Kindness&Humility

We just received our newborn Wacom Cintiq 21UX at the office today and I am very, very impressed. It is buttery smooth and as wispy as you could ever ask a machine to be. Mort took it for a spin today and it was fireworks. Some of us cried.

Like most of you, I’ve been patiently waiting for enough time to re-design the entire Masters of the Universe cast as Indie Hipsters, but the talented Mr. Adrien Riemann beat me to the punch. The shame!

While I’m sulking, check out his set of sixteen characters, including He-Man, Man-At-Arms (aka Burt Reynolds), Trap Jaw, and She-Ra. Please note that Skeletor bears a striking resemblance to a hip and bald Carrot Top, who in turns looks quite a bit like Liono when unbald. Maybe it’s just me.

I’d like to explain. When I wrote, “Maybe it’s just me,” I meant that maybe I’m the only person who thinks that Carrot Top is getting dangerously close to looking like a creepy cartoon villian. I was not inferring that I might be the person who looks like Skeletor, Carrot Top, or Liono.

Am I making this more confusing that it needs to be? I am starting to believe that should have been split into two posts: one about He-Man sketches and one about spooky weirdos.

I want his hair right now — and I mean RIGHT NOW!

Skeletor is one bad dude but he's got mad fashion sense.

Whoa, settle down She-Ra. PS: Kate Hudson called and she wants her face back and the Hoff might want his jacket.

Over the course of our renovation, we tackled quite a few projects without having a clear idea of how we were going to accomplish them, but none more so than our firewood walls. They turned out to be far more time consuming than we anticipated, and they took three times more wood than we estimated, but no other part of the office gets as much attention. We regularly get uninvited visitors who get a peak of the walls through our entryway and decide to pop on in for a tour and a 30-minute Q & A.

Take my word for it, watching this time-lapse video will leave your computer far cleaner than witnessing the actual build. (Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about sawdust, you creep.)

Of all the woodwork that was carried out for our office renovation, none was as detailed as our little kitchenette. We did some rough math and figure that the entire kitchenette is made of more than 600 individual pieces of wood, each of which had to be planed, joined, sanded, assembled and finished. It was worth it though — it’s a real workhorse and it turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the renovation.

Photo: Lincoln Barbour

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The Wood

Apart from the doors, which are made from old crates, the entire kitchenette is made of fir that we got from a 1904 barn from Wenatchee, via the ReBuilding Center. No plywood. Nothing from Home Depot. Just 103-year-old fir.

The dark wood on the left is what the fir looked like when we picked it up. The pile on the right has been milled down. We did this for every piece of wood used in the office — it was extremely time consuming.

To facilitate impromptu discussions between designers and programmers, we designed a sitting-height work table to tag team with the taller Brooklyn Streets Work Table and placed it right in the middle of our production area. Like its big brother the Brooklyn Streets Work Table, this table originally lived as a pizza oven, but now a quick push off your desk sends your chair gliding into a magical collaborative wonderland.

Photo: Lincoln Barbour

The rough sawn fir came from a barn built in the 40s in Sherwood, Oregon.