By Mike, on May 2nd, 2010 Thank you for your interest – please note that this course took place in summer 2010. Many thanks to all who participated!
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Mike Simpson is offering a free online course. The topic is “Do It Yourself” Graphics and Marketing. iDIY and uCan too! You are invited to participate! (Printable PDF [...]
By Mike, on April 23rd, 2010
Click image to view larger version.
This is two images layered in Photoshop – taken on Carlton St just west of College and Yonge, downtown Toronto.
Taken with Motorola cellphone.
View more of my photos!
By Mike, on March 11th, 2010 Yesterday I was walking along “West Queen St. West”, the hipper cousin to the commercial strip known as Queen West, and I came across a funky furniture store with some real Canadian flavour and heavy style going on (hence the name “Style Garage” I guess!). Style Garage has been at the corner of Queen and [...]
By Mike, on March 5th, 2010 4 famous books on Presentations
I have just finished a book review on Garr Reynold’s inspirational Presentation Zen. I summarize a few of the key ideas in the book and offer some links to online presentations at Slideshare and Ted Talks.
Presentations have fascinated me for the last year, coinciding with my early video [...]
By Mike, on February 22nd, 2010 Mike and "Driver 8" magazine – Hot off the Press! Photo by Ian Robertson
I’ve been involved with publishing and DIY enterprise for a long time— almost two decades! A colleague recently scanned some negatives and I thought I’d share a cool photo with you.
This was my first apartment in Toronto, circa 1990, and [...]
By Mike, on February 12th, 2010 The branding and identity work for the Olympics features some stunning illustration. Kudos to the Vancouver Olympic committee!
Today I fired up Google Chrome and saw the Olympic graphic (or “doodle”) Google created for their homepage. (It’s pictured at the end of this article). The image is subtle and appealing. It doesn’t even [...]
By Mike, on January 28th, 2010 Once upon a time, in the days of university when I was going to school, and playing in a rock band, and booking shows, and doing some fanzines and graphics work, I bumped into a friend of a friend. We exchanged laughs and email addresses. His email address was unforgettable. It was “ican@ucant.com”. I had [...]
By Mike, on January 11th, 2010
"World's Tallest" Illustration by Strongandfree.ca
From our old building we could see, through a sliver of highrises, Toronto’s downtown and the CN Tower. Now we look west to the green canopy of the west end and if we peer south from the balcony edge we have a view of the immensity of [...]
By Mike, on January 9th, 2010 I have been doing this blog quite a while – I just reached the amazing mark of 50 posts! Some blog nearly everyday but I tend to post about twice a month so it’s taken about two years to get to this point. I’ve learned quite a bit along the way and I’d like to [...]
By Mike, on December 18th, 2009 Art by a Chinese artist named Liu Bolin. He specializes in camouflage painting. His work challenges us to think about identity and ambiguity in contemporary Chinese society. Click to view larger image.
It’s no secret that China has long been the world’s factory and is increasingly looking to change its position from that of producer [...]
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Mike Simpson is a teacher, writer, musician and designer from Toronto, Canada. He is a new media enthusiast and has been "strongandfree" since 1996.
Mike is working on a hybrid music and video project called "City Symphony" and teaching at George Brown College.
Check out Strong+Free for his Design and Media work.
Contact him:
mike @ strongandfree.ca
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