New York City is one of my favorite places to be in the winter. The holiday lights line streets in all five boroughs, the glow inside restaurants looks inviting and each shop is lit up like a little gem waiting to be discovered. So many of you have mentioned that you’re heading to the New…
As soon as Amy and I set foot back in Brooklyn, I started planning to pack up and head out again for the first-ever Portland Bazaar, which I organized with friends and all-around awesome dudes, Matt Pierce and Greg Hennes. We’ve been working overtime to get the final details together, and this week I’m posting…
This weekend my parents were in town and we ended up talking about music. My dad was lamenting that no one bought albums or non-digital music anymore, which got me thinking about how much I miss record and CD packaging. My first job out of college was with a small record label in NYC and…
Today I’m thrilled to offer a special twist on our traditional Tuesday city guides. For years, I’ve wanted to offer a second (and third and fourth) take on a city from the perspective of one of its local talents. The book sidelined us with work for a bit, but we’re finally back on schedule and…
It’s weird to think that I was born the same year MTV started, but today marks the network’s 30th birthday. So many of my earliest music memories were courtesy of the fledgling channel and I can still remember staying up late to pop a tape in the VCR so I could record Nirvana, Pearl Jam…
Cello print by Heather Webster at Etsy I’m dedicating this week’s music mix to a seriously fun show I saw last Friday. The Doug Fir in Portland hosted The Portland Cello Project’s “Extreme Cello Dance Party” (yep, you read that right), a celebration of old and new music arranged and played by cellists who were…
I’ll be the first to admit that I know way more about the music coming out of speakers than the speakers themselves. But maybe if I had speakers this gorgeous, I’d pay a little more attention. These concrete speakers are designed by Shmuel Linski as part of his graduation project from Shenkar College in Israel….
Print above by Sarah Marshall at Etsy There are few things I love more in songs than a good hand clap. I naturally want to tap my feet or clap my hands when listening to music, so I appreciate when musicians build that right into the song so I don’t feel like such a doofus…
Image above: Portland print by Nathan Trivette at Etsy Today, Amy and I are hopping on a plane to San Francisco to work on a special summer project with our DIY queen, Kate Pruitt. After we cram in a few days of fast-paced work, we’re heading to Portland to finish the project, visit some of our…
Print above by Blimpcat at Etsy The last few weeks of have been a blur of tagging, coding, and de-bugging. So much so that music was sadly the last thing on my mind. My head felt like the picture above, except that instead of words and lyrics all I could see was HTML and the…
Hi everyone! Today, I am thrilled to welcome new D*S guest writer Rachael Maddux! Rachael was an editor at Paste magazine until its recent print closing and I was delighted to discover that she is equally passionate about music and design. So today she’s joining us for a guest column called “Sights & Sounds” that…
Photo by Grant Wilkinson Lupe Núñez-Fernández’s paintings look effortless, as if the inky brushstrokes rendering pensive humans, curious animals and bleeding landscapes were applied in just a few deft wrist-flicks. But her relationship with art is hardly casual: in addition to technical training, Núñez-Fernández holds a PhD in modern art history, and over the last…
This morning is a very special edition of the Monday music mix because . . . my parents are taking over. Okay, not entirely, but they’re outnumbering me two to one. Before dinner yesterday, I was thinking about this column and how we could pool the diverse Bonney family musical tastes into one post. Rather…
For me, the lines between design and music are constantly blurred. The sounds playing in your home can be as effective as beautiful artwork or great furniture in creating a space that feels like you. While my musical tastes are pretty much all over the map (and I’m always looking for something new that will…
Photo by Elgarbo Art Growing up in a beach town left me with a lot of good and bad traits. I have an appreciation for the outdoors (good), a keen awareness of the difference between marsh and saltwater smells (in between?), an unabashed love of flip flops (bad in the winter) and I will forever…
Looking through Nate Duval’s portfolio, it’s almost hard to believe that all of his concert posters, band t-shirts and album covers (plus art for national ad campaigns, corporate identities and more) are the work of just one dude. But his self-imposed chameleonic nature is one of the things we love most about this Massachusetts-based designer,…
Photograph of Wormsloe Plantation (on vintage tin tile) by Meryl Truett Last week’s trip to Birmingham, Alabama still has its claws in me. Whenever I touch down on southern soil it’s as if some stubborn weed wraps a tendril around me and it makes it harder and harder to leave each time. This trip was…
It’s no secret that I’ve been crushing on Wye Oak lately. Their new album, Civilian, is on heavy rotation around my apartment, so I was excited to hear from Merge about their newest music video. The video for their song “Fish” is a collaboration between Wye Oak and local Baltimore artist Katherine Fahey and photographer Michael…
Print above by Tiny White Lights I’m really excited for the D*S redesign to be up and running (in May!) because the title I wanted to write for this post wouldn’t fit in the alloted space. And man, I hate shortening something important like National Record Store Day. Last week I was thinking about how…
Image above via Veer Saturday morning, I packed up the car and picked up Amy & Amy to drive from Brooklyn down to Pennsylvania to . . . celebrate Brooklyn. For some reason, the three of us never stopped laughing about how funny it was to leave Brooklyn to honor it in another state, but…
