A high-brow collage I made while watching the DNC… I Heart Barry!

Labor Day is around the corner and made me wonder what I was doing Labor Days of yore - banging on keyboards! Here’s a flyer I made when I played synth in The Sems and we performed at Pianos in NYC. A night of proletariat good times for the working class.

Left to right: Steve Baker (Red Antenna), Rosten Woo (CUP), John Mangin (CUP), Sean Basinski (The Street Vendor Project), and James Reeves (Red Antenna) discuss big things.

CUP’s Making Policy Public project continues and we all met at our Red Antenna office yesterday to discuss the scope of content that will go into the final fold-out poster for The Street Vendor Project. How much will be directed towards street vendors as a much-needed resource, and how much will be an educational/advocacy tool about street vendors and regulation reform? How much will be about clarifying the convoluted regulations into clear graphics and how much will be about showing just how convoluted it currently is? Will the tone be neutral, pleasantly reform-suggestive, or fight-the-man militant? Probably not the latter, but it’s fun to imagine the extreme… I’ve always wanted to draw a big fist. Stay tuned for next week when I come up with some design directions!

Hey kids, it’s collage time again! And Men In Hats is now a series… Words from Pocket Calculator by Kraftwerk.

Hey kids, it’s collage time! Here’s a new one I made last night. Words from Punkrocker by TeddyBears featuring Iggy Pop.

Let CUP’s Making Policy Public project begin! As the graphic designer for one of the projects, I’m collaborating closely with CUP and The Street Vendor Project to create a fold-out poster distilling NYC’s complex vending laws into something concise and coherent. Sean Basinski, a lawyer and former vendor, founded The Street Vendor Project in 2001 as a legal advocacy group for NYC street vendors. Their organization has 600+ vendor members who sell food and merchandise on the sidewalks of New York.

We all met at Sean’s office yesterday and he pulled out a comical box containing heaps of pink tickets they’ve accumulated from local vendors. The violations are mostly for the physical position of vendors’ carts and tables, which must be certain distances from curbs, crosswalks, and building doors. Vendors are also frequently ticketed for not “conspicuously” wearing their vending license and for setting up shop on restricted streets. All these regulations are buried in official documents made up of legalese and heinous text formatting that seem set to get you. Check out this list of streets you’re not allowed to vend on:

Snap. Can the City be ticketed for bad formatting?

Sign in Kyoto, Japan.

I’m honored to be a part of two very cool projects. I won a $20,000 grant from paper company Sappi’s Ideas That Matter program which funds righteous print projects that graphic designers want to produce for non-profit organizations. I’ll be developing my flashcards on renters’ rights for tenant rights organization Tenants & Neighbors. A mock-up of the project can be found here and it’s all about making NY renting rights more fun to learn. Tenants & Neighbors and I will collaborate closely on creating a set that will be mass-produced and available in their online store in a few months.

I’m also excited to work with one of my favorite organizations, Center for Urban Pedagogy. They have a program called Making Policy Public that pairs designers with advocates to develop posters on public policy. I’ll be working with the Street Vendor Project to translate the complex regulations governing NYC street vendors into an accessible poster for all vendors. The poster will become a handy resource that they can use every day on the street when dealing with police officers and local store owners - while serving New Yorkers some of the best and cheapest food in town! Cheers to making important city information more accessible and engaging!

During the past month in Global Studio in Johannesburg, I’ve been working with the non-profit Diepsloot Community News to help improve ways residents can communicate within the township of Diepsloot. Inspired by a community chalkboard model in Liberia, we installed a local community chalkboard so residents can have an accessible platform, share info on a daily basis, self-organize, and empower each other through local knowledge. And it’s cheap to boot! I want one in my neighborhood! Learn more here!

Someone told me Johannesburg looks like an ’80s photo. I like that. After going dark for a month, I’m back online with juicy escapades from Global Studio 2008 in Joburg. More to come. In the meanwhile, thanks to Gothamist for the mention about I’ve Lived!

If you’re venturing out to Governors Island in the next few weeks, you should check out my Pedestrian Timeline! It’s part of the Figment public art event on Governors Island June 27-29. Landmark events in the island’s past are stenciled with temporary spray chalk directly onto the ground so you can get your walk on and your learn on at the same time. Did you know squirrels didn’t arrive until 1931? That’s right. Learn more here!