I ♥ FreeHand

I don’t purport to be an expert at much of anything. But I have to very immodestly claim expertise at vector drawing and the software that facilitates it. If there is one thing I have done more than most, it’s manipulating bezier curve points. I’ve used pretty much everything out there, starting in 1988. An early version of Deneba (now ACDSee) Canvas. Altsys (now FontLab) Fontographer from v. 1.0 onwards. Adobe Illustrator from v. 1.0 onwards. Aldus/Macromedia Freehand from v. 1.0 onwards. FontLab Studio 5.02. CorelDraw from v. 8 onwards. I’ve even noodled around a little with Aviary Raven. In addition to that I’ve also dabbled in CAD software like SolidWorks and Google Sketchup.

If Malcolm Gladwell is correct that to be an expert at something you have to devote at least 10,000 hours to it, I have earned my expert badge many times over as far as bezier/vector drawing is concerned.

Early in my career I worked at a small to medium sized printer that tackled loads of different things. We had both PageMaker and FreeHand. The computer when I got there was a Mac SE with a 20MB hard disc and the only backup medium was the floppy disc. Pagemaker, just to start an 8.5x11 page, created a 75k file. The same blank page in FreeHand created a 5K file. As soon as you began importing .eps files into PageMaker (which never displayed satisfactorily) the file would balloon in size. The logo in FH was tiny. Turn it into an .eps file and it grew huge; place that .eps into a PM document and it grew exponentially bigger. PM files were sometimes so large that they needed to be split across several floppy discs. In FreeHand I could simply copy and paste the logo into the business card, brochure, poster, what have you, it would look fine, and do everything else I needed to do. Text controls were robust. The only thing it missed was a spell checker. Since I’m a human dictionary, I didn’t mind that. I would always get someone to double check what I had done anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, and this was rather important in those early days of DTP, I ended up with a file that was relatively tiny. Under a hundred K, rather than the many hundreds, thousands of Ks for PM files. I could often put everything – logo, and all the collateral done with that logo – on a single floppy disc, as opposed to trying to spread even one file across several floppies. Which would then sometimes not reassemble properly when you put them back on the hard disc. Not to mention, why even deal with the nuisance of two separate programs and having to export files between them, when it could all be done in one program? Unless I was doing a book, or a catalogue, or a magazine, I saw absolutely no reason at all to deal with the less elegant and frankly less fun Pagemaker.

As I later worked with more powerful computers with larger hard discs and larger storage mediums, I still saw no reason to diddle around with PageMaker or Quark XPress. Again, unless it was a massive multipage document that required pagination or indexing, I saw no reason to not work in Aldus FreeHand.

So as far as I was concerned, FreeHand allowed me to be much more productive than PageMaker, or Quark XPress. So how did it stack up against the other powerhouse vector software, Adobe’s Illustrator? I tried Illustrator. I hated it. It was unnecessarily complicated and lacked the intuitive ease, precision and versatility of FreeHand. I kept forcing myself to use Illustrator, since I figured it would be good for me to be proficient with both. But I just could not force myself to actually enjoy that shit sandwich. The basic core of it, the way it handled bezier curve points was frankly, terrible. Only a pen tool, and a different tool to manipulate the control handles, and different tools to add or remove points, and different tools to handle the lines or select the control points. Joining points was idiotic. I was often swearing like a drunken sailor as I tried to use this maddening clunker. There is a reason I call it Frustrator or Ill-luckstrator. How the hell did this moronic interface ever allow Illustrator to gain any sort of market prominence at all? FreeHand was always a breath of fresh air. I could get the same job done in a fraction of the time, everything flowed smoothly, and it was just plain fun. Like a determined athlete that wanted to win, I kept forcing myself to get back at it despite the pain. I became familiar enough with Illustrator that I could show up at a new job and know what I was doing. But goddamn did I loathe that program. It was awkward, counter productive, the work flow in it felt like I was swimming in molasses... FreeHand was so clearly superior that I wonder how Illustrator managed to survive at all. How the hell had this program managed to bamboozle anyone into using it? People, through not knowing any better, bought AI, and not being made of money, were unable to buy anything else, so they had to suffer through it. If anyone had the resources to acquire both AI and FH, I suspect that FH would have trounced AI resoundingly. FH was simply a vastly superior program, outshining its competition in almost every way. It offered text on a path and layers long before AI did. I think it wasn’t until AI v. 3.0 that you could even do anything in colour. Many other features. Oh yeah, and then there was the fact that FH’s core functionality was so much better.

