Spotted: Simple Blueprint

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I was catching up on some blog reading and while scrolling through one of my favourites — Simple Blueprint — I spotted issue 4 topping a stack of Joanna Swanson's magazines. What a gorgeous living space! How nice to know that something I made is "living" in such a place. Thank you, Joanna.


Joanna is an art director and stylist: view her portfolio here. You can see more images of her apartment on Jane Flanagan's blog Ill Seen Ill Said. There's a nice feature called "Where we blog from" — who doesn't want to look into others' spaces?

Incredible news!

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I found out a few hours ago and this news needed some time to sink in. I still can't believe that I'm posting this amazing news... UPPERCASE is one of 16 finalists in the annual Society of Publication Designers' Magazine of the Year category!!! And what a category! To be listed along with such iconic publications as The New York Times Magazine, Bon Appetit, Wired, GQ, Esquire, and Time... and well-respected award-winning art directors such as Fred Woodward, Deb Bishop, Matthew Lenning, Janet Froelich and Scott Dadich... to be included amongst these people and publications is certainly the high point in my career as a designer and more than I could have expected for a small, year-old, independent magazine from Western Canada.

Thank you to the panel of judges who took time to discover our relatively unknown magazine and decided to recognize it in such a manner.

A heartfelt thank you to editor-at-large Deidre Martin and to Jenny Tzanakos and my husband, Glen Dresser. And to our generous contributors, photographers and illustrators and other enthusiastic collaborators: thank you for sharing your talents and helping to make UPPERCASE a magazine with outstanding content and an inspiring publication to design. Thank you to our subscribers and stockists for keeping us going!

 

From the SPD.org website:

Magazine of the Year is the highest annual award SPD grants. It is given to the art director whose magazine demonstrates the most effective and imaginative use of design, typography, illustration and photography to promote the editorial message. The category is judged entirely by itself during the first day of judging, as the jury pores over three different issues from each entry in order to get a sense of both the highest high points and the steady consistencies the magazine the readers rely upon. Those scores, from the entire jury, created this pool of finalists for the jury to sift through again during the final round of judging on day three.

The sixteen finalists we share here are representative of this year's strong and vibrant entries in the category, showing a wide and varied range of editorial challenges and solutions. Each is now officially a Merit winner for Magazine of the Year; from these sixteen we will announce the Magazine of the Year Medal Finalists on Friday, February 12th (this Friday! check back soon!) along with all the other Print Medal Finalists (so really: check back Friday for the FULL LIST OF PRINT FINALISTS ON THE SITE).

Our heartiest congratulations to each of these magazines and their creative teams, representing the best of the field from 2009, presented here in no special order other than alphabetical because we're like that:

Blender
Creative Director: Dirk Barnett
Director of Photography: David Carthas

Bon Appétit
Design Director: Matthew Lenning

Cookie
Design Director: Kirby Rodriguez
Art Directors: Alex Grossman, Kristina DiMatteo
Director of Photography: Darrick Harris

ESPN The Magazine
Creative Director: Siung Tjia
Director of Photography: Catriona Ni Aolain

Esquire
Design Director: David Curcurito
Director of Photography: Michael Norseng

GQ
Design Director: Fred Woodward
Director of Photography: Dora Somosi

More
Creative Director: Deb Bishop
Director of Photography: Stacey Baker

New York
Design Director: Chris Dixon
Director of Photography: Jody Quon

The New York Times Magazine
Design Director: Arem Duplessis
Deputy Art Director: Gail Bichler
Director of Photography: Kathy Ryan

Real Simple
Creative Director: Janet Froelich
Design Directors: Ellene Wundrok, Cybele Grandjean
Photo Director: Casey Tierney

T, The New York Times Style Magazine
Creative Director: David Sebbah
Director of Photography: Kathy Ryan

Time
Art Director: Arthur Hochstein
Director of Photography: Kira Pollack

Uppercase
Creative Director: Janine Vangool

W
Design Director: Edward Leida
Art Director: Nathalie Kirsheh

Wired
Creative Director: Scott Dadich
Design Director: Wyatt Mitchell

Wired (Italy)
Art Director: David Moretti
Photo Editor: Francesca Morosini

Guest curator on Etsy!

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I'm thrilled to be a guest curator today on Etsy's inspiring blog, The Storque. (hmmm curious coincidence with the name, there!) I've selected just a few of my favourites and they're all creative people who have been involved in UPPERCASE magazine in one way or another. Click here to read the full post and to find links to great Etsy sellers! If you're a regular reader of UPPERCASE and have an Etsy shop, please feel free to include a link to your shop in the comments below.

(If you'd like to advertise your Etsy store in the winter issue, we have a full page dedicated to independent sellers. Ads are inexpensive, starting at just $72 Canadian for subscribers. Click here for more details and here to see past ad pages in our magazine.)

Thanks, Etsy, for providing so much inspiration, eye candy, connections and great purchases to us all!

Best in Show!

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Work/Life: the UPPERCASE directory of Canadian Illustration & Photography (2008) has won Best in Show at the National Unisource Annual and Corporate Report Show (NUARs), in the category of corporate publication. A few copies of the book will be on hand at the exhibition that will travel across Canada, and the remaining copies are available for $18 in our shop. Thanks to Darren Booth for the excellent cover and to Printcrafters for the great printing.

We're planning a follow-up to Work/Life, featuring international illustration talent, to be published next year. If you're interested in finding out more about participating, you can sign up here.

Love for Communication Arts

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Thank you to the fine folks at Communication Arts who have been very supportive of UPPERCASE's publishing endeavors. Today they've included a link to our magazine in their news section. And if you pick up the current issue (with an excellent timeline of the history of Communication Arts magazine) there is a mention of Work/Life: the UPPERCASE directory of Canadian Illustration & Photography in the Resources section. I've been reading CA since 1990 when I was a high school year book editor in small-town Saskatoon. It was my introduction to the profession of graphic design.

Type Tuesday: I love typography

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As you can imagine, I am very busy getting the launch issue of UPPERCASE magazine ready, not to mention a new show opening this Thursday! So for the day's type tuesday fix, I will direct you over to I Love Typography. I was thrilled to see their mention of our magazine on their fine pages.

Speaking of the magazine and pages, we have so much great content that I am increasing its page count!

A nice mention

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Writer Kiki Anderson has written an article about UPPERCASE on Suite 101. "The UPPERCASE venture seems to have done a lot in the brief time they've been open," she writes. "It makes you realize that if you do something you love, you stand a good chance of succeeding at it. Just work really hard."

This is certainly true! And we're going to be working even harder in 2009 to produce more UPPERCASE publications, unique products and original content. Deidre and I have some amazing ideas and collaborations in the works, and we can't wait to let you know what they are!