especially if you’re Katie. They also do custom picture framing. The store is housed in an mid-century filling station—upping the adorable factor to near incomprehensible levels—and was started by couple that left the LS hustle and bustle for the starry-nighted, dreamcatcher-filled Ojai life, a move that sounds pretty appealing most days. Except for those deep summer ones where it gets into the upper 200°F’s or so in Ojai.

Check Summer Camp Instagram feed for more shots of the planters and other home goods and order via their web site if you can’t make it out any time soon.

Work given to us years back by NYC artist and musician Allison Hawkins.

A new month—and one with spring in the air, no less—means a new mixtape, and this one’s chockablock with some awesome tracks from awesome artists.

That’s right, chockablock.

Minneapolis-based Lizzo starts us off with the perfect springtime, bedroom dancing track, “Let Em Say”, a song that celebrates women, features Caroline Smith (also outta M-town), and was included in the intro of a recent Broad City (AKA, the best show ever), so win-win-win. Then we’ve got a great song from British singer-songwriter Jack Garrat; something from a band we’ve been loving of late, Los Angeles’ own Tuft (FKA Hi Ho Silver Oh), who’s new album is pretty great start-to-finish; beautiful glitch from Blackbird Blackbird (who’s playing the Echoplex next month with the excellent Chad Valley—see you there!); a new one from NYC’s TEEN, who we wrote up last fall; a really fucking cool song from Wicca Phase Springs Eternal; a song from LNZNDRF, the new collaboration between the brotherly rhythm section of The National, Scott and Bryan Devendorf, and Beirut member and National/Sufjan collaborator Ben Lanz; a way-too-catchy mopey indie pop song from Brooklyn’s Porches (AKA, Aaron Maine), who, weirdly enough, Frankie Cosmos (AKA, Greta Simone Kline) used to play bass with…also weirdly enough, Cosmos/Kline is the daughter of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, the latter of whom once threw her coat on Katie during a show at the Bellhouse, some think on purpose. And a ton more great music, obviously.

Give it all a listen below. And, New York friends, do not despair—warmer weather and sunshine are just around the corner! Likewise, Los Angeles friends, don’t you despair either—we’ll get through that rain tomorrow if we all stick together and keep our heads about us!

We’ve used these pages to proclaim our general love of space and science, as well as our general appreciation for NASA’s Image of the Day series. Well, here’s another pretty impressive shot of nature in action courtesy of NASA.

As they explain:

“During the afternoon of March 9, 2016, a total solar eclipse was visible in parts of southeast Asia. An eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun. The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the total solar eclipse moving across the south Pacific Ocean at 03:05 UTC on March 9, 2016.”

Beautiful.

Image Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team.

We’ve mentioned the fine folks at Louisville Vegan Jerky Co. on these pages before—first on the company in general, then when they started making vegan bacon bits. But now LVJC has started their very own mail-order vegan jerky of the month club and, thanks to Katie, I am a proud member of said club.

Here’s the deal: Basically, you choose your plan—month-to-month, three-month prepay, or six month prepay—and then, every month you’re signed up for, you receive a lovely, excellently branded box of three bags of vegan jerky. The first two bags are from the company’s excellent regular stock (Bourbon Smoked Chipotle, Maple Bacon, Bourbon Smoked Black Pepper, Sriracha Maple, or Sesame Teriyaki), but the third is a test kitchen batch that changes monthly.

The first month I received the jerky, the test batch was Perfect Pepperoni, made using tamarin, beet juice, liquid smoke, fennel and crushed peppers—an excellent, dry meatless cousin of the pepperoni and one we eventually used to top a homemade pizza. Last month, the test flavor was a really nice, peanut-less Peanut Thai, a slightly sweet jerky made with soy nut butter, sriracha, and fresh ginger.

If you love vegan jerky, or love someone who loves vegan jerky, we highly recommend the Louisville Vegan Jerky of the Month Club. Excited to see what March brings!

Below, pictures of the jerkies, packaging, and said pizza.

In our ongoing effort to fit studio improvements into our usually pretty packed work days, we just completed this wall-mounted palette planter. Yay, us!

Want to make one yourself? Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Find an abandoned wooden palette in your neighborhood. Usually, this is pretty easy. Don’t live in a big city? Head down to your local Industrial Way and have a look-around. Still no? Dumpster-diving time.

Step 2: Do not lick or raise your child in found palette—these things are chemically treated and you found this thing on the street or in a dumpster for god’s sake. What kind of parent are you‽

Step 3: Knock out every other plank on the top of the palette. This can be done with a rubber mallet or a hammer or you can pry them off with a crowbar or the like. Watch out for the disease-covered, rusted nails. And don’t worry about harming the remaining panels much—that’s called “rustic charm”.

Step 4: Paint the palette with primer; allow to dry for a day or so; paint the palette with crazy-bright paint; allow to dry.

Step 5: Steal a bunch of succulents from your neighborhood. If you don’t live in Southern California, change this step to “Go to the plant store and buy a bunch of plants”.

Step 6: Buy some tight-weave landscaping material, usually found in the gardening section of hardware stores. The tighter the weave, the better. You want some breathability, but you don’t want to the soil to spill through. Measure the spaces between the two or three (in our case) vertical beams and cut panels of the fabric so that you’ll be able to form rough pockets for the soil and plants, using nails or thumbtacks (easier) to pin the front, back, and both sides so you’ve got more of a thee-dimensional pocket than a two-dimensional pouch.

Step 6: Fill the pockets with soil and carefully arrange the plants, ideally in an artful, adorable manner.

Step 7: This is the tough one. Attach the palette to the wall. If you’ve got shitty drywall, find studs. If you’ve chosen an outer concrete wall like we did, ideally use your trusty hammer drill to drill holes for Red Head wedge anchors or the like. Don’t have a hammer drill? Yeah, we didn’t either. In that case, buy a concrete drill bit and be prepared to stand against the wall drilling for, oh, two or so hours? And it might break your drill’s motor. Concrete, man. Don’t want to bother with all this? We get it. In that case, lean the sucker against a wall and be done with it.

Step 8: Use a water spritz-y thing to saturate the soil around the plants so the succulents (or other plants) will take root.

Step 9: Water according to the types of plants you use and enjoy.

We wish you the best of luck, DIY-ers!

Confetti-filled photo-shoot in the studio.