Check out the video for a little taste of how Ken Barnes begins his type construction. His logo process usually begins with creating custom type. One of the many cool opportunities we are exposed to on this trip is being able to see how designers work, their thought process, the tools they use and just the way they solve problems.

In Seattle we met with some awesome people. These two in particular, Ken Barnes and Julie Pogue, helped us out tremendously. They’re both super creative designers. Julie has some very beautiful illustrations and design work. Julie and Ken are a pretty unique couple, not many couples work together like they do. It’s very cool to see their dynamic when it comes together in one of their pieces. Ken focuses on brand creation, interior design and branded architecture. He has done some awesome work for restaurants, where he is involved with every aspect of building the brand from the floor up. Literally, he showed us floor plan layouts, mural designs, menus, logos, packaging — everything. Hopefully one of these days we can get involved with a project that allows us to take on such a wide range of design.

On our way to Glacier National Park, we found bears! Real, live, giant black bears. Our car was our cage and we drove through an area that housed four of ‘em. It was about as close to real bears as you can get without feeling like a zoo or getting eaten. Photo quality is shoddy because we weren’t allowed to roll the windows down. We practice good bear safety.

Oh, look! Here we are throwing rocks into the glacier lake.

Glacier National Park is easily one of the most beautiful places in the country, the rest of Montanna is a whole lot of nothing. Okay…that’s not entirely true, there are fields of hay. Cows. Five small “towns”. Suicidal deer that hang out next to (on) the interstate. And somehow, there are people scattered about the countryside — living. Needless to say, there wasn’t much for typography or anything really graphic design related but the environmental visuals were incredible, at least in Glacier National Park.

One lane road for most of the drive up top. On the left, the driver could easily touch the rock face and on the right side of the car, the passenger could look out over the ledge to a huge drop below. At times there wasn’t even a guard-rail. We also found a water-fall at the top of the mountain and decided it’d be a good shower spot. Glacier water is cold! Check out the video.

We also drove through hours of this.

There isn’t a whole lot in Hayden, Idaho, but we did manage to find some very cool people and do a bit of trade work. We stayed with Dave Van Etten who let us crash in his basement. Dave and his family were super nice and even cooked for us. We also had a chance to meet with Jesh Barlow and Ben Tran. Even though we are in a small town, everyone we met with here is working with clients across the country, these guys are all super legit designers. It was very cool to see people living where they want, but working with clients from across the country.

On a completely different note. Martin decided it was time for another tattoo and found a pretty rad shop (Dan’s Tattoo Shop) that was down for some trade work. Martin busted out a simple splash page that redirects to Dan’s myspace page (where he gets most of his traffic) and in return, Martin got some fresh Idaho Ink. Check out the Video/Photos.

We’re heading to a glacier, about five hours NE from Hayden, ID. Getting on the road now.

We’re not even half way through this round and we’ve already collected a pretty decent stack of business cards. Wanna see? We picked through ‘em and found the ones we loved. Thanks to our buddy Rafik for the brilliant post idea.

This one is pretty epic — those are the actual teeth imprints of this guy. Sadly, there is zero contact information, so…pretty card, but pretty useless.

This is a beautiful card, printed with a letterpress. Jonathan Arvizu

Sweet design shop in Seattle. Fresh website/portfolio too, definitely worth checking outTurnstyle

Magazine about art/design culture in Phoenix, AZ. Switch Studio, all-in-one design shop, specializing in publications.

Ripe Creative

Nishant Kothary – Microsoft

Aaron Irizarry

check it out, everything from street art to street fighter.

(click these thumbnails to see the entire poster)
Check out these rad posters that @christy_lai and @michael_a_john from ColorCubic hooked us up with. We were super lucky to get set up with these designers. Both of them are incredibly talented and were very real and transparent. We chatted about design for a couple hours and something we had asked in an earlier post came up in the conversation. It was about projects you would refuse to design for whatever reasons. ColorCubic takes a fairly “green” approach to all their design and because of this turn down projects that don’t reflect earth-friendly practices. We think this is pretty cool.

