Hasta La Ideas

My hands are shaking and my heart is fluttering.

The idea of publishing a magazine has been floating in my mind for many years, but I didn’t make the decision to proceed with it until this past Christmas. Deidre and I began working on it in earnest in January. I still can’t quite believe that we accomplished so much in just three months. UPPERCASE magazine is really the culmination of a dozen years of freelance graphic design experience and four years of this creative entrepreneurial adventure called UPPERCASE. All the skills I have acquired over the years have been put to use… and then some! It has been an amazing learning experience and so creatively satisfying.

Blanca Gomez provided the perfect cover image. Blanca, I am so grateful for your generosity. Thank you.

Deidre, thank you for your inexhaustable flow of ideas. And for truly putting your heart into it.

Thank you, Glen, for writing some terrific articles and for listening to me talk about the minutiae of the magazine’s progression.

The shipment of magazines is on its way from Winnipeg and we expect them tomorrow. Everything’s on schedule for the launch celebration this Thursday from 5pm – 9pm. In the meantime, I’m transforming the gallery space for the treehouse show, adding new subscribers (thank you!), filling our biggest Eclectonote order ever, and sending out Jen11 orders. I’m going to leave this post up for a while, to bask in the moment… and I’ve got a lot more work to do!

See you on Thursday!

The Suitcase Series Volume 1:
Camilla Engman

Artist Camilla Engman may live in Gothenburg, Sweden, but her appeal is international. A professional illustrator and exhibiting artist, her images are whimsical, poignant, humourous and insightful. With her keen eye for finding the extraordinary in the everyday, Camilla documents her inspirations and artwork on her popular blog. Nearly 2000 fans visit her site on a daily basis (with three quarters being from North America) to get a glimpse into Camilla’s creative life.

UPPERCASE is proud to have been the first gallery outside of Sweden to feature her work, in our 2005 exhibition “Best in Show”. We are excited to be collaborating on a book of Camilla’s art and life, the first volume in our “Suitcase Series”, to be released in the fall of 2009. I am looking forward to travelling to Sweden next month and meeting Camilla (and her cute dog, Morran) at long last.

The Suitcase Series presents in glorious detail the lives of select artists and designers. The books are image-based, full of artwork, sketchbook pages, beautiful photographs and artifacts from where the artists live and work. Interviews with the artist are included in both their native language and English. The books’ size will be small and intimate, like a diary/sketchbook and each book in the series would have a special treasure added: perhaps a small limited-edition art print, a vellum envelope filled with foreign paper scraps for collage, fabric swatches, etc. The book becomes a precious souvenir of a creative journey shared between the reader and the artist.

For our book and magazine subscribers, you will be receiving the Jen11 and Camilla books as part of your subscription. If you’d like to preorder Camilla’s book by itself, click here. All pre-orders will include a unique keepsake of the project.

{ PHOTO: Elisabeth Dunker }

New mirror designs are in the shop.

We’re inquisitive: learning from other artists, illustrators, designers, photographers, filmmakers and musicians, whether they’re upstarts or icons, famous or shy, verbal or visual.

We’re inspired: enchanted by great ideas and strange inventions; by colour and pattern; things fancy and frugal; the charm of vintage in a modern life; the ridiculous and the sublime.

We’re adventurous: traveling to destinations both real and imagined, peeking into creative spaces and discovering magnificent people and memorable places.

We’re eclectic: curating souvenirs, collecting treasures and celebrating the extraordinary in the everyday.

We’re playful: delighting in visual amusements, intelligent distraction, entertaining wordplay and sweet indulgences.

We’re UPPERCASE: a magazine for the creative and curious!

This quarterly magazine is 68 pages of glorious print on paper, 8.75″ x 11″ perfectbound. The Spring issue will be released in early April followed by Summer (July 2009), Fall (October 2009) and Winter (January 2010).

Read all about the project and how you can subscribe, participate and advertise on the Magazine sidebar at right.

Cover illustration courtesy Blanca Gómez, Madrid.
Thank you so much, Blanca! 

New things are in store! I received a shipment of LePens plus some new items such as Squishy Scissors (they have soft, flexible handles and are great for fine cutting… these sure would have come in handy when I was cutting hundreds of paper snowflakes!) Marvy has also introduced eraseable highlighters. Such a funny notion, to “de-highlight” something! (available in person in UPPERCASE. If you’re not in town, but are interested in purchasing any of these, please email us.)

We’ve also replenished our supply of Petite Pattern Books and these are available online. (Act quickly if you’ve had your eye on Simple & Natural – they only sent me two copies of this popular title.)