FreeHand allowed me to do just about everything I needed to do. I could create custom typefaces, draw a logo, do an illustration, design a poster, create any ancillary items meant to accompany that poster - tickets, maps, stationery, booklets, etc., all in one program. There was often little need for me to switch to any thing else. FH wasn’t limited to doing just drawings – it was an absolute powerhouse that suited the way I worked perfectly. What I liked about it so much is that it took a backseat and just let me create. I wasn’t struggling with an abysmal interface. The core of what it did, vector drawing and type handling were simple and powerful. It was user-friendly, logical, intuitive. I sang FH’s praises to anyone that would listen.

In 1993, I came back from a trip to Asia and heard that Adobe had bought Aldus. Oh no. Adobe has Illustrator, Aldus has FreeHand – what would happen to FreeHand? Would they bury it in favour of the inferior Illustrator? Fortunately, they were obliged by US antitrust legislation to divest themselves of FreeHand so that there wouldn’t be a monopoly on vector graphics software. This is how Macromedia came to own FreeHand. Later, when Adobe bought Macromedia, that same legislation wasn’t brought to bear. Truly, a tragedy.

When Adobe merged with Macromedia, many wondered what would happen to FreeHand. Did Adobe even realize what a gem they had in this versatile program? They continued to sell it, but they didn’t do anything to upgrade it. In May of 2007 Adobe finally admitted that they had killed FreeHand. They would no longer update or patch FreeHand for new operating systems or hardware (such as Intel Macs). Adobe created several migration guides to help long-time FreeHand users move over to Adobe Illustrator instead. Which really wouldn’t be anywhere near satisfactory.

Speaking with other people who were experienced with both programs, the same phrases kept coming up. FreeHand – simple, intuitive, quick, powerful, efficient. Illustrator – frustrating, complicated, awkward, confusing, clunky.

Some of the features that made FreeHand so great. This touches on a number of versions over many years. Some of the features were eventually adopted by Illustrator. Some have never been adopted.
Layer Control – Less complex to use and easier to select/de-select and move objects to and from.

Dynamic Palettes – I select a line and the stroke and fill options appear. I select some copy and the text options appear. Of course! The info and tools I require are always in the same place. I don’t have to search for a new palette – very intuitive, less clutter.

Cloning Objects – one keyboard shortcut rather than two. This is merely one example of many things that could be achieved in one step rather two or three in Illustrator. This may sound trivial, but it starts to add up over time.
Knife Tool – ability to slice over a bunch of lines and cut everything in one go.
Joining Paths – a breath of fresh air compared to AI.
Multiple Pages in One Document – not just multiple pages, but each in any size or format desired. Multi-page documents with linked columns, obviating the need for a program such as Pagemaker or InDesign or Quark Xpress.
Lock/Unlock – lock and unlock individual objects, not unlock all like AI.
Paste Inside Command - way better than AIs Clipping Paths
Text Handling – always better in FH. I could use tab features for instance.
Radial Gradation – were always smoother in FH versus AI.
Punch and Union – way better than PathFinder.
Collect For Output – quickly gather up all the elements used when it came time to send the file to a service bureau.
Name All Colors – made colour swapping very easy.
Find & Replace Graphics – amazingly powerful tool. The ability to alter all the stroke widths or colours in a document in one fell swoop - huge time saver!
Corner, Curve and Connector Points – ideal for drawing.
Bezigon Tool – yet another option for drawing that AI didn’t offer.
Rectangle, Oval and Polygon Tools – much better than in AI. Adjustable curved corner - great feature!
Editable Blends
Page Tool
Perspective Grid
Spiral Tool
Power Duplicate

There were so many other things – efficient selection methods, text attached to top and bottom of circular paths, well implemented point alignment and snapping controls, flowing text inside paths or around shapes, customizing toolbars, working with colour and gradients was always easier, being able to colourize tiffs, reliable film output, amazingly accurate point alignment.

And then we get back to the point I keep hammering on about, the very essence of what a vector program is supposed to do. Namely placing and manipulating points, which was infinitely easier in FreeHand, rather than a frustrating exercise like it is in Illustrator.

Another thing that always annoyed the hell out of me is that FreeHand allowed you to export many more file formats. Including exporting Illustrator formats. Illustrator on the other hand would not export Freehand formats – which always struck me as utter petulance on Adobe’s part. Yeah, there is another program out there, one that happens to be better than your offering, and refusing to concede that fact isn’t going to make it go away. Oh right, but you can buy it and make it go away. Assholes.

