There are a lot of directions I could go in with this post. But I worry about alienating those of you with kids and/or drinking problems (though they usually go hand-in-hand, don’t they?)

And really, the picture says it all, and by “it all”, I mean “babies love getting loaded on chocolate-covered whiskey.”

Duh.

For more drunken, drooling cuteness, click.

(Via Liqurious, courtesy of Adrienne — I think.)

I actually had a really cramazing Thirsty Thursday post lined up for today, but it’ll have to wait until next week — I have an exciting announcement to make (well, two actually):

First up: my Diver Riding Shark shirt was worn by Jimmy on FOX’s Raising Hope this week!

The full video won’t be up on Hulu until next week, but rest assured, it will be embedded ASAP (provided Congress doesn’t destroy the internet between now and then). There’s something vaguely satisfying about Jimmy passing his GED test while wearing one of my tees…

But even MORE exciting than this teeny-tiny step up the ladder of fame is the addition of ART PRINTS to the Ex-Boyfriend product line! While a limited selection to start, I hope to be able to add to the collection of available art prints in the future. Each 11″ x 17″ print is digitally reproduced on 100 lb. glossy cover stock, ships for FREE in sturdy cardboard shipping tubes, and is guaranteed to get you mad high-fives & fist-bumps at your next dinner party (if your dinner parties are typically held at the Jersey Shore. And if they are, the high-fives might be for your delicious rum-ham.)

I realized that while I mentioned this on Twitter and Facebook, I never actually got around to introducing it here on the blog: my new Pterodactyl Springs Summer Camp t-shirt!

What better way to relive the halcyon days of your youth than by throwing on this distressed vintage-looking tee from the Pterodactyl Springs Summer Camp? Guaranteed to evoke fond memories of warm summer nights spent listening to the lake lap against the shore as the flap of dinosaur wings passed by overhead!

In my first industry-related design job out of school, I designed t-shirts for a local commercial screen print shop. Most of the stuff I did was for local small businesses and churches and schools. You know, crappy, unimaginative one-color stuff featuring a lot of clip art, Comic Sans, and Bible verses — and almost always on white tees.

Occasionally though, I’d get a project with multiple colors and more complex designs, which I was then directed by salespeople to quickly replicate or mimic with fewer colors. I’d hear things like “reproduce this EXACTLY…but use two colors instead of four, and we need it to print and ship tomorrow, so I need a mock-up to send for the client’s approval in 30 minutes.” In the Art Room, this became shortened to “you know, use the Photoshop button.”

“The Photoshop button” was the magical, mythical, non-existent cure-all button that non-designers are convinced exists in reality — they just never see it action. As though we artists just hang out by the water cooler with unicorns and yetis discussing sports and politics until we hear salespeople down the hallway and everyone disappears and/or “fakes” working hard to avoid getting handed new projects.

This is only tangentially related to the video below, but any time I hear or see something advertising the wonders of Photoshop, I always pause for a split-second and ask myself, “I wonder if the version they’re using came with a Photoshop button?”

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Via JesseRosten.com)

This time of year is when I usually transition from beer & cocktails to wine. It also helps that Meredith & I made sure to stock up our wine rack at Trader Joe’s when we were visiting my family down in Virginia for the holidays. Maryland really needs to start allowing grocery stores to sell booze. Sigh.

Anyway, a very cool design/culture/miscellany blog my friend Adrienne turned me on to called A Cup of Jo recently ran a fantastic (and hilarious) post of wine-drinking (and serving) etiquette tips written by Joanna Goddard and illustrated by artist Gemma Correll. I won’t load the thing wholesale here, but definitely check out the original post here, and check out the whole blog and Gemma’s other work here; it’s great!

(Via A Cup of Jo; illustration by Gemma Correll)

A couple weeks ago when I was researching vintage advertising imagery for reference material and inspiration to use for the re-design of my Now Accepting Girlfriend/Boyfriend Applications tees, I found some pretty amazing ads from women’s magazines of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.They weren’t exactly revelatory or surprising — right after we moved to Baltimore a few years ago, Meredith and I hit the kitsch jackpot while hitting up thrift & antique stores for stuff to decorate our house: tons of back issues of True Story magazine. Loaded with full-page ads trying to sell women on using Lysol to both disinfect their kitchen counters and their panty liners, and lots of other classics.

But when I found this over at PlanetOddity.com, it floored me:

There are a few things going on here that are cramazing:

• Directly equating a woman’s happiness with the volume of housework she engages in
• Calling what is essentially speed “vitamins”
• The fact that FREAKING KELLOGG’S, home of Tony the Tiger and Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and Eggo waffles, and founded by consensus nut-job health-food masochist William Kellogg, was the company manufacturing and selling Pep Vitamins

The thing that’s so entertaining about this sort of advertising is how spectacularly this sort of cultural mindset crashed and burned at the turn of the 1960s and resulted in the dark underbelly of suburban swellness (see Men, Mad and Dolls, Valley of the. Or, if you’d rather laugh than cringe, John Waters’ Mom, Serial).

Wow, sorry for the radio internet-silence; the holidays can do that to a guy. And by “that” I mean “crawl into a cave for weeks at a time with nothing to keep him company but his wife, cats, and copious amounts of fattening food and booze”.

Speaking of cats, remember this cutie from our last chat? Well, she just had her surgery on Monday morning and is recuperating nicely in the pillow & blanket nest I made for her in the bathroom. I felt bad sending her under the knife without a name, so she’s officially Penelope, at least as far as the state of Maryland is concerned. More pix will be forthcoming.

Anyway, let me show you what I’ve been working on. First up is a new design documenting the on-going exploits of Fuzz Aldrin, first kitty in space!

Being the enterprising sort, Fuzz decided to make a little scratch doing what he does best, not unlike his bud Victorious Yeti did with his alpine resort. I present to you Fuzz Aldrin’s Astro Camp:

Cyber-high-five to Yuki Shichi, a fan who helped critique an early version of this design months ago and really got me pointed in the right direction. She rocks!

Another cyber-high-five to Victoria Vu, who loved the skull & cross-carrots on the Pirate Bunny jolly roger so much that she asked that it be made into its own shirt. Done and done!

Finally, as I’ve already done with my I’d Rather Be Making Out & Peanut Butter & Jelly Lovers tees, I recently re-designed my Now Accepting Boyfriend Applications and Now Accepting Girlfriend Applications tees. I think they’re way better now:

Well, that’s it for now. I should have some new stuff up in the next couple weeks. Tomorrow we resume our normal diet of booze, weirdness, Japanese robots, and hilarity!

Remember a couple months ago when I was all excited about the advent of 3D printing, aka Star Trek replicator technology? Well, my past and our future have collided into this present happening, and it freaks me out!

Some smart cookies have already decided to monetize this amazing future-tech in the coolest way possible: by building and selling customized robots!

My Robot Nation gives robot enthusiasts the chance to design unique robot figures online and then uses a 3D printer to fabricate them to your specifications. The do a pretty good job of explaining the process here, as well as showing some of it here:

Being a legit graphic designer (I have the degree that proves it!), I love a lot of the early 1960′s movie title cards done by Saul Bass and other giants of the pop art era. Simplistic, powerful, and full of contrast. While that sort of thing went out of style once the hippies arrived, it’s made a nice comeback over the last decade or so, and Christian Peterson’s poster homages are a great example of this:

I love stippling, and would use it all the time in drawings after I learned about it as a kid. But man, is it tedious!

Hero from Miguel Endara on Vimeo.

(Via LikeCool.com)