After our chat we headed out to a classic arcade/bar. It was filled with all the old school arcade games like Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter, NBA Jam, etc. After some intense button smashing we helped them install some Ikea shelves in their office — not one of our strengths. We left their studio around 4:30am. We use computers, not drills, but it was worth it because they put us up in a hotel and we had fun hanging out.

What does it take to successfully run a two person design shop like theirs? One could go a hundred different directions with that question but we talked a bit about the hours they keep. It was kinda scary. They mentioned their work schedules are pretty intense and end up pulling all-nighters quite often, a weekly ritual. In the past, clients knew they could contact them anytime because they were always awake working. That was until clients were randomly calling them at 1am and then they started to be a little more discreet about the hours they keep. On a more positive note, this also means they can work when they want to. Work late, come in late. Anyone can see how dedicated these two are by looking at their work, definitely check ‘em out.

We also saw this giant crazy looking clown.

We know it’s a long video but stick with it

Sorry we haven’t updated in a while, we hope this video will make up for it. The starter in our car went out! The element has been very good to us, but it finally had enough. Thankfully we stayed with our friend Justin, in Pasadena, when the car decided to randomly not start. He is a genius with cars and was able to temporarily fix it, but Pep Boys sold us a bum starter. It did get us to Murietta in time for Collekt, but it would take us about 20 key turns to start it. The video explains everything we had to go through to get the car fixed up.

Anyways, huge thanks to @iamgarth and family for letting us crash on their couch. They really helped us out and even let us use their car to run around town while we waited for money to hit our bank account. Garth is also the genius behind Collekt, a monthly meet-up of creative types in the Murietta area. This was only their third meet-up and the place was already filled with a bunch of incredibly talented people. We are continually inspired by all the creative meet-ups we are able to attend. It’s so rad to see the willingness everyone has to help each other out, to collaborate and to create things that could never have been possible alone. No one has brilliant ideas all on their own. When similarly minded people get together, completely transparent and willing to become part of something bigger than themselves, very, very cool things can happen. We’re just stoked we get a taste of this at each creative gathering we’re able to attend. It was awesome to meet everyone at collekt! Thanks for letting us hang out.

@aaroni is the reason we even made it out to Murrieta. We got a chance to hang out with him and did a sweet little interview with him, which will be out shortly. Huge thanks to @aaroni for getting us hooked up in Murrieta.

We know you want some new textures.
Grab a few we found on the road from Phoenix to Pasadena.
If this isn’t enough, we have some more for you here.

Enjoy some random nonsense straight from the element.

This is how cool networking can be: While in Albuquerque, we emailed a freelance designer, Deanna Fusco with SoHo Southwest, in Phoenix the night before we were supposed to be in Phoenix. It was the only designer we got a response from. She responds in the morning and tells us about a gathering of creative folk called Creative Connect that starts at 6pm. We leave Albuquerque immediately and head that way. We make it to Phoenix just in time for the meeting at Design Within Reach. There are a TON of creatives. We met Dan Semenchuk, awesome guy! He started Creative Connect about 7 years ago. Dan gives us an opportunity to tell people what we are doing and we like that. Thanks Dan! We met illustrators, graphic/letterpress/web designers, photographers, marketers, copy-writers, fine artists, developers, etc. Everyone was super nice we’re stoked we were able to hang out. We think this area of Arizona is doing some amazing things to bring the creative community together. Oh and if you don’t believe us here are some sweet photos from the event: here (via Jason Garcia)

We also got to check out a shared work space called Gangplank. We’ve been to a few shared working environments on our trip so far, but this is the first space that is free, anyone can find a place to sit down and grab some internet. They like pirates.

We also interviewed three designers that we think you’re really going to enjoy. Check those out at fuelnetwork.tv very soon.

Here is a drawing Martin was inspired to do while driving through New Mexico.