Get your hands on out-of-print back issues!

Do you love UPPERCASE magazine but you're missing a back issue? Have you recently been introduced to this quarterly magazine for the creative and curious and now you wish you had them all?

Here's your chance to purchase an entire stack of all the issues we've ever printed! We have taken a few of our early issues out of our archives for this one-time only auction. (Issues #1-#7 and #12 are completely sold out elsewhere.)

The purpose of this auction is to raise funds for the upcoming studio move (our current home of the past 8 years is in a building slated for "redevelopment" and so we'll be moving to new accommodations later this summer).

Due to the heavy weight of the package, this stack is only available to ship within North America. However, we have created other listings for individual out-of-print back issues #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7 and #12 that we can ship internationally.

Click here to see the listings on eBay. 

Bidding ends next Friday, May 31.

Thank you for your support!

the stories behind the fabric designs

Here's a new video from Creativebug featuring many of my favourite fabric designers who were launching new lines at the Portland Quilt Market. (I got to see the Creativebug team in action at the Makerie last month—as an amateur videographer, it was interesting to see them at work.)

lots of stitching at ideologio, London

"'Iris Todd - Stitching in my own way', is a artist book published by ideologio earlier this year. The book features embroidery works of the late artist, with focus on how the work was built up, starting with a section on small fragments intended for use in bigger pieces, followed by unframed works, many of them banner type formats, ending with a section of story telling illustrative embroideries. What distinguishes this book is that all works are shown from front and back, revealing the reverse side of the embroideries, where possible, which allowed us to show more of the process and craft behind the works."

"Evelin Kasikov's CMYK was a daily special at the 2013 Pick Me Up show at Somerset House in London. This short video is a collaboration between Evelin Kasikov (CMYK embroidery), Bill Stratford (stop frame animation) and ideologio (concept and direction)."

UPPERCASE commissioned Evelin for a CMYK alphabet that appeared in one of our early issues (#3, back in 2009).

the art song project

At UPPERCASE, we love ephemera. It is not often that we use found bits of paper beyond admiring their beauty and including them in collage. I'm sure many of us are guilty of cutting up old sheet music; I confess that I have taken scissors to some and repurposed them for notebook covers.

For Munich-based soprano Hélène Lindqvist and pianist Philipp Vogler, when they come across old sheet music, they bring the music to life and share it on their Art Song Project website. Illustrated with their own paintings, the couple records art songs and include the lyrics on the site so that visitors can stream the audio, learn and admire obscure—and beautiful—music performed by world-class musicians.

"We're Hélène and Philipp and we are professional classical musicians. We search for unknown art songs in libraries, garage sales and on the internet. Then we record them live and put them on our website for free listening.

We have songs by all kinds of unknowns, and many of them are female composers—writing great music but being "too blonde and beautiful to be taken seriously". We also especially love to feature songs by living composers, who send us their music (we have a few "blonde and beautiful" there as well ;).

Each song comes with a painting and a translation of the lyrics, so it's easy to sit down and listen."

Visit the site and keep it open throughout your day; it will certainly enhance to your mood—and level of sophistication!

stationery guide: Sarah Phelps Creative

Here are some examples of Halifax-based Sarah Phelp's stationery work whom we featured in the UPPERCASE Stationery Guide.

If my work inspires a smile, I know my job is done. My bright, clean designs are full of whimsy, laden with heart, and born out of a deep love for both traditional letterpress and gocco screen printing—as well as simply adding a little cheer to the world with every item I create. 

Some folks may call me old-fashioned at heart. When realising those just-can't-stop-thinking-about-it ideas, my process always begins with putting pen to paper. I also lovingly produce my pieces by hand for a truly tactile product crafted right in my home studio, with slight print variations bringing character to every piece. 

Aside from my paper goods, I also offer bespoke stationery and invitation design. I work closely with my clients to bring their character and personal style to life on paper, whatever the occasion. I also work one-on-one with clients on a range of design projects.

In addition to the guide, UPPERCASE subscribers (as of mid March) received a special insert courtesy of one of our guide participants in their copy of issue #17. The bookmarks, above, were Sarah's generous contribution.

National Stationery Show

For those of us who would love to attend the National Stationery Show on in New York right now but can't, have a flip through the (free) UPPERCASE Stationery Guide to get your paper goods fix. The guide is part of our current issue.

stationery guide: top ten tips from Lilla Rogers

For more career inspiration, pick up Lilla's book!

This article appears in our current issue, #17 and is part of our free UPPERCASE Stationery Guide.

Get your work on stationery

By Lilla Rogers

You walk into your favourite little shop, and you covet the ridiculously cute illustrated journals and cards and notebooks, and even the charming sticky notes, and you ask yourself, “How do I get that gig?”

getting a fab illustration gig

1. Go to shops, turn over products you love and note the manufacturer.

2. Go to the websites of these manufacturers and find their submission details.

3. Stop and reflect on what you love to draw. What’s out there already? Now draw something different.

4. Colours are key. Look at websites like fossil.com or modcloth.com, or at a sumptuous page in this magazine for colour ideas.

