The other day, I was pursuing the cooler section of our local fancy foods + drinks shop, The Oaks, when this beer caught my eye.

Now, from a beer-drinker’s standpoint, Belgian white ales usually fall pretty low on my list of preferred beers, but, from a designer’s point of view, how could I not buy this beer‽ Look at that cat!

Wednesday Cat ale and its adorably designed can are produced by central Japan’s YO-HO Brewing Company. YO-HO was founded in 1996 by the eco-friendly, locally minded Hoshino Resort Company in the popular mountain resort town of Karuizawa—a spot often sought out as an escape from the hustle and bustle of nearby Tokyo.

The beer itself is described as a light, sweet, and citrusy brew with a low level of carbonation but some nice, unique aromas. And, as you can see on Barnivore—the online guide to vegan libations—Wednesday Cat is, in fact vegan. YO-HO’s head of Customer Relations got right back to us when we inquired, telling us:

“The answer is yes, but the line is not vegan. We make other products in the same line and we use isinglass (fish bladder) for filtering some of the other products. Wednesday Cat itself contains water,malts, hops, orange peels and coriander seeds. We use a kind of moss for filtering it.”

So indeed—let this cat help you get through the rest of the week.

I’ve owned these tiny ceramic mugs since I bought them at a department store in the town of Piła (pronounced pee-wa), Poland, back when I was in the Peace Corps in 1998. They number among the very few things I brought back from Poland and the even fewer I still have to this day.

I have no idea if these little cartoon characters pre-exist the mugs themselves or if they’re just the product of some in-house illustrator tasked with creating them but, either way, I think they’re awesome. They’re all so strut-y and happy—with the possible exception of the tiny, slightly threatening owl—it’s hard not to smile as you’re downing your morning OJ, for which I’ve almost exclusively used them over the past 16 years.

So cheers to you, tiny, inexplicable Polish cartoon mugs! Here’ sot another 16 years together!

“Bougainvillea is a genus of thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers…. The first European to describe these plants was Philibert Commerçon, a botanist accompanying French Navy admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville during his voyage of circumnavigation, and first published for him by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in 1789. It is possible that the first European to observe these plants was Jeanne Baré, Commerçon’s lover and assistant who was an expert in botany; because she was not allowed on ship as a woman, she disguised herself as a man in order to make the journey(and thus became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe).”

So, promise to lay off this soon, but we wanted to quickly share some photos from our opening weekend at MooShoes Los Angeles. The space is finally complete and we’ve got our opening day and our first event under our belt now.

If you find yourself in southern California, swing on by and say hey. We’re at 3116 Sunset in Silver Lake and open seven days a week. You can see more photos and follow along as we go on our MooShoes LA Instagram account too.

For anyone not already in know, here are all the details from the original announcement earlier this year.

And yes, we’re very much still running raven + crow studio.

A hearty congratulations to same-sex couples in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin who may now be legally wed due to the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear cases from those states seeking to keep their same-sex marriage bans in place. And an equally hearty thanks to the Supreme Court justices who catapulted those states into the cultural, ethical here-and-now.

What’s more, this ruling may clear the war more similar ruling in other states. According to CNN:
“Experts say its refusal to hear the cases from those five states also means that six more states — Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas, West Virginia, and Wyoming — could soon have to lift their bans on same-sex marriage, because they are covered by the same circuit appeals courts that initially struck down the prohibitions.”

We’re digging into our own graphic archives for this tribute, way back to the summer of 2011, when New York State passed the Marriage Equality Act.

So welcome to the 21st century, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. We’re happy to have you.

Tomorrow, our first major labor of love since founding our own company comes to fruition.

Tomorrow we officially open the doors to MooShoes Los Angeles, the first expansion for OG purveyors of vegan shoes and longtime friends + clients, Erica + Sara Kubersky.

Obviously, the company itself is a longtime passion for Erica + Sara, with origins in the sisters’ shared childhood compassion for animals. But  now, after nearly ten years of growing MooShoes’ brand professionally and spending just as many years building lasting friendships with Erica + Sara, Katie + I have excitedly taken MooShoes Los Angeles under our wings as our own, choosing the lines we carry, designing the space, and working to create an identity for MooShoes here that reflects both its universally compassionate roots and Los Angeles markedly…Los Angeles vibe.

So, correct—no rain boots.

In short, we’re excited about this, folks.

MooShoes Los Angeles is located at 3116 Sunset in Silver Lake and opens for the first time Saturday at 11AM.

Come by and see this guy if you get a chance.

I’m not saying we’re World War Z-esque Brad Pitts or anything (how cool that the protagonist in that story is a UN worker though?), but we have done a good bit of work with the United Nations over the years.

We told you a couple weeks back about the print + Web publications we created for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; even more recently, we wrapped up a longterm print project for the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund—their 2013 Annual Report.

We started in on the concept for the piece way back at the beginning of this year, working with their communications team to envision a more image-forward, streamlined publication that could more easily be digested by their audience. Meaning leaner on text content, heavier on attention-grabing photos and the visual real estate dedicated to them, and a lot more creative translation of data to understandable graphics.

