Happy Halloween!

7 billion

The United Nations has forecasted that the world's population will surpass 7 billion tomorrow. Only 12 years ago (in October 1999), the world passed the 6 billion mark. So, just how much is 7 billion? Here's a little visualization:

See that tiny dot? (No, that's not a speck of dust on your screen.) That's one pixel.
Let's say one pixel = one person.

Each one of these black blocks have 333,000 pixels (576 pixels X 578 pixels).
So, when you look at these three blocks together, you are looking at about 1 million pixels.

Now imagine looking at 7,000 sets of these blocks (21,000 blocks in total).
Or, imagine looking at an image on a monitor that was 83,666 pixels X 83,666 pixels.
The monitor would need to be about 64 feet X 64 feet.

That's 7 billion.
Yikes!

I love Saturdays

Yesterday at the St. Lawrence Market (probably my favourite place in Toronto)

Weekend words

Have a great weekend everyone!

Laundry day

As seen on Queen St. West.

The trouble with doppelgängers

...is they mess up your Google Alerts. Pictured above is Chris Rouleau, also known as Blaze Ya Dead Homie, part of the American gangsta rap / horrorcore group, Insane Clown Posse. Him and his (*cough cough*) posse were arrested on Saturday, and needless to say, my Google Alerts have been haywire all week. Such is life, I guess. :P

Rocket by time

Loving this infographic by James Rosselet, which shows times between TTC stops. Neat-o!
(via BlogTO)

Türkiye için (For Turkey)

I recently found these delightful Turkish children's books. My thoughts go out to all of the Turkish citizens in Turkey and abroad who have been affected by the disastrous earthquake this weekend.

Words for the weekend

A sudden change of direction

Apologies for my absence the last few days. One week ago, I found out my colleagues and I will be laid off as of December 31, 2011. The last week has been a whirlwind of soul-searching and life-planning.

As you may or may not know, I have been pursuing freelance graphic design part-time for the last year. I have been so fortunate to work some amazing clients - both old and new. With this new development, I am happy to report that I will be available to take on design and type projects full-time starting on January 1, 2012!

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has supported me up to this point. I am so grateful to be surrounded by such amazingly supportive and talented friends and family across the continent. It overwhelms me. I want you all to know that it was your words of encouragement that helped solidify my decision to pursue design. A giant group hug is in order!

Change, especially sudden change, is never easy. But I also believe that all things (good, and not-so-good) happen for a reason. I am so excited to see what the future has in store.

Please stay tuned… big, amazing things to come!

xo,
CR

Day on the farm

  
I had a wonderful day yesterday surrounded by animals, food and new friends. Thanks Beth and Alex, Anne and Mike, and everyone else on the farm!

Morning coffee memo

Weekend pie

Weekend painting

This weekend was spent enjoying the beautiful weather, eating pie, and finishing this oil painting for Hugh and Tracey's cottage. Life is good!

Thankful

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend everyone.

Connecting the dots (Repost)

I first posted this on 6/3/2011:

"... And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting ... And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: 

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. 

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. 

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.   

... Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. 

... Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

- Excerpt from commencement address by Steve Jobs at Stanford University, delivered on June 12, 2005. Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs. 

Geode fun!

Fauxgo love!

My Edward Lewis Enterprises logo from my silly Edward Lewis Scholarship Fund is featured on Fauxgo today, which presents logos of fictional companies or organizations.
Thanks Tymn!

Roughing it in the books

Here's a logo I created for my good friend Melanie's new literature blog, Roughing It In The Books. You can see in the screenshot below that the colour scheme was based on her collection of antique books from the New Canadian Library. Thanks Melanie, and happy reading!

Fulcrum Group

Above is the new logo I created for Fulcrum Group, an HR consulting company in Alberta. The objective was to create a clean, contemporary logo that instilled solidarity, professionalism and approachability. (N.B.: A fulcum is the point on which a lever rests / pivots, or, a thing that plays a central or essential role in an activity, event, or situation.) Below are a few of the preliminary mockups to give an idea of the logo's progression.
Thanks Gary, and best of luck with Fulcrum!

Nuit Blanche 2011

Spectacular lightshow at Nathan Philips Square last night!

Hello October