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Resources

I’ve compiled this handy dandy page for you full of people, places, and things that I love. I try to update this whenever I find something new and awesome, and only endorse things that I’ve personally used / tried. I’m not getting paid by any of these companies to promote anything, just wanted to point you in the direction of awesomeness.

Skillshare asked me to put together a class to bring my lettering knowledge to the masses and I couldn’t be more excited! For a mere $25 you can learn how I approach lettering projects from research to final execution and learn how to create your own fancy drop cap based on your favorite book. Sign up here!

I’ve started offering office hours for consultations and student portfolio reviews! These appointments take place on Wednesday mornings every week and can be held in person or over Skype. Rates are $25 for a half-hour student portfolio review / Q & A, or $150 for an hour-long professional consultation. Appointments can be booked here.

    General

  • Bella Figura

    Send all brides-to-be here. Beautiful letterpress invitation designs by yours truly and dozens of other designers.

  • Boxcar Press

    Where I buy my letterpress plates.

  • Briar Press

    Great site for keeping up with Letterpress news and to peruse / post classifieds for buying and selling type and presses.

  • Design Observer
  • Design Sponge
  • Favorites: NYC

    A google map of my favorite spots in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Updated infrequently, but full of good eats and shopping.

  • Grain Edit
  • Humble Pied

    Mig Reyes’s site showcasing inspirational creatives sharing one piece of advice over video chat.

  • Inker Linker

    A resource I created to help find printers. You can sort based on method, price, location, popularity, and more.

  • Lovely Package
  • Swiss Miss

    Tina Roth Eisenberg’s smile-making blog of design and gift-giving inspiration.

  • The Dieline
  • Under Consideration

    A network of great design-centric sites including Brand New, FPO: For Print Only, Art of the Menu, and Quipsologies.

Type-centric

Web-centric

  • A List Apart

    A wonderful site covering all things relating to the web with well-written articles by the field’s top practitioners.

  • Codecademy
  • Code Academy
  • CSS Tricks

    Chris Coyier’s excellent and extremely helpful site with articles, code snippets, and other goodies.

  • Don’t Fear the Internet

    A site I created with Russ Maschmeyer to teach basic HTML and CSS to Non-Web Designers.

  • Kirby CMS

    I use Kirby as the content management system for my website. It’s amazing.

  • Method and Craft

    Web-centric interviews and articles “exploring the creative mind and beauty within each pixel.”

  • Microformats

    A resource for semantic HTML in general and microformats.

  • Mozilla Developers Network

    An open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Top online documentation for HTML, CSS, JS, DOM.

  • Awwwards

    Pure web candy.

  • WordPress Codex

    A massive site full of articles and forums as well as extensive documentation of all Wordpress features that is relatively easy to read and learn from.

  • Zeldman

    Web Design news and information since 1995.

Compatriots

Places I love

Things I’ve Bought That I Love

Work Stuff

  • 15” MacBook Pro Retina

    This is my primary computer, it’s super quick and much lighter than their regular MacBook Pros. Also, since Adobe updated their software to retina resolution, it’s super awesome.

  • 27” iMac + 24” Apple Display

    This is my office set up. I am super spoiled having so much screen space to work with. Generally the iMac is my “work space” and the extra screen is for distracting things like twitter and browsers, or hulu and netflix if I’m working late and need Olivia Benson to help me through it.

  • iPhone 5

    iPhones. We all haz them. I use mine all the time and if you have a 4, 4s, or 5 the camera is good enough that it doubles as a scanner for sketches (not for high res artwork). I use Photoshop Express to crop and adjust my images before sending them off to clients. See software / apps for my favorite other ways to use it.

  • Mobee Inductive Charger

    I used to go through mouse batteries like crazy but now I can charge my mouse overnight. This thing is awesome.

  • Bose Noise-canceling Headphones

    These things are just the best. If you travel at all, you MUST own them.

