Sebago Lighthouse Boot

by Karen Day

Sebago's new Lighthouse boot is more city than seascape, a seemingly new trend for boat shoe aficionados and a natural extension of the trend among urbanites. On the heels of their collaboration with the street-savvy brand Vane New York, comes this hand sewn, leather lace-up, enticing both the nautical set and the trendsetting fashion crowd.

The boot's moccasin construction features distressed, waxy leather uppers treated with a scuffed down finish that reveals raw undertones and adds a natural dimension to the solid black or blue hue. The slip-resistant soles provide support on rainy days around town or maritime excursions, while the three-quarter leather sock lining makes going from dressed to barefoot a breeze.

Hitting stores and the Sebago website mid-May 2009, the Lighthouse will be available for $140. Sign up now to receive notification of its arrival.

Abe's Penny: A Micro-Magazine

by Brian Fichtner

Sisters Anna and Tess Knoebel started Abe's Penny, a micro-magazine, earlier this year as subtle reminder of communication in our pre-digital days, back when receiving a postcard from a friend on holiday was the sole means of keeping tabs on their adventures. More a series of flash cards than an actual magazine, Abe's Penny is a monthly volume of four postcards ($48 for six months) that subscribers receive one by one, every week. Each volume features a pairing of two artists, a series of images on the face coupled with a developing story on the reverse.

A week ago, I received my first card in the mail and have to admit feeling a mild sense of excitement, so I asked Anna a couple more questions about the project.

Where did this idea come from?
Tess and I wanted to make something that would resonate without requiring a huge time commitment, or even much effort to enjoy. The postcard comes right to your mailbox so all that's left for you to do is read it. When the next one comes, people go back to the previous ones, so engaging with the work becomes a process, but still doesn't require much time.

What does Abe's Penny signify?
We were thinking of Dickens and serials and the Penny Press. We also talked about how, if you pared down a magazine to its core, you're left with images and text, so using the word penny made sense, as money's smallest form. We decided to call it Abe's Penny because it's self-contained and referential, like postcards.

See the remainder of volume 1.2 after the jump.

Papercuts: You Can Have What You Want

by Lost At E Minor

The third album for Papercuts, You Can Have What You Want, highlights a strongly maturing Jason Robert Quever, who's still a nostalgic songwriter but is bringing a new level of mastery to his trademark sound in good form. Looking back to the first impression of the SF band in 2004, the lo-fi aesthetic of Mockingbird was a hazy and modern take on the old. A "vintage" concept in many respects, it expressed a sort of devoted appreciation for the faded era in music that rang loud throughout the mid-sixties.

Recalling the Zombies and perhaps some stony aftermath of love gone wrong, Papercuts' sound is all adrift in dreamland from start to end. With some heavy base lines and raspy drums—not to mention those chiming organ pipes—the music seems just right, in all the wrong ways, for that recent heartache.

Kidlandia Custom Maps For Kids

by Evan Orensten

Kidlandia, a website that lets you create personalized fantasy maps for kids, evolved from illustrator, entrepreneur and former Disney producer Brian Backus' intricate, personalized maps that he started making a few years ago.

His custom-made maps of fantasy kingdoms featured names and places that were part of the child's life, creating an endless source of fun and fantasy. He quickly realized that an online version with a much more accessible price point could bring greater joy to more families. The upshot was Kidlandia.

The easy-to-use site simply involves selecting one of the map styles and entering the name of the kid and anyone else you'd like, such as family, friends, pets, etc. The site automatically populates the map with towns and places named for variants on the names provided.

You can save and share the digital map for free, or order large prints starting at $40.

Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World's Most Influential Designers-Contest and Interview

by Evan Orensten

We recently sat down with Timothy O'Donnell to talk about his new book, "Sketchbook," a look at the role sketchbooks play in the creative process. We also have a copy to give away—see the end of the post for details.