There are things I like about Illustrator: 3D Effects, Live Paint, Open Type support, Make Warp presets, Brush tools, Live Trace, Lens Flare tool, Mesh tool, Opacity masks, PDF output, and great consistency and nearly seamless integration between the other CS apps.

And there are certainly drawbacks that FreeHand had at various points. (No program is ever perfect.)

PDF export in general was kinda lousy.

OpenType and UniCode wasn’t supported.
Freehand wasn’t Postscript level 3 compliant for quite some time. Meaning that only 256 levels of grey were produced rather than say a gradient with 4096 levels of grey, which PS Level 3 allowed.
Pattern fills and strokes could not be output to high-resolution devices.
When making a PDF of a FH document with a 2 spot colour linear gradient using Adobe Distiller, while the other elements appear in their spot colours, the gradient came out in CMYK.
Text that had been underlined, when converted to paths, would lose the underline.
A high resolution PDF generated from a FH11 document with a spot channel EPS DCS 2 as a composite, spot colours would disappear and convert to a low rez 4 colour.
FH 11 lost information (strokes would disappear) when ungrouping objects.
Freehands transparency effects did not work well. A grey-scale scan made transparent, became a bit-map with all the grey gone.

But a lot of the latter ones were somewhat obscure flaws. Some of these things were conflicts that only become apparent in the crucible of a production environment. Just plain awkward vector tools with crappy anchor point and handles controls is something that should be apparent right from the get go.

And the flaws of the later versions showed signs of Adobe allowing their acquisition to stagnate and not bothering to update or amend flaws.

Admittedly both programs have had bad versions in the past: FreeHand 4 and 10 and Illustrator 7, for example. Not all so-called ‘upgrades’ are improvements; often the interface gets worse and the software becomes increasingly bloated. What users never want (but what the big software firms are always giving us) are more and more functions patched on, meaning more bugs and conflicts, and a bigger and slower program.

I realize that all software has its strengths and weaknesses. Some will say that Illustrator and FreeHand are just vector illustration tools utilizing anchor points and paths, with the ability to change the attributes of these vector objects’ fills and strokes. But strip away the filters and effects from AI and what you end up with in my opinion are abysmal vector tools with crappy anchor point and handles controls.

In the last decade I’ve been forced to use Illustrator since it’s often all I have access to, and I’ve sucked it up and gotten more proficient at it. If it’s the difference between getting an idea out of my head or not, well...I guess I’ll eat that shit sandwich. But I don’t have to like it. The whole time I realize that something exists which would be faster and more fun. I would still happily take FH 7 or 5.5 or even 1991’s 3.1 over the latest version of AI. How’s them apples?

If Adobe was to come to its senses and resurrect Freehand, or allow someone to resurrect it, some features I’d like to see include:
Proper PDF engine, with an ability to import and export PDFs
Adobe type engine, with support for OpenType, UniCode, font grouping, optical kerning etc
Support for SVG
A history panel would be great.

There is now an organization dedicated to spreading the word about FreeHand, http://www.freefreehand.org/. Trying either to get Adobe to revive it, get them to sell it to someone who will do something with it, or release it as open source software.

I don’t know the first thing about programming. I’m merely an end user of programs. But I feel so passionately about this, that if somehow someone is able to wrest control of FreeHand away from Adobe and turn it into an open source project, I want to learn about programming so that I can contribute in some small way to that most worthy project. FreeHand was (and in so many ways continues to be) such a vastly superior program, I want to help get it out there again. The more I learn about open source projects, the more I like it. I realize open source has its flaws, but a monopolistic software giant that refuses to listen to the pleas of a huge user base, and buries a better product, doesn’t have flaws? FreeHand deserves better than to be bled to death by a company who looks at this as another victory over its competition.

Even if it was just a simple stand alone drawing program, that used FHs beautiful tools, (maybe at the level of v. 5.5 or so) that would be fine with me. Do all the drawing I need to do, and then take that into Illustrator. Anything to avoid the aggravation of having to use AIs drawing tools.

Poppet Design

The tattoo shop is making some changes and is going to start offering clothing with different designs from a few different artists.

Andrew did a rough pencil sketch and I took it into Illustrator to vectorize it.

I tried one variant where the smoke was a bit more smoke like, but no, he didn’t like it.

He ended up noodling around with it for a while longer.

Great design, fun to play around with and gives Yolanda a chance to learn a bit about silk screening. Finding out that the the white ink is a bit goopier than black ink and require slightly lighter touch.