You can see more accurate, less arty photos of the report in our portfolio, where you’ll also be able to find some of our other work for various UN offices.

Okay, for the sake of newcomers or any souls who’ve been graced by the absence of our life stories of late, quick recap—Katie + I have been working over the past few months to open MooShoes Los Angeles for longtime friends + clients, Erica + Sara Kubersky, who started their vegan footwear + accessory store MooShoes in NYC way back in 2001.

For anyone interested in the minutia, feel free to take a look at our original announcement back in June, complete with official press release. Here’s a succinct list of answers to anticipated questions for everyone else:

• Yes we will still be pursuing and even expanding our primary pursuit and longtime company, raven + crow studio, the Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based graphic design studio that excels at not being jerks;

• No, we have not, in fact, had much time to sleep, hang out with friends, or play Super Mario Brothers lately; yes, this saddens us greatly,but we believe it to be for a greater good;

• Our principal role at MooShoes Los Angeles is that of Creative Directors, so we’ve designed the space and worked with the contractor to make those ideas into real world environments, expanding the MooShoes brand we’ve worked to grow for nearly ten years now;

• Additionally, we’ve hired an awesome staff, so come by and say hi; we’ll definitely be at the store from time to time too, especially early on, so come by and give us a hi-five and/or slice of vegan pizza;

• No, we do not anticipate hosting an inordinate number of stray cats at the store—all cats should be shipped directly to the New York location;

• Yes, you do look good in those pants.

One of the tasks we took on with the new space was designing a custom wallpaper for the store featuring hand-illustrated lettering and images of animals from the wild kingdom along with a couple of our favorite companion animals—former NYC store cat Bowery + co-owner Erica Kubersky’s dog Libby.

Last week, we got a request via Instagram to make digital wallpapers for smart phones, tablets, and the like out of that wallpaper. Here, we’re kindly obliging.

Click—or right-click to download—the various icons to the right according to your desired device. These are clearly pretty iOS-/Apple-centric, but what do you want? We’re graphic designers, man.

Honestly though, they should translate decently to Windows devices too. If they don’t, drop us a line and let us know what you’ve got—we’ll make an adjusted version and let you know when it’s up.

We’re hoping to do more with the pattern down the road, so stay tuned.

And remember—MooShoes Los Angeles opens this Saturday! Come on by if you’re in the area!

If you’ve been a guest at our house in the past months, you might have noticed a new addition to our home decor—this elaborate, extremely heavy, handmade quilt in our guest room. No, it’s not a faux antique we paid hundreds of dollars for at Anthropologie, it’s actually a bit of a family heirloom that my maternal grandmother maybe made for me?

You see, this past year, as we ventured out to move our lives cross-country to California, my mother made a much-appreciated trip north from her home in North Carolina to meet us along the way. She’d asked me beforehand if I’d have any interest in taking an old family quilt off her hands and, being a lover functional family keepsakes AND pre-Etsy hand-made stuff, I’d happily agreed.

After a lovely couple days of lunches and slightly embarrassing childhood stories, my mother suddenly remembered the quilt. Not really remembering what the thing looked like at all, I was expecting something pretty tame. But the thing she produced and handed over was much less a bedcover to keep warm in the night and much more a piece of hand-crafted art that even the most crafty of crafters would be lucky to call their own work. By my eye, that is. I don’t know the first thing about quilt-making, but I do know that this quilt is awesome-looking.

But rather than pass along some endearing, heart-warming tale about how each square represented a segment in time in the lives that led up to my own or how the images were linked to iconography in our family’s history or something like that, my mother unceremoniously told me, handing it over: “Your grandmother made this when you were born. So, I guess she wanted you to have it?”

…cool. I’ll take it!

She did mention that my grandmother had made it over the course of a long period of time leading up to my birth and that it was what was called a Cathedral style quilt, made using Cathedral Windows.

According to the all-knowing collective consciousness of Wikipedia:
“Cathedral Windows is a block type that uses reverse appliqué using large amounts of folded muslin, and features modular blocks of an interlocking circular design that frame small squares or diamonds of colorful light-weight cotton. The volume of fabric is high, and the tops are heavy. Because of the weight and the insulating value of the base fabric, these tops often are assembled without batting (thus need no quilting stitches) and sometimes have no backing. Such a quilt may be called a ‘counterpane’ and may serve mainly as a decorative ‘bedspread’.”

Wanting to show the thing off though, we skipped that decorative counterpane bit, making common use of it when guests visit in the colder nights that frequent us in all but the warmer months. I think my grandmother would approve.

She might not approve so much of the fact that our very elderly, slightly oozy cat with chronic ear problems, Allister, has adopted the quilt as his own, making a beeline for the guest room any time the guest bed’s made and the door opens.

But who are we to deny an old cat one of his few pleasures? That thing’s probably easy to clean, right?

Right?

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’”

John Steinbeck, East of Eden