  • Lexmark E260D

    Laser printers are shockingly useful for type designers and letterers. You have to print stuff out often to see how it looks and this is a good and cheap laser printer.

  • Epson 3800/3880 Printer

    Really impressed with the quality of prints you get from this printer. I did a lot of print on demand high end inkjet prints at one point and this thing never failed me. Also because all of the ink colors are separate cartridges, you go through a surprisingly little amount of ink. It took a number of months until I had to replace even one cartridge.

  • Leuchtturm Sketchbooks
  • Canon 5d Mark II

    This camera was well worth the investment. I feel like it’s impossible to take a bad photo with this camera. I bought it primarily to shoot work, but end up using it as my main travel camera despite the size. If you get it, make sure you also get Lightroom for handling the RAW files. It comes with its own program but Lightroom is more fun to use.

Software / Apps

  • Dropbox

    Dropbox completely changed the way I work and how I organize files. I cannot recommend this service highly enough.

  • Rdio

    I love rdio. Streaming music...making collaborative playlists...it’s the bee’s knees.

  • Rackspace

    I host all of my side projects on a Rackspace Cloud account. Rackspace has been absolutely wonderful to work with, their customer service is AMAZING and I never have outages even when I push a lot of traffic to the sites.

  • Laughing Squid

    I host my portfolio site through these guys, who use Rackspace servers, but are set up to handle my weirdo .is domain and are super reasonably priced.

  • Kirby CMS

    I use Kirby as the content management system for my website. It’s amazing.

  • Sign Now

    Great web app for signing documents.

  • Text Expander

    Saves oodles of time in email.

  • Cloud App

    Automatically upload screen shots for quickie sharing. I use this extensively to get fast critiques from friends and clients.

  • Basecamp

    Good for project management, I use this to help organize TDC comings and goings.

  • Big Cartel / Pulley App

    My store is Big Cartel with their Pulley App integration for digital downloads.

  • Wordpress

    Most of the sites I’ve made are made on a Wordpress backend beginning with Elliot Jay Stock’s Starkers Theme. I’ve since migrated over to Kirby as the primary CMS that I build from, but each has their own pros and cons.

  • Text Mate

    Great text editor for html, css, and tons of other languages. I have yet to convert to Coda.

  • Red Pen

    This is a really easy site for uploading images to get client feedback on. I haven’t used it extensively but it just seems so easy to use and you can’t beat the copywriting on the homepage.

Life Stuff

  • Breville Dual Boiler

    This thing is just the best. Makes amazing espresso. Worth every penny.

  • Presso

    Great espresso maker for home or office. It’s all manual, looks nice, and is super easy to clean.

  • Baratza Virtuoso Grinder

    A good coffee grinder is shockingly important for making decent coffee, especially if you make french press coffee. Getting the grinds to be course but uniform just isn’t possible with a blade grinder or even a mediocre bur grinder. This is a great burr grinder recommended to me from some legit coffee snobs.

  • Breville Electric Kettle

    Looks good, boils water, nuff said.

  • Travel Clothing Steamer

    Ugly but works incredibly well. You’ll never iron again.

  • Panasonic Lumix GF1

    An amazing camera for travel—it’s very compact, shoots RAW, and has interchangeable lenses (the 20mm pancake lens is the best and most useful).

  • Panasonic 1080p Projector

    When Russ and I moved to San Francisco we decided against getting a flatscreen TV and did a bunch of research to find a good projector. This was definitely the best we found and the picture quality is AWESOME. It also is pretty nice looking and far less huge than some other models we were scoping out. Also, because the fan/vent is in the front instead of the back you can push it right up against the wall.

  • BenQ Projector

    This is a less expensive projector that I bought for the studio for presentations and other stuff. It’s not 1080p HD, but is still good and gets the job done.

  • Mission Bicycle

    Custom made bicycles, I am obsessed with mine and get compliments on it constantly.

  • Keep Cup

    Customizable travel coffee mugs from Australia. These are great because they come in a few sizes—I only need the little one for my espresso drinks.