Artspiration – Glennz

Being a fan of Swiss Army Knives, I had to buy this shirt from Threadless.

The artist responsible for this and several other shirts over at Threadless is Auckland, New Zealand based Glenn Jones.

I like his clean, graphic illustration style, but love his very clever, make you laugh concepts.

http://www.glennz.co.nz/home.html

http://store.glennz.com/

Views from the Edge

 Looking towards the McQuesten High Level Bridge.

Shots taken from the end of the promenade behind Dundurn Castle.

S.o.t.D. – Just A Phase – Norken

Just A Phase – Norken

I think my liking Norken won’t be just a phase.

A brush with rally fame

The company I used to work for, experimented with print sites in a retail chain, that on a handful of occasions I was asked to cover. Didn’t dig it much, but I got to interact with some actually cool people once in a while.

On one occasion, a man came in and asked me a couple of questions about printing some photo collages. 

“I’m doing up plaques for my team and I want to have some pictures from the past few years in the center.”

All he had was Microsoft Office, so, go with what you have I guess. He said he needed to do it that afternoon, so I told him about the coffee shop around the corner he could go to. 

“The chairs are comfy, the staff is cool, and if they give you a hard time, tell them I sent you.”

Off he went and I got back to some other tasks. His mention of a team didn’t make me think it was anything more exciting than a little league soccer team he coached out in Stoney Creek or something along those lines.

He came back an hour later and handed over a USB key. I plugged it in and pulled up his file. Right in the center was a photo of a Mitsubishi Evolution leaping over a hill and around it were smaller photos of other races and photos of mechanics working on cars and the like.

Well, that’s a little more exciting than a little league soccer team.

The file was pretty massive and took quite a while to process. We struck up a conversation. I told him what I thought his ‘team’ consisted of when he first walked in.

I can’t say I’m a huge rally fan, but it is about the only moto–sport I have any patience for. When I was in Toronto, a bunch of us would congregate at Jarkko’s on Sunday evenings for “church”. Aperitifs, The Simpsons and WRC on Speed network. Fun times.

It turns out his name was Andrew Comrie-Picard and he was kind of a big deal on the North American rally circuit, has become an even bigger deal in the intervening years, and a television figure as well. http://www.acpracing.com/

I asked him how he got into rally. 
“I grew up on a farm in Alberta and got to drive all sorts of things. Tractors, motocross bikes, trucks, cars, you name it. Got into racing motocross bikes when I was pretty young. Then when I was at Oxford, I got interested in classic rally. You take an old car and fix it up and race that. I had a 1955 Volvo that I raced. Really got into that. Then when I came back here I bought an old Lada that I fixed up and started competing on the Canadian Rally circuit. I eventually moved my way up to a Mitsubishi car.”
“So, I don’t mean to be crass or anything, but rally has got to be a pricy proposition to get involved in.”
He laughed. “Yeah it is! Well, I work as an entertainment lawyer in New York, so that helps fund it. But it is an incremental thing. You get better and better as you compete and sponsors begin to take notice of you. So you get some better tires from a sponsor in exchange for putting their logo on your car, so that helps. It builds from there.” 

He readily answered a bunch of questions I had and explained to me the intricacies of course notes.

He was in Hamilton filming a TV show for Global, War of the Wheels.

He also worked as an instructor at a driving school in New Hampshire where he was teaching evasive driving skills to PSDs going to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I’m taking my crew down there so they can bomb around in cars for the weekend. There is no way that I could do what I do without their support. But it isn’t really feasible to say ‘hey take the car out and have fun with it for a while, an hour before a race.’ So this gives them the chance to tear around in the schools cars, have fun, blow off some steam. 

It was getting late in the day. He needed to go and pick up the plaque portion at a place across town. “Just go and do that. I’ll take care of all this here, trim them down. If you don’t make it back here before the store closes, I’ll just wait over at the coffee shop for you with this stuff.”

“Oh dude, you’re a life saver.”

His file was mammoth and it took forever to spit out all the copies. I trimmed them all down to size, placed them between some cardboard, and in a large envelope. I went and hung out at the cafe until he showed up.

“Thomas, thank you so much. If I didn’t have a dozen things to do and be on the road for New Hampshire at 03:00, I would take you out for beers and dinner.”
“Oh no worries. Glad I could help you out. I think we’ve all been in a similar position. A fun conversation was all the thanks I need. Good luck.”

