project updates

It's been a little while since we've posted, but thankfully it's because we have so much going on! I just picked up our great new grid notebook that we worked on with Jason Munn (see pg 108 of the June issue of Metropolis--it's all about him!) and some silly little notepads I drew from our friends at 1984 in Oakland. Very exciting to finally have those in hand. In the meantime though, we've been working like crazy getting a new batch of projects ready to turn in.

Lart kicked ass when she got back to Berlin and did an amazing job wrapping up her Come Along planner. It's hard to work with someone half a day away from you, but she was a champ and stayed up late many nights just to talk to us and get it done. Martine's been kicking down some extra work time too to finish up the Annual Vol. 2. She's added lots of little touches like scanning in security envelope patterns to use for borders and making small tree drawings to use in distinguishing the months. It will be the "cleanest" planner we've ever made, but still has our personalities poking through. Jeremy and I came up with a whole new batch of questions for every week, often crossing the line between thought-provoking and stupid. Hey, they're supposed to be fun right?

Last week we turned in Eun-Ha's Milky Elephant 2008 Postcard of the Month calendar to our friend Cindy at Favorite Printing and the pages are drying as we speak! It still has a ways to go before it will be done as it's the most complex binding job we've ever come up with. The pages need to be perforated twice, the cover needs to be drilled and scored in three places, and then the whole thing has to be stapled and glued. yowzer. It's a lot of work, but it's totally going to be worth it. We can't wait to see how it turns out!

proofs for Eun-Ha's calendar

On top of all that, I've been working with John Porcellino on coloring his Little Otsu 2008 calendar and mini-book, Through the Year with Gordon the Fox. We're so used to seeing John P's work for King-Cat in black and white--it's part of the simplicity that makes his work so moving--but we were inspired to do a full-color calendar with him because of the cover that he did for the Comics Journal a few years back. It was a lovely seasonal scene and it got us thinking that it would be great to have a whole year of such things. We've admired John's work for a long long time and got to know him during his stint in SF, and it's an honor to be working on this with him. I've done a lot of editing and cleaning on our projects, but I've never done anything like this before so I was looking forward to the challenge. It's been a pretty smooth process so far, although it has definitely pushed my limits as far as thinking in color. But John's been a great help and very encouraging. I think the end result is going to be great.

sneak peek at one of the month's with Gordon the Fox

Anyhow, I need to finish doing some revisions on a couple months today and we're finalizing the layout for Keri Smith's Non-planner Datebook. We got some much needed help from Kristine in putting it together and just have some minor details to take care of before wrapping it up and hopefully turning it in tomorrow. Did I mention we've been busy?