5. Set up your palette of these fresh colours.

6. Now draw and paint or vector your images. Make a mess. Use references. Put on awesome music. Dance around your studio. People buy your joy!

7. Free-floating silhouetted icons give the client great flexibility. Having lots of isolated images, such as a mushroom, an anchor or a telescope, give the designer bits to play with. These are used to create coordinating patterns for things like journal endpapers, packaging art and interior pages of sketchbooks. You are making a kind of art kit for the client, a designer, to have fun with.

8. Make sure your icons are related to the theme of your main image.

9. Pop the images onto your website. Post, blog and pin your images. Send out a newsletter with them. Now you’re ready to email them directly to your favourite manufacturers. In the email, pop in about three to five jpgs that are 72 dpi, RGB, and add a link to your website.

10. Rinse and repeat. The system works!

Stay tuned for an amazing opportunity to work with Lilla!

stationery guide: free guide!

Does your heart beat faster at the sight of beautiful stationery?

Issue 17 of our magazine includes this special Stationery Guide of small stationery companies from around the world. We’d like to share this content with you to help promote their businesses and to give you a small taste of the quality content you’ll find in each and every print edition of UPPERCASE magazine.

Please share this guide on your blogs and your social circles to help promote all the talented people who have contributed their work to this guide.

type tuesday: the history of typography in animated cut paper

sketchbook: Isabell Seidel

UPPERCASE reader Isabell Seidel has an excellent urban sketching project underway: "A sample of postcards and two booklets which will show a selection of Ourense´s culinary scenery. The visits down "in the capital" to have tea have already started." She draws these on location from various cafés in Ourense, a town in northern spain.

Isabell put the back of an UPPERCASE magazine subscription cards to good use! "I'm a slow reader of your magazine," she writes. "I like to taste it page by page because it´s one of the few that deserves attention in each detail you place so carefully. As an addict to all kind of paper stuff I especially liked the last issue =). In one of the previous issues I found a subscription postcard with a beautiful frame that invited to be filled. Today it'll go on its journey from bucolic Galicia/Spain to urban Berlin/Germany."
 

To see more of Isabell's work, visit her Flickr sets.

type tuesday: Jonathan Boyd

Upon discovering Jonathan Boyd's work through Flow Gallery's current exhibiition, I'm at a loss for words. wow.

"Jonathan’s work deals with the strange and complex relationships that exist between object, written language and the body. Interested in how language can shape thoughts about an object and its context, his works often being inspired by the text’s narrative."

I believe that some of the letterforms are from typewriters and apparently he has designed a typewriter to type out his own handwriting.

type tuesday: Matthew Raw

Matthew Raw is a ceramic artist featured in Flow Gallery's Forming Words exhibition (see previous post).

type tuesday: forming words at Flow Gallery

Susanne Matsche

I recently heard from Flow Gallery, located in London's Notting Hill. Their current exhibition entitled "Forming Words" includes work by issue 16 cover artist Debbie Smyth. Though I'm on the other side of the ocean, the exhibition has introduced me to some intriguing artists such as Susanne Matche, featured in this post.

If you are fortunate enough to be in London, a visit to this exhibition promises to be an experience of note:

Flow has asked selected artists to create new work based on a piece of writing of their choice, from poetry to a letter to lyrics. Whether it is the shapes, lines and curves which letters create that inspire the work, as in vibrant wall pieces by Debbie Smyth that motivate the work. Or simply the fluidity of the writing, artists exploring this theme express the diverse approaches and outcomes this one theme can manifest. Many of the artists have chosen to utilise the meaning of their selected text or the message that the text communicates to inform their work. Other artists, such as Aino Kajaniemi take a personal approach to using text with particular memories woven in thread. The work in this exhibition traverses disciplines. Jewellery will be exhibited alongside silver teacups, ceramic vessels and enamel plates. The variety in material has resulted in an exhibition that intends to capture the endless inspiration of the written word.

The exhibition continues until May 17.

Susanne Matsche

Susanne Matsche

Susanne Matsche

rock show

This weekend my family and I went to the Gem, Mineral and Fossil show looking for inspiration for the fall issue (#19) that has rocks and gems as a theme. I'm on the hunt for creative projects using or inspired by rocks, gems and minerals. Please submit your links here. 
 

come what may...

Our May desktop wallpaper featuring artwork by Cécile Daladier, photo by Jas Tang and lettering by Janine.

Yesterday, readers of our e-newsletters received a link to download this free desktop wallpaper. If you'd like to download the image, please sign up for our newsletter here.

working on work/life: Lea Vervoort

The submission deadline for my 100 artists is nearing, so my inbox is bursting with questions, artwork and downloads. While I'm busy sorting, here are some images of Lea Vervoort working on her illustration for the forthcoming Work/Life book.