Chances were good I would never see him again, and I might never get any repeat business from him. But he may well tell someone else about the good service he received, and there really is nothing like good word of mouth to help propel a business along. There were a lot of things that my managers were doing wrong with those sites, but I felt that offering great service was something I could easily do right. The slight inconvenience it was for me to sit in a cafe for a half hour reading a book, could very well translate into good words and more business in the long run. And he was a nice guy, so doing him a favour was no big deal at all. (Not at all like this tactless jackass. Isn’t it amazing how just following simple directions and being half decently pleasant gets you somewhere in life?) 

S.o.t.D. - The Love Fry – Mike Shannon

The Love Fry – Mike Shannon

If I was mixing this, I would start it at about the 4:30 mark. Creamy. The rest is just build up. Not terrible, but it does show its genesis as a techno record – a DJ tool. Various points where it can be mixed in and out. And, if I was DJing, I would choose to blend it in at about that point.

6° of Law Enforcement

On a gear making forum I go to, I’d been chatting a bit with a cop. He’s a fellow sew ho, but he also makes knives and bodies for Sure-Fire flashlights, as well as sheaths out of Kydex.

In Ontario I know of me, him, a cop up in Sudbury and my pal Andrew Kent that are stitch bitches. Just figured it would be advantageous to get to know one another, to compare tips, teach techniques, share ideas, show off our creations, but also with the idea of group buys and crap exchange. A lot of time you have to buy material in pretty sizeable amounts, which really doesn’t make much sense for people like us who are only producing small quantities of products at most. So group buys might work out well in that instance. Also, we all have sizeable collections of material and hardware, that might not be of use to one of us, but may well be of interest to someone else. Let’s share what we have. If one of us only needs one or two of something, but you need to buy a minimum of 200, but someone else has loads and has no real use for it, share it. I have piles of stuff that I have no real use for, but might be advantageous to someone else. That sort of thing.

On the forum he only listed his location as Ontario. I asked him where he was and he mentioned that he works for the York Region Police but lives up in Barrie. 

So we’d been trying to arrange a meet up to have a beer and dork out by showing off what we’ve all made. We exchanged names and numbers and all that.

The very next day I turn on the news to see what the weather is going to be the next day and I catch a bit about a robbery and chase. Then there’s a 2 second snippet with a cop, and it says Sgt. Mark *******, York Region Police.

What the hell?

I asked him about it the next day.

“Yeah that was me, and there is a photo of me in the Star today too. I’m the folliclely challenged one in the center. I happened to be the most senior officer on the scene so they stuck me in front of the television camera.”

The condensed version of the story is that there was a noon time robbery of a jewelry store in Vaughan. A security guard and off duty police officer who happened to be at the mall were shot at by one of the suspects, with some of the bullets whizzing past kids in a school yard. The suspect then forced his way into a home, took two women  hostage, put them in their van and led police on a wild chase. The van was eventually brought to a halt, with both hostages unharmed.

An article in the local paper at the time had a photo of Mark arresting the scroat, his head on the cruiser, looking a little worse for wear, surrounded by five pissed off looking cops. I’m sure that since all the arresting officers were white and the “suspect” (come on) black, some liberal do-gooders complained about racial profiling and police brutality and blah, blah, blah. Let’s see: robbery, shooting at police and security, endangering innocent bystanders, including school kids, home invasion, hostage taking, carjacking, driving through traffic endangering everyone else around. The circumstances left no doubt whatsoever as to this skells involvement, and he gets roughed up by the cops when he is arrested? Don’t play the race card at that point. I will gladly buy all the cops who leaned on this scumbags neck a little longer than necessary or dragged his face along the pavement or really twisted his arms up behind his back when handcuffing him, a beer or two. This fucker is a cancer on the face of society and I’m not going to lament what happened to him. There is police wrongdoing, and then there is criminals getting a little extra judicial attention, ie: what they deserve. Bleeding heart types who try to bemoan that shitbag getting his just desserts and trying to turn it into a socio/political quagmire need to shut up.

All I can say is good job Mark!

S.o.t.D. – Deliverance (Harry The Bastard Mix) - Julien Jabre

Deliverance (Harry The Bastard Mix) - Julien Jabre


Some fun, pumping deep house, complete with cheesy go go dancer....oooh yeaahhhh...oh sorry, got a little distracted there.

S.o.t.D. – Illumination – AtJazz

Illumination – AtJazz

Mesmerizing and kinda loungy and pretty peppy too. I’ve known about AtJazz for quite a while, but just now checking them out. Liking it.

