By Mike, on September 27th, 2011 Early this year I interviewed Ray Larabie, a Canadian font designer (from Ottawa), who lives and works in Nagoya, Japan. Ray studied animation at Sheridan college and worked initially in the video game industry. He runs a successful company called Typodermic. I knew about Ray back in my early days of design (mid 90s) because [...]
By Mike, on September 23rd, 2011 There is a quite a buzz surrounding the arrival of a large exhibition of work by General Idea at the Art Gallery of Ontario. GI were a Toronto-based art collective, founded in 1969 and comprised of: AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. They were renowned for their irreverance and satirical wit – [...]
By Mike, on July 6th, 2011
Cinemagraph by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg – http://cinemagraphs.com
I found an absolutely stunning bit of photography and animation on the web today. I went to google and searched for “sophisticated GIF” and found some work that blew me away. Each shot is like a time capsule, a magical micro-moment – and they’re [...]
By Mike, on May 22nd, 2011 "I want it all" – Marian Bantjes
If you get a chance you must head to the Onsite gallery at OCADU and catch the Marian Bantjes exhibit. Marian recently published, “I Wonder,” a beautifully printed and design “illuminated manuscript” (as design guru Steven Heller has described it). She is definitely one of Canada’s hottest [...]
By Mike, on January 25th, 2011 Mike has been an earnest student of film since he studied the “History of Cinema” and “Italian Cinema” at university. Mike is an aspiring filmmaker with a few short videos under his belt. Currently he is working on “City Symphony” – a hybrid documentary / music video that includes music by his alter-ego “Mikooshka.”
Here [...]
By Mike, on October 15th, 2010 It was with great excitement that one day early this summer a search for “Douglas Coupland” at the Toronto Public Library website yielded an amazing find: “Extraordinary Canadians – Marshall McLuhan.” This is a book by Coupland which explores the life and ideas of a most iconic Canadian. And if you are familiar with Douglas [...]
By Mike, on September 9th, 2010 Two art show / exhibitions open this Friday that explore the geography of Ontario, one focusing on the man-made spit at the foot of Leslie St. in Toronto, and the other on the remote wilds of northern Ontario, north of Thunder Bay by and reached via Highway 11.
I don’t really frequent art openings and [...]
By Mike, on July 30th, 2010 I am a huge proponent of the multiculture. It informs my design and my world outlook. I also teach English and through my teaching have met students from literally every corner of the globe. In my artistic life, as Mikooshka (my musical alter-ego), I craft music which crosses over from genres like reggae, rock and [...]
By Mike, on June 14th, 2010 I’m a teacher and designer offering a free online course for people interested in developing skills in areas like Graphic Design and Marketing. I’m offering the course to people who are not artists, but who have “artistic” or “artsy” tendencies and would like to develop some materials to promote themselves, their business or their organization.
[...]
By Mike, on June 10th, 2010 It’s amazing to think about the importance of Photoshop in my life. As a graphic designer I have fired up Photoshop nearly every day for the last ten years, and for a few years prior to that, friends were doing the “firing up” and I was just along for the amazing ride.
In 1996, with [...]
|
|