Jim Coudal kindly asked if I’d like to be guest editor for Fresh Signals for the month of May over at Coudal. Who could say no to that? Expect the usual items of fancy, delight and wonder. And perhaps a WTF or two.

My parents instilled a sense of fashion into me as a child. I grew up surrounded by piles of Vogue and more of their ilk. My mother and sister rattle off designer names, as familiar to them as their own family. My father aligns himself with designer names that simply sound aristocratic — Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, Valentino and their kind.

I resisted their call to fashion, opting instead to embrace the styles of skaters and snowboarders, hip-hop and grunge. Despite disappointing my parents when I’d wear the nice striped shirt and slacks only when I had to attend a function of some kind, I soaked up the magazines and the names and more importantly cultivated the eye for what made clothes look good.

My family would probably chuckle today and be proud. That I’ve finally over the past decade, come to embrace a good cut, a fitted shirt, a proper pair of pants that fit and a shoe collection that women I have known have been surprised to see, almost jealous in some cases.

I like to watch trends. I keep an eye out on what the kids are doing these days — currently, I’m not too happy with the selection of American men’s fashion at the affordable level. The classic brands have remained preppier than ever and the rest are going with some kind of hip-hop indie hybrid comprised of chunky Nike dunks and tight jeans matched up with your father’s blazer on top of either a striped t-shirt (either slanted, horizontal or asymmetrical), a striped sweater or cardigan or some other pattern variant (houndstooth, herringbone, etc).

I’m personally a man of solid colours and clean cuts. The Europeans have long been prescribers of this aesthetic, as well as some of the Asian countries.

Menswear is described by many as hard to do — there’s a limited canvas to seemingly work with — masculinity is measured in finite terms and the clothes, made to match. Very few designers and companies make menswear that I feel push the boundaries even a little bit, re-inventing old classics into new silhouettes and shapes. There are a few I do like though.

Earlier this week, Trent Reznor released Ghosts I-IV, a 36 track (or a traditional split of 4 albums) collection of instrumental music. It forms a soundscape of moods, atmosphere, moments and volume. It’s a highly interesting experiment in regards to Reznor pulling a Radiohead but how good is the actual music? And how does this set the tone for distribution?

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Today is the official launch of Patternclash, the site of photographer Francesca Tallone. We’ve been working together on the site in bits and pieces over the summer and amidst a few domain and host issues, have everything sorted out.

Francesca has in the last year, been featured as part of Surface Magazine’s Avant Guardian portfolio — a selection of stateside photographers who are recognized as pushing the boundaries of commercial photography.

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I’m back from my excursion to Key West, Florida. A few days before I left, I made a photo containing items I use and carry on a daily basis — the essentials to function. I made the photo with the intention to use it for the redesign I’m working on for Weightshift but did use it as a splash page for the temporary studio closure.

I had an inkling that it might be a decent group but it wasn’t until my SF brethen Daniel Dent and Gareth Spor proposed the idea in public that I decided why not?

The Items We Carry was born.

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The still-fresh, brand spankin’ new relaunch of AIGA.org has had a lot of well-deserved press around the web. The Happy Cog crew did a hell of a job.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have now been involved in the design processes of two major AIGA redesigns in different capacities. The first time around when Flat redesigned the national website, I worked under Behavior with Khoi Vinh to come up with designs for the Design Forum. This time around, I was again, fortunate to be pulled in to work on the AIGA redesign, but not on the public-facing website, but rather under the hood and behind the scenes on AIGA.org’s CMS interface.

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