Vox Pocket Chisel

I have a few knives. Okay, maybe more than a few. But not nearly as many as I’d like mind you. 

The reality though is that most of what I do with my knives is a lot of pretty mundane stuff. Slicing open the tape on boxes, seam ripping, scoring cardboard or leather, scraping off stickers, drilling or deburring holes, scraping crud from under my finger nails, splinter removal, trimming a cuticle, slicing an ad from a newspaper, peeling an orange, etc. Quite unglamorous really. And as much as I hate to say it, a 4" bladed tacticool folder being whipped out tends to freak sheeple out.

When I saw this little beaut, the Vox Pocket Chisel, I was instantly smitten. Reminiscent of a Kiridashi. Small, discreet, really damn interesting looking, and capable of handling many of the day to day tasks I use a blade for.

This, and many equally intriguing blade designs are the work of Danish bladesmith, Jesper Voxnæs, of Vox Knives. He has a very distinctive style, and produces a range of very functional and just plain cool looking knives.

Some of his designs have recently been taken on by Boker knives. Being a small scale custom maker means that his production will be limited and the price higher than a mass produced knife. With Boker taking on the production they can be put in the hands of people for a bit less than he could make them for.

He also has a blog I really like. Slick advertising tends to leave me a bit cold to be honest. Getting to see his shop, the evolution of it, where he live, the repairs to his house, going camping with his kids - I love seeing all that stuff. It gives me a real appreciation for the maker and his designs. The impression that this is someone I’d enjoy hanging out with for an afternoon makes me far more likely to want to support him with my business. Certainly more than glib corporate hyperbole.  

I don’t know if he makes them very often, but one day I’m going to get Jesper to make one of these for me.

The following images are from Southard Knives (an interesting blade smith in his own right - and how I originally learned about it) to show the wet form leather sheath he made for it.

Some more images and a writeup of the Vox Pocket Chisel can be found here.

S.o.t.D. – Medusa – Clan of Xymox

Medusa – Clan of Xymox

Another 4AD band. From Amsterdam no less. They put out two albums on 4AD, this track being from the second. Then they left the label. It seems like every band that left 4AD went downhill from there. These guys were no exception.

Bibliophilia: Fables

I read a lot. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, forums, novels, reference books, manuals. One thing I really like to read is graphic novels. Or “more sophisticated comic books” to the uninitiated.

One in particular I absolutely fell in love with, and if the number of awards is any indication, many agree with me just how fantastic it is.

Fables by Bill Willingham and an assortment of very talented artists.

The series deals with various characters from fairy tales and folklore – (King Cole (as in Old...) is the mayor of Fabletown. Snow White, divorced from the philandering Prince Charming is the deputy mayor. Cinderella, who owns the Glass Slipper Shoe Store is actually a covert spy. Big Bad Wolf has reformed his ways and taken on human form. He is now the sherrif of Fabletown and goes by the name Bigby Wolf. Goldilocks is now a psychotic eco-terrorist. Hansel is a feared witch-hunter. Boy Blue (as in Little...) appears as a meek office clerk with a valiant past. The Wicked Witch is now Frau Totenkinder and lives on the 13th floor of the Woodlands tower and creates spells to help Fabletown. Rapunzel needs to have her hair cut three times a day. Flycatcher is the prince who has been turned into a frog) – referring to themselves as “Fables” – who have been forced out of their Homelands by “The Adversary” (oh, I’m not going to give away who it is...) who has conquered the realm. The Fables have traveled through portals to our world and formed a clandestine community in New York City known as Fabletown. Fables who are not in human form and thus unable to blend in with human society – (Three Blind Mice, The Three Pigs, etc.) – live at “the Farm” in upstate New York.

I had known of the series for a while, but what really made me want to read it were the stellar covers by James Jean. Several of my tattooist friends rave about him. And I have to agree. I know this may sound hyperbolic to some people, but I think James Jean may be one of the greatest artists – EVER. He seems to have complete mastery of any and all mediums, possesses a stunning conceptual vision, and he is amazingly prolific. His rough sketches are often more impressive than many peoples finished pieces.

I had seen Fables at the library, but it always seemed to be the collections that featured issues 47 to 54. Didn’t really want to start reading it that far in, so I reserved the first collections, and started from there.

I cannot say enough good things about Fables. I’m a huge fan of Sandman, and I dare say.....I find it shocking to even admit this....I think I like Fables even more than Sandman. Wonderful stories that draw you into an incredibly rich and well thought out world. Highly recommended reading. If you don’t want to rush out to buy them all on the basis of my recommendation, rush out to your library and see if you can reserve them there.

