I haven’t been to many places as gloriously stereotype-affirming as the Austrian Alps, where we just spent a week’s vacation. Whether you’re standing on the side of a mountain and picking wild blueberries and reaching behind your head to feed them to your infant son on your back (did this), or being hailed by every [...]

There are literally 20 emails in my inbox from my mother all from this past week… and you know what that means: a family get-together is brewing. Whether its train connections, presents for her grandson, or the weather, my mom has got a question about it. So, yeah: we’re picking her up in Innsbruck and [...]

Last night, I met with the publisher to show my second round of cover ideas for Bruno Jasienski’s The Legs of Izolda Morgan. We were joined by a lot of wine and his wife, who’s a sort of cultural luminary here in Prague (she gave a tour of the historical Jewish quarter to Michelle Obama [...]

The first two posts covered the illustration-based covers; these next two posts show the ones designed around photos. In this batch, I especially love the irradiated glow around Errol Gardner, and the Victorian-era swashes around his initials. I suppose the latter design idea probably stemmed from the fact that he happens to have a dashing [...]

• Looks like I spoke too soon about my back. After victoriously crowing about it feeling entirely better on Monday, I screwed it up again on Tuesday playing basketball. Not good times. Bad times. • To follow up on an old post: my buddy Tol is blowing through Prague this week and reports having heard [...]

Nice World Cup final. My only regret is that when Iniesta scored and the Spanish team began celebrating, the producers didn’t cut to a split-screen view of Paul the Octopus being deliriously mobbed by other octopii in recognition of his prefect record of prognostication. (Above: artist’s conception of what this might have looked like, using [...]

This is what happens when you have a portfolio site that’s your own name (as in danmayer.com): That’s us Dans: always loving each others’ shit, man.

Back in 2003, I took an advanced typography class where we had to do a sort of self-generated thesis project. I wound up looking at typography associated with different genres of Jamaican music, which actually held together as a topic more coherently than I’d dared hope. One of my classmates, Lora Santiago, did something around [...]

OK, I’ve never blogged the ongoing process of working on a project before and so I have no idea whether it’s interesting, illuminating, unseemly or just dead boring (or some heady concoction of all of the above). In any case, I promise this is the last image dump I’ll do on the Legs of Izolda [...]

Favorite new Czech word: Zázrak. Means ‘miracle’. I can’t tell you how much enjoyment I’m getting out of this one. The next time something mildly surprising or fortunate happens, lift one hand, say ‘ZAAAAAZ-RAK!’ with great zest and make a face like Doug Henning (above). If you’re in a public place, just say it under [...]