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Oh, now this is pretty damn fine. The folks at Rapha, home of utterly delicious and exquisitely detailed (not to mention wildly expensive) cycling clothing, are opening up a pop-up store, at 146-148 Clerkenwell Road, which is more or less directly below our studio. Woop!
The Rapha Cycle Club is open from Saturday 8 May until Saturday 31 July.
We nipped along to Central Saint Martins yesterday to catch a free lunchtime talk by the utterly wonderful Brian Bolland, one of the finest comic book artists in the world, and officially a Very Nice Guy. He created the sublime The Killing Joke
Bolland was talking about work from right across his career, and showed early draft work as well as finished pieces. He did a postgrad graphics course at Central Saint Martins in 1974, having previously studied at Leicester School of Art and Norwich School of Art; and had spent his early career working out of his room at 110 Southampton Row, just yards from where the talk was taking place.
He's best known for his beautifully controlled pen and ink work, though he now works entirely in Photoshop, using a Wacom tablet and pen. Check out his site for some really in-depth (and entertaining) step by step tutorials showing his working process, as well as a huge gallery of work.
Bolland stressed the importance of life drawing, having spent at least one day a week on it at college. It was sobering to hear the silence when he asked who in the room (which largely consisted of illustration students) was doing life drawing.
You can see more of his work in the book The Art of Brian Bolland
So, let's see now: Michael Johnson discussing personal projects, Tom and Theo from SORT on setting up their letterpress studio, Teal Triggs talking about Fanzines, and the boys from It's Nice That speaking about their magazine and blog.
And that's just a few of the highlights.
The 9th Annual St Bride Conference: DIY Design is on Thursday 27 and Friday 28 May (£120 full price, £90 for Friends of the Library, £50 concessions, £35 concessions who are also Friends) at the wonderful St Bride Library (just off Fleet St in London).
Not a bad way to kick off the second May bank holiday...
Not often you get to look up at a clear blue sky in London and see it entirely empty of planes... obviously it's a nightmare for anyone who's supposed to be on a flight, but for the rest of us, well, it's kinda lovely.
A while back (well, just over two years ago actually) we posted about the brilliant 826 programme - a series of after-school writing centres set up in the USA by the author Dave Eggers, each of them fronted by fantastical retail spaces, including the original Pirate Supply Store in San Francisco.
While we were out in New York last week, we popped along to the local branch, 826 NYC. The centre is fronted by the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., a shop that stocks everything the modern day super-hero could need, from capes to tins of anti-matter, from secret-identity kits to vacuum suction cups.
There's a capery, where you can try on your cape; and when you make a purchase, you must recite aloud the Vow of Heroism:
"I [your full name], also known as [your superhero name], promise always to use my superpowers for good. I promise that I will use the items I've purchased here today safely and in the name of justice. I promise to remain ever vigilant, ever true."
One of the shelving units doubles as a secret door, which opens up to reveal the writing centre, a brilliantly friendly space that feels more like a cafe than a classroom, where kids can come along to work with professional writers, either on school projects, or on 826 projects - creating their own 'zine, or putting together a literary mash-up. Check out Alistair's Flickr set for more photos.
At the time of our original post, we asked if anyone in London was thinking of setting up something similar. A few people got in touch, and things bubbled along in a gentle kind of way for quite a while.
Recently though, thanks largely to the efforts of Lucy Macnab and Ben Payne, things have started heating up, and a London version of 826 looks like becoming a real possibility, with some initial funding secured from the Arts Council. Lucy and Ben are working with a team of associates to put together the pilot version, and We Made This is helping out.
You can find out more at Lucy and Ben's blog, Word in Progress. If you'd like to get involved, or can think of anyone who would, drop Lucy a line (especially if you know how to get hold of some retail space...)
So we're back from New York City, narrowly scraping in before the cloud of doom. We had a blast out there, and you can check out some shots on Alistair's NYC Flickr set. We've put together a Google Map of most of the places we visited too.
Our highlights were:
MoMA: a behemoth, but you can't beat its collection of the greatest hits of 20th century art
The New Museum: a great space for contemporary art
The New York Transit Museum: the history of New York's transport system, housed in a disused subway station, with a great collection of signage
The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co: the brilliant front for the inspiring 826 NYC
Hell's Kitchen Flea Market: stylish junk
Printed Matter: all manner of artists and designers books and zines
Freemans: lush dinner down a back alley right by the New Museum
The High Line: a stunning urban park created out of an old elevated train line
Buttermilk Channel: delicious Brooklyn restaurant
Green-wood Cemetery: a vast and peaceful graveyard in Brooklyn
We'd planned to rely on an iPhone for navigation. We loaded up the NYC Subway Map app which was pretty indispensable, and works offline so you can check it while riding the subway; as well as My Maps, which lets you access any Google Maps you create. But, and it's a huge but, the data roaming charges in the US for overseas visitors are just nuts - £6 per meg of data, which you can plough through in moments. It's a massive hindrance, and we found working from a standard guidebook and map the only way to go in the end.
One of the things we truly loved was that at any restaurant or cafe, they immediately bring you a free bottle of iced tap water as soon as you sit down, which they replenish as much as you like. That's a damn fine idea, and London would do well to follow suit.
Have a nice day y'all.
So, we're lucky enough to be stateside at the moment, for a week of shenanigans and suchlike in New York. So far, the Big Apple is living up to expectations - we've already spotted a guy reading the NY Times on his iPad on the subway, sitting next to a girl with a chihuahua in her handbag, who was in turn next to a guy reading manga comics on his Kindle.
We're not going to be posting a whole heap while we're here, but we'll be sure to fill you in on our return. In the meantime, Alistair's gonna be posting bits and bobs on his Twitter feed, so check in over there if you're wildly bored.