LAST CHANCE:
If you didn’t order one of our Grand Canyon Subway Posters last week, this weekend is your last chance, ever, to get one. The DFTBA website will stop taking orders at 11:59 p.m. MST on Sunday, August 25th, and we’ll total up the orders and get them printed the next week. Here’s the link to the product page: https://store.dftba.com/collections/semi-rad/products/grand-canyon-subway-map-poster
And here’s one last photo of the poster (clicking on it will also take you to the DFTBA order page):
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The folks at Musora asked jazz drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and his jazz ensemble to improvise a cover of Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box.” Listening to the band talk about how to approach it is pretty fascinating, and the end result is super fun. (video)
I draw pie charts for a living (sometimes! For actual clients! Like UltraSignup and Precision Fuel & Hydration), and I draw them by hand, which means I have to draw a circle, because pie charts are circular. Except drawing a circle is really hard. So one day several years ago, I just downloaded an image of a circle, and traced it with my Apple pencil on my iPad, which gave it that hand-drawn look, but it was still circular enough to not offend anyone. So for years, I’ve been tracing the same circle, because as I said above, drawing a circle is hard. So, I don’t want to oversell this 9-second video of this guy just casually drawing A PERFECT CIRCLE in the snow on a car’s back window WHILE FILMING IT ON HIS PHONE with his other hand, I absolutely must include it here because DAMN.
I’ve mentioned Jono Hey’s book Sketchplanations in this newsletter before, and how great he is at simultaneously illustrating and explaining concepts in a concise and approachable manner. I had the great honor of being a guest on the Sketchplanations podcast Jono does with Rob Bell and Tom Pellereau, and we talked about one of Jono’s Sketchplanations about finish lines.
[As a bonus, here’s Jono’s recent drawing of how to peel a Post-It note so it doesn’t start peeling off whatever you want/wanted it to stick to]
Novelist—ahem, arguably very successful novelist—Elif Shafak writes about the idea of a “writer’s writer” vs. a “reader’s writer.”
OK this is kind of fascinating, especially because the researchers expected to find the exact opposite: How TikTok is making you bored
I fight the urge to recommend music here, but my friend Bodie told me about LA LOM a ways back, and I have been eagerly awaiting their debut album, The Los Angeles League Of Musicians. I am happy to report that it is wonderful, and if you don’t find it endlessly enjoyable, you should probably not come over to my house in the next 4-6 weeks.
Maybe this will only hit home for other parents, but when illustrator Stephen Collins had to get rid of his three kids’ baby shoes in 2020, he decided to draw all of them, and the resulting drawing is … well, it will make you feel something, or it won’t. Which I guess is true of every piece of art ever created.
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