From her home studio in the Netherlands, Lea answered some of our questions on her illustrated life:

Has being an illustrator affected your personal life? (ie the choice of where or how you live?) Actually I can live where ever I want to. My work is international orientated. As long as I have a roof, my computer and my paper with pencils I can work. 

Does your personal life (i.e. children, working from a home studio) affect your career? Working from a home studio sometimes affects my career. I would love to work at a studio away from home, but I'm not able to afford it (yet).

Lea's sketch for her Work/Life illustration.

How do you maintain a balance between your work and your life? (or not?) Illustration is a really big part of my life. It’s my passion and it's my work. And even if I’m not working I’m thinking about it, so there's not really a balance between work and life here. But I don't mind, it makes me happy.

What is your ideal day? A day with lots of sun! Living in the Netherlands with all the rain can be a bit depressing sometime.

Where do you work? Do you have a studio at home or somewhere else? How is your workspace enhance or hinder creativity? I work at home. I live together with my boyfriend. He is an animator and works from home too. We share the office, a room (15m2) next to our living room. It's quite nice to have company of another creative soul.

The full illustration will be revealed in the book!

Is your image-making inspired by personal interests or do you prefer to be driven by specific assignment? Mostly my image-making is inspired by a specific assignment, but I always try to put some things of own interest in it too. And when I have some spare time I love to make personal work.

How is your creative vision expressed through your work? Because of my imagination I love to create/make up worlds. In my work you are likely to find things like environments, surroundings and cities with a certain atmosphere or characters such as animals, people or non-existing beings. Sometimes I’m still a kid who thinks that grown-ups are boring. With my work I hope to surprise and bring back a little sparkle to dusty lives.

creative calgary: wreck city

A row of houses in my neighbourhood is slated for demolition (seems to be a recurring theme) and a community of artists have transformed the buildings before they're torn down. We headed down to see Wreck City before this art installation project ends tonight.

Though it was certainly interesting to see something like this on mass scale and I can see how this was a fun project for lots of young artists to do whatever they wanted, it did feel a bit like a missed conceptual opportunity. Perhaps there could have been some way to comment intelligently on development (ie 'progress'), on respect for the past, on recycling and upcycling, on 'home-fullness' and homelessness... or the history of the houses? Who used to live there? How do they feel about their former homes being torn down? Where are they now?

Maybe I missed some of these concepts as I held tightly to Finley's hand in some potentially hazardous spaces (for a curious 3-year-old) and juggled my camera. I'm not sure. (There was a house with a lineup and controlled entry that intrigued me but we couldn't wait in line.) The overall experience left me melancholic.

A commenter on the Wreck City site wrote something that I agree with:

"As a neighbour, I am glad to see the demolisher (aka Developer) interested in some of the neighbourhood’s culture by supporting WRECK CITY, however, I find it a bit funny that we’re going to have this influx of art and culture just to have the culture entirely wiped out by a colossal condominium spanning an entire city block in the heart of this heritage community." 

Bee Kingdom Glass

Vinciane in the Bee Kingdom gallery/house for the interview.

Vinciane pulls some molten glass.

It is always enjoyable to spend time in artists' studios and peek in on their process. In our current issue, our Work-in-Progress Society article took a new direction in that we decided to focus on an in-person interview rather than curating from the Flickr pool. Bee Kingdom Glass is an exciting 4-person studio hidden in an unassuming house in a Calgary residential neighbourhood. At one point, some of the members of Bee Kingdom were also roommates living in the house; now the living room is a small gallery, bedrooms are office studios—and the glass studio is out back in a converted garage. This close-knit group is aptly named; as glassblowers they are dependent on one another to see their individual creative visions come into form.

Vinciane de Pape, regular UPPERCASE contributor, interviewed Phillip, Kai, Ryan and Tim while I took photos for the article. When the Bees started a demo, I took an impromptu video of the process. You'll find more of my photos and full article about Bee Kingdom in our current issue.

Join Bee Kingdom this weekend for an open house from 1-5pm Saturday and Sunday. More details on their site right here.

my studio as seen by Tracey Ayton

Vancouver-based photographer Tracey Ayton was recently in Calgary on some shoots and she stopped by to visit the UPPERCASE studio. Here are some images of my workspace that she captured; there are more on Tracey's blog. We have published Tracey's work in the current issue (#17) where you can see a photo essay about Granville Eyeland Framemakers.

I was happy that Tracey was here to capture some images of the space "au naturel" (no tidying!), though I am also planning on a final photographic study of the studio to feature in the fall issue of UPPERCASE. By the time the fall issue is out, this space will be a memory and UPPERCASE will be nestled into our new office. It is hard to believe that I'll have to move it all in a few short months.

a little video from the Makerie