Celine Debray founded the Swiss-based company Sérendipité in early 2013, with a vision for a traveling bookstore that offers foreign magazines at creative events, such as antique fairs and design events.
In less than a year, Sérendipité's clientele has grown beyond events to include boutiques as well as individual customers who subscribe to their imported offerings.
This past fall, Celine moved the business from her home office into a large coworking space called Carbu that is shared with architects, photographers and other creative companies. (The current issue of UPPERCASE has a lot of inspiring content about the emerging trend of coworking.)
For customers in Europe, Sérendipité's sophisticated online shop is a reliable source of UPPERCASE and many other creative magazines.
On the west coast of Australia, Mr Sparrow, a shop belonging to Jelena Maticevic, is tucked away on a tree-lined side street off of one of Perth's main shopping strips. A mere forty-seven hours' drive east to the Sunshine Coast, you'll find the town of Cotton Tree, home to Tanya Northey and her shop, The Lovely Bird.
The Lovely Bird's entrance
These two shop owners met virtually when Jelena found The Lovely Bird's website and sent her an email.
"When I saw Tanya holding the keys to her shop on her website and her cheerful nature in her (website's) About section, I immediately wrote to her and introduced myself. I can't quite remember what I wrote but something along the lines of 'will you be my shop friend?'"
A bi-coastal friendship was born, nurtured via email and social media. Tanya and Jelena share ideas, collaborate on strategies and commiserate on the challenges of being an independent retailer.
"It's great having someone who is just there to listen, and isn't someone around you who is emotionally or financially invested in your shop. I find Tanya tells me stories I can relate to, rather than trying to give me tips on how to do it better! It's both reassuring, inspiring and motivating all at the same time. Incredible really, given we haven't even met... yet! :)"
UPPERCASE at The Lovely Bird
“(Our shop) is like a little bit of Etsy and Frankie Magazine all mashed together.”
— The Lovely Bird's website
We noticed the similarity between these two shops when they both applied to be UPPERCASE stockists within a few days of each other. If you follow their Instagram feeds closely, you'll see this isn't the first time that great minds have thought alike! Both shops carry delightful assortment of home goods, stationery and clothing.
The opening of the (tongue in cheek) Alberta Illustration Awards is tonight at RandM
Collective on the lower level of Art Central in downtown Calgary
100 7 Ave SW from 5-8 pm. For previews and more information go to
randmcollective.com.
If you're the type of person whose day is improved by things like antler art, modern bird houses, or a even a mug that celebrates the love of squirrels, then make a point to visit Paramour Bungalow the next time you're in Evanston, Illinois. Meaning 'lover of the home', Paramour Bungalow is the sister business to a successful boutique hair salon called RED 7 SALON. The store was born out of a desire to share the aesthetic that made the salon such a pleasant place to be. The result is a shop that is full of the unique, charming and quirky details that can inject personality into your home.
Here are a few things from Paramour Bungalow that show a kinship with UPPERCASE's aesthetics:
A charming fox-shaped book-end in the same orange as the UPPERCASE office decor.
This serving platter is reminiscent of the cover of UPPERCASE #13.
“My philosophy is buy what is unique, creative, not everywhere and has something that people would/should love in their homes. there has to be a great STORY behind a product that makes it stand out. ”
Greetings from the back of the theatre at the DesignThinkers conference in
Toronto. I'm looking forward to the keynotes this morning and bringing you
updates and posts throughout the conference. Follow along on Twitter and
Instagram, too.
I've sent a whopping 1200 free copies of UPPERCASE magazine which are
available on the long table when you first enter after getting your
conference badges. If you don't see UPPERCASE on the table, just ask
someone in a yellow tshirt to open a fresh box!
If you're not at DesignThinkers you can use the code #rgddt for $15 off
subscriptions/renewals today! http://upperc.se/VV6ICt
If you'd like to connect with me here at the conference, just send me a
tweet! @uppercasemag
A documentary by student filmmaker Hanah Ryu Chung about the present and future of books. Shot in Toronto, it features lots of independent booksellers (including UPPERCASE stockist Type Books) as well as bookbinders and letterpress printers. Nicely done. {via The Travelling Bookbinder}
Hooray! The Sign Painter project on Kickstarter has reached its goal and still has a few days left. I couldn't resist the $200 pledge level:
Your name, logo or design hand painted AND CUSTOM-DESIGNED BY CHES PERRY on an 18"x24" show-card plus a professional photo and video taken of your sign being lettered for however you wish to use it: website, print or to show your friends how awesome it is that you had your logo or design hand painted by a old time sign artist. Also includes the sign painting instructional DVD to learn how to sign paint, techniques and tricks (fall delivery date on DVD).
Since it is International Typewriter Day, it seems fitting to share with you a project that I have in the works...
A richly illustrated book full of never-before published typewriter memorabilia, intriguing historical documents and entertaining anecdotes, The Typewriter: a Graphic History of the Beloved Machine is a beautiful ode to an all but obsolete creative companion.