Oh, and a few of the stellar covers that James Jean created for Fables, and that intrigued so much I had to read the books themselves. After seeing and loving the covers, seeing and reading the actual stories that inspired the covers was great. Do rush out and buy a copy of his Fables:Covers. 75 of the covers, as well as sketches that led up to the final piece. Well worth the money.

 I could go on and on and on, but let me post these last three, among my particular favourites. The first because it's just a stunning image. But the last two especially. The early fables dealt primarily with European and to a lesser degree North American folklore. Issues 42 to 47, the Arabian Nights (and Days) story arc delved into some of the Arabian fables. Those two covers blew me away.

S.o.t.D. – Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse/Shoot Out – Colourbox

Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse/Shoot Out – Colourbox

I became a huge fan of the 4AD label in the eighties. From a purely face value perspective, the covers were spectacular, each and every single one. The stellar work of 23 Envelope gave the label a very diverse, and paradoxically very unified look. I don’t think I’m the only person who bought their records, sound unheard, just because of the cover or by virtue of the fact that it was a 4AD release.

And then of course, there was that other important point – the music. I’m trying to think if there was any act on 4AD that I wasn’t such a fan of..... Don’t think so. Bauhaus, Birthday Party, Wolfgang Press, Cocteau Twins, Clan of Xymox, XMal Deutschland, This Mortal Coil, Throwing Muses, Swallow, Red House Painters, Pale Saints, Lush, His Name Is Alive, The Pixies, Dead Can Dance, the list goes on and on and on.

Colourbox remain one of my particular favourites. Everything from kick ass dance tunes, soulful covers of old reggae tunes, to atmospheric movie soundtracks. They tackled a broad range of stuff, and did it all with aplomb.

Sadly, after their A.R. Kane collaboration, M/A/R/R/S, and the mega hit Pump Up The Volume, Steven and Martin Young, the musical core behind Colourbox (Lorita Grahame was the voice), stopped making music altogether. There are more than a few acts that I lament their demise, death of members, etc. But I really rue the day the Young brothers pitched it in. When I listen back to their stuff now, some of it getting on to 30 years old, it still sounds absolutely fantastic to me. It makes me sad to think what else they might have achieved if they had continued on making music.

FreeHand Job

Years ago when I was living in Toronto, one of my room mates did a lot of work with a place called Freelancers Unlimited. They seemed to keep her pretty busy and she was very happy with the arrangement. On her recommendation I went down and signed up with them.

She let me know that they were looking for someone who had a lot of experience with Aldus Freehand. (Actually this was shortly after Adobe had bought Aldus. {It is (or was) a superb vector drawing program, infinitely better than Adobe Illustrator is.}) I fit the bill perfectly, so I called them up to inquire about the job.

“Hey James, it’s Thomas, Dawn’s roommate. I was just calling to ask about that FreeHand job?”

I hear Dawn and her husband Martin in the other room laughing.

Afterwards they came in still laughing. “Don’t you realize what you said?”

I probably looked a little baffled. “No.”

“You called about the FreeHand job.”

Blank look from me.

“Free. Hand. Job. Get it. Freehandjob.”

I got it at that point and laughed. “Oh, geez.” But of course, I would have said FreeHand, job, not free, handjob. Didn’t catch the drift straight away on account of that.

Anyway, no harm seemed to come from it, since I got the job.

But Dawn still loves that story and tries to milk it for everything it’s worth. Bugger.

And all I have to say is that FreeHand, rooollllzzz!! FreeHand jobs  are pretty great. Free handjobs, well, I guess they’re pretty great too...

S.o.t.D. – Exodus – Bob Marley

Exodus – Bob Marley

“Taxi bus, movies for raw people.”

Legend is one of my “if I could only take 10 albums to a deserted island with me” picks.

Bald Eagle Cam

I’ve made mention of the bald eagles that have taken up residence near here over in Cootes Paradise.

There has been some mention of them in the news the last few days due to the fact that they have laid eggs and bird lovers are anxiously hoping to see some young eagles soon. Which will be the first eagles born in this area in a half century or so.

I just came across this camera set up above a bald eagles nest in Decorah, Iowa. 80 feet up, 5 to 6 feet across and just as deep, and with a weight of about 1½ tons.

http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

You’ll want to turn the sound down (wind whipping across a microphone doesn’t sound pleasant) and there will be an ad. But if you’re at all interested in eagles, this will give you an idea of what it looks like in the nest above the shore of Cootes Paradise.

