Design Indaba 2013

Very excited for the Design Indaba conference happening this week, from tomorrow til Friday! If you haven't heard of it before, the Design Indaba is a design conference that happens once a year in South Africa, with amazing highly accomplished speakers from around the world. It happens in Cape Town, but there are simulcasts held in other venues around the country and I'll be attending the Durban simulcast. Last year was incredibly inspiring, and I see this year being even better! Particularly looking forward to seeing illustrator and letterer, Jessica Hische. It's three full days, so posts may be a bit slow/non-existant for that time, but I hope to share some inspiration from the event next week.

Read more about Design Indaba and see the list of this year's speakers here.

Moments of Happiness 02

Where I share with you a few snaps of recent goings-on :)

These two little adorable sweethearts made their way into my life recently! The cuteness is so intense it's almost unbearable at times. My rule is I can't take in more cats unless they come to me coz then it's a sign, right? So these two were traipsing down the road one day following some people who weren't interested and would surely have been run over pretty soon had we not taken them in. And now they're mine :) YAY CATS!
(If you're also a cat person and would like to meet my other "kids", look here, here and here)

The Botanic Gardens is one of my favourite places to chill - it's so peaceful and beautiful, and inspiring! Nature and its colour palette are truly awe-inspiring.

I collect second-hand classic books and I found a whole stack of great ones recently! It was like finding hidden treasure. I love reading and doodling at my favourite outdoor cafés.

The sea! Need I say more? 

Flowerface Doodles

Some doodles from my sketchbook - watercolour and pen. 

What do you think?

Haydanhuya Wooden Things

How awesome is this bag?! Gökhan Eryaman is the Turkish genius behind these beautiful, simple wooden bags, also known as Haydanhuya. They're carved from one or two pieces of solid wood, usually oak, walnut and lime wood and leather.

A quick doodle...

A quick doodle inspired by the cool plants at The Factory Cafe...

Moments of Happiness 01

Moments of Happiness is a regular I'd like to keep up that's basically a few shots of moments I've had that I've enjoyed recently. It's partly to just share everyday, small happiness with you guys, and also partly a record and practice in gratitude and mindfulness for myself. It forces me to be more aware of all those little moments and to get a quick snap of them, even ones that I may not post here, and I find it's really great to be able to back and look through all those little moments and take stock of all that's good. So this is the first...

The lovely and talented Nadia hosted a creative business workshop a few weeks ago which I attended. It was a fun day filled with useful information and I got to meet a whole group of new awesome people. We also got a goodie bag with some fun stuff in, including a Daniela's delicious brownie! (If you look closely you'll see only half that brownie made it to photo time!)

A quiet moment on one of the awful hot days we've been having lately, cooling down at Ci Gusta with some pink grapefruit gelado and strawberries. As delicious as it was, I cannot wait for winter!

The henna I got done for my cousin's wedding. I really love henna.

My dear little venus fly trap! I just love this creature, and it's really been thriving on my windowsill.

V-day...

Like I mentioned in my free printable post "in the name of love", I'm not a celebrator of Valentines day, and I thought this superb illustration by Mary Kate McDevitt, one of my absolute illustration heroes, was rather fitting :)
If you are celebrating today I do hope it's awesome!

Fascinating Illustration by Daniel Horowitz

I really like these weird-awesome illustrations by Daniel Horowitz. The contrast between the gory creatures and the perfect, pristine, innocent looking women is what makes it so striking and fascinating.

Daniel is a mixed media artist whose work has been widely featured including The New York Times, Random House, GQ, The Wall Street Journal and more. He has also been highly awarded many times by various institutions. 

View more of his work here.

Commissioned Illustration

If you follow me on twitter or facebook you might have seen my work in progress pics of a commissioned illustration I was working on - this is the end product! It was a commission by a mom-to-be for twins...

Initial rough sketches...

What do you think? :)

Sounds I'm loving this week...

This song has been pretty much on repeat for days on end! Check it out, debut full track by Australian band, Little Daylight.


And this is just pretty cool: it's a video for Bonobo's new track Cirrus made from clips of a 1962 film about "the wonders of consumerism". Awesome and mesmerising.


Like it? Comment and let me know your thoughts! :)

Download in the Name of Love!

So I don't really dig the whole Valentine's Day thing and don't wish to support it, but I have been meaning to give you guys a free printable download and thought this would be a good opportunity. This isn't a valentines day post, just a Post in the Name of Love! (Sounds so dramatic, right? hah!) So you've got some heart shapes that you can string along in loving garlands, or stick onto cards, or use as decoration for packaging, or anything else you can think of. There are some gift tags, which aren't specifically lovey so you can use them for any occasion, and some cards which are lovey. Really hope you like'em! 

Click here to download the printable!

Please do share the love and drop me a comment to let me know what you think :)

Daily Dishonesty

Lovely little lies from a hungry graphic designer.

Lauren Hom is a graphic designer and illustrator from New York City. She creates these superb typographic artworks based on the lies we all tell ourselves on a daily basis. Many of these sound veeeerry familiar. I'm sure you'll recognise some, too.

“The idea for Daily Dishonesty came to me one night while my roommate and I were having our weekly wine-and-cheese session in the kitchen of our tiny East Village apartment,” Hom recalls. “We were talking about all the things we wanted to do in our free time, but then burst out laughing because we realized that neither of us really had any free time. That night, I easily wrote down a couple dozen lies that I tell myself, and started drawing the next day.” (source)

Aren't they just beautiful? I love how they're all so varied in style. If you have any lies you'd like to see made pretty, you can lie to Lauren on her site.