It is an ambitious 224-page hardcover book which I hope to fund through Kickstarter next month. The concept for the book is one I have been refining for many years and I can't wait to share more about it with you. In the next few weeks, I'll be shooting and editing a video in preparation for the project launch on Kickstarter.
If you're not already signed up for the UPPERCASE e-newsletter, please do that here and you'll be informed when the Kickstarter project goes live. If you'd like to help spread the word about The Typewriter: a Graphic History of the Beloved Machine, please drop me a line! The success of a Kickstarter campaign relies not only on the strength of the project concept, but also the support it gets through social media so your help is very much appreciated.
Top two cakes by Petit Trianon made in honour of The Regional Assembly of Text's 3rd and 4th anniversaries. The bottom cake is by Debbie Ross Cakes.
June 23 marks the 144th anniversary of the date Christopher Latham Sholes received a U.S. patent on the typewriter. It's International Typewriter Day, so grab your portable and type something! And if you have lots of time and patience... bake a cake!
Gingerbread typewriter by Susanna Blåvarg via Baked Ideas.
An authentic typewriter cake made in 1967.
Readers of this blog and UPPERCASE magazine will know that I have a passion for typewriters. In honour of International Typewriter Day, I invite you to peruse my past typewriter posts.
In late March, Kasey and Nick from Evernote came to Calgary to shoot a video about how I use Evernote to run UPPERCASE magazine. If you're not familiar with the service, Evernote's slogan "Remember everything" sums it up. With online, desktop and mobile access, you can create and categorize notes. Anything that you want quick and easy access to, from receipts to saved web images to writing to lists to audio notes, you can save to Evernote. There's a detailed post on their blog about how I use the service. The tool has been invaluable to me (I've been using it since issue #2) and I urge you to give it a try. It's free, though I use the premium version for increased storage and other useful features.
A few notes about the video:
0:03 My necklace is by Urban Legend. We're featuring jeweller Kateri Morton in issue #15.
1:23 That's my storage space in the lower level of Art Central. Yes, I do heavy lifting, too.
1:38 For non-Calgarians, that's Stephen Avenue, a pedestrian street a block from my studio. I'm trying to walk purposefully and not look at the camera.
1:38 Astute viewers will note that I took a really weird route to get into Art Central, but a scenic one!
1:50 Eleanor and I are discussing the felt pennants we've ordered to coincide with issue #14. From The People's Pennant, more details on this coming soon...
2:11 When we went to The Daily Globe to shoot, UPPERCASE contributor Nikki Sheppy just happened to be there. Another serendipitous moment for UPPERCASE magazine.
The Heads of State are masters of saying a lot with very little—and without sacrificing style or visual interest. They're special presenter's at this summer's TypeCon in Milwaukee:
"For ten years, Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers have been working together as The Heads of State for clients as diverse as The New York Times, Starbucks, the School of Visual Arts, Penguin, and bands like R.E.M., Wilco, and The National. Throughout those years they’ve had an up and down relationship with typography. This talk will feature various typographic tales in which our heroes fall in love with letters, rebel against fonts, forsake letterforms to become illustrators, and then beg for forgiveness."
Are you going to TypeCon this year? We're looking for a few correspondents to report back for the blog. Leave us a comment with your website or send us an email for more details.
The international design company Pentagram recently turned 40. To mark this anniversary, the nineteen current partners designed posters for each of those years. The only rule for the design was the use of black, white and red. To view all 40 posters, visit the company's blog.
From the traditional pixels of needlecraft to offline renderings of our ubiquitous screens, the pixel motif can be interpreted in creative ways. Submit your perfect pixels to UPPERCASE and they might be published in our fall issue. Files should be at least 6 inches wide at 300dpi, uploaded here and named "lastname-firstname-01.jpg". Please include a word document with your full name, contact info and a few sentences about you and your piece. Deadline: July 15.
We're compiling the big mailing list for the next issue—get your new subscription or renewal in asap to ensure that you get the new issue as quickly as possible!
Issue #14 is about creative play: wordplay, concrete poetry, the typography of sport, plus a BIG feature about creative careers in children's books.
In my house, the children's book "I Want My Hat Back" is a favourite. I love the simplicity of the layout and design and we all love the story about a bear searching for his stolen hat. Written and illustrated by Jon Klassen, I knew that Jon's combination of simplicity and sophistication was just the thing for our next cover. We are very fortunate that Jon created the playful cover of our summer issue.
Here's an animated preview of "I Want My Hat Back". Note the turtle!
Plant three trees with cyan, magenta and yellow blossom in a triangle. When the blossom drops, the colors mix.
Materials: CMYK soft drinks (Cyan – Gatorade Cool Blue / Magenta – Fernandes Cherry Bouquet / Yellow – Orangeade / Black – Coca-Cola), jerrycans, socle, cup dispenser
Universal FlagTime well spent exploring Rotterdam-based artist Helmut Smit.
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