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.)

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)

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)

This is pretty cool. Makes me wish I was better at/more willing to learn about animation:

keep drawing from studio shelter on Vimeo.

(Via LikeCool.com)

So Australia was surprisingly like the U.S. in a lot of ways. But every one of those similarities was just a little off for some reason. Here’s a list of ten things that were just weird:

1. _________ (insert iconic snack food here) “Classic”:

So I thought to myself in the airport newsstand at LAX “I bet Meredith misses American junk food. I’ll bring some Oreos® along!” Good thing, too, because in Australia, they don’t have Oreos®. The have Oreos® Classic.

The ingredients are different, the packaging is muted and faded compared to the bright, bold blue of our Oreos©, and the taste…well, let’s just say the closest comparison I can think of is along the lines of “stale Hydrox”. And this wasn’t just limited to the cookies—5 Chewing Gum® (the one with the Matrix-y commercials) just tastes WRONG over there.

2. The Royal w/ Cheese (AKA, the f#$king metric system):

They use the same road sign set-up that we do on their highways—kelly green field with white border and text, in the same font. But my ability to determine how soon we would arrive at a destination was thrown by the fact that all of the distances were in kilometers, as was the speedometer in our rental. This confusion extended to filling up at gas stations—sold by the liter, not the gallon, and rather than stating that regular unleaded was $1.45 per liter, it just said “145.8″ on the signs. So the cost of gas (and only gas) was expressed in hundreds of cents.

3. Alcohol Serving and Cost:

If you’re a cocktail and/or beer drinker and you’re in Australia, I hope you’re either loaded or OK with subsisting on wine. It’s easily the cheapest of their adult beverages. The average cost of cocktails in Melbourne is $18. Decent craft beers aren’t much less expensive, selling for between $8 and $12 a pint. Also, beers are served in one of three sizes: pots, pints, and jugs. Pints are like they are throughout the rest of the world (roughly 20 fluid oz.), but pots are half that size, and jugs are roughly equal to two pints (40 fluid oz.) Depending on the strength of the brew, you’ll want to adjust the size of your glass accordingly.

4. “Am I driving drunk, or just in Australia?”

They drive on the left side of the road, and the driver sits on the right side of the car. The toughest aspect of this? Remembering to use the lever on the right side of the steering column to signal turns and lane changes; the left side lever will (naturally) turn on your wipers. It’s very disorienting the first couple of days.

5. There are only white people in Australia.

Not really, but you’d certainly be forgiven for assuming that based on the television programming, especially the commercials. I think there may have been an islander in one of them, but that particular commercial was in black & white—almost as if they were trying to obscure the fact that there was a non-white actor involved. Now, our apartment had VERY basic channel offerings, but it was still noticeable enough that Meredith and I both commented on it.

6. Soccer is football. Football is GRIDIRON!

This was admittedly hilarious and awesome. They were actually airing commercials advertising open tryouts for refs, coaches AND players, and the clips of Australian “gridiron” they were showing throughout were so poorly-attended and sad-looking; you’d probably find more fans at a pee-wee football game for under-10′s here than the number that were watching the games in Australia.

7. They really love art:

Melbourne in particular was just COVERED in cool street art and graffiti, and that’s b/c it’s considered a valid form of artistic expression (as it should be). We walked by a couple of guys working on a mural in an alley off a main street at TWO IN THE AFTERNOON. The U.S. really needs to get on board with this.

8. Pumpkin, pumpkin everywhere, but not a pie to eat:

Basically, every restaurant had a pumpkin-centric item on the menu, but barring one establishment that offered a pumpkin pie ice cream sundae, they don’t seem to use pumpkin for sweet applications. They’re missing out!

9. They have a really vibrant music scene that is surprisingly (and wonderfully) not U.S.-centric.

We heard a lot of great indie-rock and pop music on the radio that just hasn’t broken through stateside, and it was pretty revelatory to find an entire continent with a rich pop musical history that I’ve only as yet scratched the surface of.

10. Wi-Fi = Dial-Up:

Seriously, the most frustrating aspect of being in Australia is the painfully slow internet speed. Even wired “high-speed” connections weren’t much better, with most browser windows freezing if more than two tabs were opened at one time. Maybe Al Gore was telling the truth when he claimed he invented the thing.

Trading under the name DWITT, David Witt is a Minneapolis-based illustrator who is in the midst of a pretty awesome series, both in terms of concept and execution: Last Words.

Basically, he does quasi-caricatured portraits of famous dead celebs paired with the last words they uttered before shuffling off to the Great Cocktail Party In The Sky. I really hope he continues the series; his most recent addition is Bob Marley, though besides Bogey (pictured above), my favorite would have to be Groucho (of the human variety—not the canine). You can check out his full portfolio, including posters and other design/illustration work, here.

(Via Thrillist)