More Maps

Map drawn on a trip to the Eastern Block. Good food, great company and amazing scenery.

Great Streets

If you are into mapping, and hand sketched maps in particular, you must check out one of my all-time favorite books, Great Streets, by Alan Jacobs.  It is a stunning collection that I came across in, where else, a Mapping Class (in grad school) of hand sketched studies, and draws upon cities from all over the world.  Included are gorgeous drawings, from simple solid / void type maps, to sectional "maps" which study pedestrian / automobile / tree / building facade relationships across a street, and then beautiful perspective sketches to tie it all together.
It is a must see for sure!

Love Maps

The Hand Drawn Map Association has a goal to share found or created maps with the widest audience group possible. Check out all the maps.

Repetition

Repetition. So many of my sketch book pages are covered with fences. The rhythm is captivating, almost audible. The photograph was taken in Ganzi, China - thousands of prayer flags emphasize this idea of irregular, pleasing recurrence.

More Mining, Alta Lakes

Jo's last post reminded me of these photos from about a year ago on a trip up to Alta Lakes.

What is it about structure that is designed out of pure utility that leads to such pure design... patterns and layers are driven by function end up resulting in such unassuming, yet compelling forms.

Even ruins of such simple vernacular forms can make for fun studies in light, repetition, form and relationships.

Soudan Mine, MN

Love functional mining architecture: texture, layers and materials. This photograph captures those ideas for me; moreover, the imagery infuses new ideas.

Jodie's Font

By the way, if you are grooving on those two gorgeous handwritten fonts in our header, like I am, they were the first (of what I'm hoping will be many) of Jodie's font creations after I found this cool link where you can design and create your own TTF... seriously had Jodie written all over it!!  I can't wait to try my hand at a few, too...

Greetings!

Welcome to Jodie & Jen's world of design ideas, architectural musings, photographic explorations, general visual candy and (hopefully) fun or at least generally entertaining linguistic fodder! 

We are hoping this will become a creative forum for the sharing of ideas and the things that inspire us in the world of design, art and life.  How different are the those things, really??

Here's celebrating the changing season!  I am very excited to see where this next adventure takes us!!