Cool Hunting: As a designer you've kept your own notebooks for a long time. What role do they play in your design process?
Tim O' Donnell: I’m an inveterate doodler. I have a hard time sitting still without a pencil in my hand. Writing this book made me examine my own sketching for the first time. I don’t produce tight or linear sketches, I tend to flail around on paper. My sketches end up being a collision of to-do lists, caricatures, calligraphic swooshes, scribbles, etc. Looking at them after the fact, it’s often hard to determine what I had been thinking. But somehow the process of drawing around the problem helps me organize my thoughts; then when I sit at the computer, I have a foundation for the project figured out.

CH: Designers solve problems through storytelling. How do other designers' notebooks shed light into their creative process for telling stories?
TO: The book stems from the frustration I felt as a student, and to a large extent still feel now, with the glut of design annuals, magazines and blogs. There's so much work out there, and it's all presented in its best possible light, dispassionately laid out, photographed and captioned like a piece in a museum catalog. None of this hints at how "work-like" the creative process can be, or the moments of joy or despair as you wrestle with a design problem. Then, people all over the world see the same pieces of work and take inspiration from them, but all they can really be inspired by is the surface quality—the materials used, or the colors and typefaces chosen. There’s no insight into what led the initial designer to make those choices, the trail of thought which is so personal and specific to that person. I think that by telling the stories of how they ended up at a particular solution, the contributors to the book are being really brave in sharing their missteps or flounderings and admitting that these wonderful pieces of design are the result of a fairly random, non-linear process.

CH: There are a lot of great designers included in your book. How did you decide whom to include?
TO: I wanted the book to feature people from a broad range of disciplines, so I intentionally tried to find architects, photographers, product designers, etc., in addition to graphic designers. I'd had the idea for the book for a few years and kept a running wish-list of people I hoped would contribute. Of course once I reached out to them, some were unavailable or uninterested, and some just weren't sketchers. I had a great hour-long interview with Andrew Blauvelt from Walker Art Center which was fascinating, but sadly, he just isn't a doodler. That's one of the drawbacks to focusing on a “secret” side of a designer’s output—you don’t really know who's appropriate until you connect with them. A few people, Chris Bigg, Rob O'Connor from Stylorouge and Rian Hughes, were friends of mine that I knew kept notebooks, but the majority of the people involved I just reached out to because I loved their work. I was flattered that so many talented and busy people would take the time to dig out their notebooks from storage and share their private thought process with me.

CH: What was the most unexpected thing you learned making the book? What was the most interesting lesson learned?
TO: Sketchbook is my first book, so I learned a lot about publishing in general in a "trial by fire" sort of way. I was also surprised at how many different forms sketching takes. For example, Catalogtree from the Netherlands sketch out their intricate information graphics on a school chalkboard, and Lance Wyman and Morag Myerscough fill their studio walls with sketches until they're surrounded by them. In terms of learning, just having my ideas on the subject confirmed by so many designers was gratifying. The concept for the book hinges on my personal view that the physical act of sketching is still vital to the creative process, but I wasn’t sure how many people felt the same way. The outpouring of interest in the book, and being able to print interviews with people, like James Victore, Ralph Caplan and neurologist Frank Wilson, who echo my own view, was a strong proof of concept that took me a bit by surprise.

CH: Anything interesting from a design/production/printing point of view that you'd like to share?
TO: All of the text in the book needed to be black, so that when they produce foreign language editions, they can just swap out the black plate. I found this incredibly challenging, as one of my major design crutches is coloring type to liven up the page a bit. In hindsight, I'm glad that I had to work around this, and not just take the easiest route. Having said that, I did set the book in Clarendon and Futura, two fonts that I seem unable to move away from, so it wasn't all a stretch.

CH: Any other projects in the works?
TO: I do have another book in the works, fairly unlike this one. It’s sort of a typeface specimen book, if written by Edward Gorey. I think it’s amusing, we'll see if anyone else does!

Sketchbook is available at Amazon.

Cool Hunting has a copy of Sketchbook for one lucky reader who follows us on Twitter @coolhunting. We'll select a winner from our followers on Wednesday, 13 May 2009.