Coyote in the Park

Got a message that there was a big coyote in the park. I was out wandering so I thought it might be futile, but changed course and made for the park. By the time I got there, 20 minutes had transpired, but the messengers were still there, and so was the coyote. (It’s on the right, at about 1 o’clock silhouetted against the water.) Its being there wasn’t a huge shock. I know they’re there, always have been. (Foxes too.) But it was still pretty neat to see it. Since they’re largely nocturnal, seeing one in the daytime is interesting.

The worry of course is that it didn’t seem overly perturbed by the presence of people, and a cat disappeared recently. A very friendly black cat that I considered a pal. Elvis was his name. Other people around the city have been on television blabbering about the evil coyotes and how they snatched their loveable Miss Miffy McFluffballs. Oh the horror. The spot where we saw them is a promontory where local dog owners take their dogs and let them off the leash to run around. That coyote isn’t stupid. It will wait out of sight for a ball to go over the edge and a dog to follow it and then ambush it.

Coyotes are just fulfilling their natural imperative. They’re predators. They hunt and kill small animals. Larger predators hunt and kill coyotes. My worry is little kids. Would it be brazen enough to make a try for a toddler? They’ve been known to shadow joggers and dog-walkers. They’ve killed humans. (There was a woman in Nova Scotia who was killed by one last year.) It’s not inconceivable that if it were hungry enough that it might pounce on a small child that was running around in a wide open park, with a forested hillside on one edge. Parents look away for a minute, coyote pounces from cover, drags the child down the hillside.

It paced back and forth, disappeared into the woods, came back, paced around, sat, licked its balls. I snuck up to about 30, 40 meters away, using trees to cover my approach. It looked right at me, and didn’t seem alarmed.

Amazingly well camouflaged.

Some close-ups. I really need to get a better camera.

It’s interesting to think that a century ago, heck, a half century ago, someone would simply have walked over to their house, gotten their rifle and shot the thing. Sold the pelt, fed the meat to their dog. Just think of the trouble you’d get into if you did that now.

S.o.t.D. – Transitions (Dom & Roland Remix) – Deep Blue & Blame

Transitions (Dom & Roland Remix) – Deep Blue & Blame

I knew this track from a mix CD (Doc Scott I think), but it was as Re-Transitions. Kept trying to find it on here, and it never appeared. Finally it did, but also this version, which I like even more. Takes away some of the pummeling drums, made it bassier, and mellowed it  out considerably. 

S.o.t.D. - Hometown Glory – Adele

Hometown Glory – Adele

Wow, does this gal have a set of pipes on her.

Logo – Vespidame, 2nd try

So, I showed an earlier attempt at this here. I thought it was okay, but immediately knew that I wanted to keep working on the concept. And this is the result. I went through a bunch of iterations of this, and I may still tweak it some more. But...I like it. It’s always hard to be objective about things when you pore over them for hours, but I think this is headed in the right direction. Still trying to resolve the dot over the I. Might make it a little skull. I’ll see.

Type Design – Anand

I’ve been playing around with a calligraphy pen the last few days, and this is my nascent effort. Going for a fat brushstroke, sign painting look. Fun to play around with, and I’ll keep plugging away at it.

S.o.t.D. – Breakdown – Michael Brook

Breakdown – Michael Brook

One of my favourite guitarists, and he’s a Canadian too, eh. Not to mention that this great record came out on the awesome 4AD.

Typeface Design – Ωhm

I had a scrap of paper that had this logo done by my pal Jarkko. I always liked it and years back I mentioned that he should turn it into a full typeface. Mainly cause I wanted to use it myself.

Going through some files recently I came across it and again mentioned to him that he should try turning it into a complete typeface. 

I was inspired last night, so I tried my hand at carrying the core idea through. I can see that more noodling and doodling will be necessary, but I like it so far. 

S.o.t.D. – So & Slow It Grows – Wir

So & Slow It Grows – Wir

Wire, seminal band that they are, have a new album out and are going on tour again. However, this track hails from their 1991 album The First Letter. When they lost the last letter, and were known simply as Wir.

S.o.t.D. – Hatfield 1980 – Everything But The Girl

Hatfield 1980 – Everything But The Girl

I always liked them, but their later stuff was definitely my favourite era. And this song in particular. That languid, trip-hoppy beat...love it. Didn’t even know there was a longer version of this.