Yes. That’s correct. We’ve started a new business. A year after we opened Haigh & Martino in our bedroom and a few years after we became internet friends with Brainstorm (remember the rad giveaway we did with them!!??) we combined forces and have opened Industry Standard, a screen printing shop with the greatest intentions. We’ll be working with talented artists whether they’re a big name already or waiting to be discovered by readers or kids with crisp bills at craft shows.

Things have been moving fast, to say the least. The pic above is from a recent open house for important people at 3S Artspace, where our studio (both HAM, Brainstorm and IN/ST combined workspace) is located. We’ve been lucky to become friends with the founder of 3S, all around amazing dude, Chris Greiner (he sings and surfs!!) and we’re ecstatic to be housed in the next hub of all things creative in Portsmouth, NH. 3S will be turning into a music venue, an art gallery and a farm to table restaurant. Not a bad place for us to be. I can just imagine working all day in the studio and walking downstairs to check out the band and grab a beer at the bar. WHAAAT?!!? Dreams, people. Dreams. They sometimes surprise you and come true.

3S was kind enough to offer us a ginormous (albeit real raw) space and with a little elbow grease, some pallets and a lot of love for what we do, we’ve got it into working condition with enough room for every-thang. And then some.

The greatest thing about Industry Standard so far? If it’s not the lunchtime frisbee/skateboarding breaks, the bobby bottleservice jokes, serious shop talk about paper stock or the sheer thrill of walking into a space that looks and feels like who we all are and want to be – then it’s definitely being in business with great people who love to work hard and play even harder.

If you’re an artists who needs screen printing, give us a holler.

If you’re a bright young thing looking to make your life truly yours, I hope this post inspires you to jump into it. Fully. We have and it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. So far.

A while back, I posted about a little side project I’d been working on and was raising Kickstarter money to try to get off the ground.  Well thanks in part to the generosity of you good-lookin’ OKGreatsters, we were able to raise the money we needed, and as of just a few weeks ago, Bound Custom Journals is a real live company.

I’m pretty damn proud.  From the beginning, Bound was something that first and foremost, we wanted.  When Joel (my biz partner) was going on a road trip a few years ago, he thought surely teh internetz would be surely able to create a custom journal with exactly the content he needed for the trip – calendars for planning, maps for marking sweet spots, blanks for sketching, lines for writing.  But unfortunately, it didn’t come through, so we set off to make it real.  Because we wanted one.  At the very least, we’d have our own journal.

But it turned out that a lot of other people wanted one too.  Kickstarter for us was just as much about validating what we thought was a good idea as it was about raising some capital to get things going.  It was a thrill – I don’t think email will ever be as fun as it was during those 50 days.

Fast forward through about 4 months of late nights of designing, coding, beer drinking, and a decent bit of profanity (mostly by my ridiculously talented brother, and Bound CTO, David, when deciphering shipping APIs), and we finally pushed our site live and caught our breath while we planned the next steps.  We enjoyed another beer, and then got back to work improving the site, adding content, and telling the world.

All this to say that I’m excited that Bound Custom Journals is live, and I think you should check us out.  Find us at boundforanything.com, or just click the link in the ‘Friends’ section in the right column.  And if you have any ideas for content, products, or just want to say hey, drop us a line or leave a comment.

(he swears he won’t outsource his posts to his daughter Jana)

Big news, people! Please help me in giving a warm welcome to our newest contributor Michael Lassiter from Durham, NC!

Michael is an outstanding freelance designer with a great eye for clean design & minimalist compositions. His critical eye will be a wonderful addition to our team, and we are happy to have him. You can start expecting Michael’s posts to drop every Thursday starting next week. In the meantime, take a peak at his blog & learn more about Michael on our team page.

Huzzah!

For the last year or so, your humble OKGreatster (me) has been hard at work on a new little project called Bound Custom Journals.  It arose out of a simple need.  Many of us use journals for sketching, note-taking, traveling, and a whole host of other uses.  But until now there was no way to conveniently do all of those things in one place.  We may have one book with grids or blanks for sketching, another with lines for writing, and entire books dedicated to city maps for traveling.  Bound Custom Journals will allow you to craft the contents of your journal around your life.  Via a simple website, you’ll be able to select from our ever-growing library of content and organize, page-by-page, section-by-section, your very own, American-made custom journal and have it in your hands in just days.

It’s been a lot of work getting to this point, but now we need to see if this idea is really something that people want.  So what better way to do that than to hold a pre-sale on Kickstarter.  Check out our project page for all the deets.

I could wax poetic on this stuff all day, but I think the easiest way to explain it all is to watch our video on the Kickstarter page and embedded below.  If you like the idea, go ahead and toss a few dollars in our pledge bucket.  Or just help spread the word – every last dollar, tweet, tumbl, facebook, blog post, whatever counts.  Thanks!

Check out what I just got back from the printer! Super Ordinary Haircuts is a freelance project I worked on with a Raleigh video production company, Myriad Media. It is a leave behind book about their company culture on which I collaborated with Connie Oh. The cover is bronze ink and orange foil stamp on French Kraft paper. It was my first foil stamp, and I can’t wait to do more! If you want to look inside, I have some more pictures on my behance.

Check out the Railinc Annual Report I got back from the printer on Friday! This is the second year in a row that I’ve designed this annual report, and it was really fun and challenging to push myself to make it better than last year.

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Big news today! Some great! Some sad.  Let’s get the bummer out of the way first, shall we?

Our good friend (and my wife) Ellie Snow has decided to leave OK Great to better focus on her work. If you don’t know, she’s an awesome designer in the process of starting her own stationery shop. You can also read about her work and her many inspirations on her blog. So everyone say farewell and wish her luck on her ventures!

Now, if you learned anything from Mufasa + Elton John, you should know that an ending can also mean a new beginning. And in that spirit, I’d like to introduce you to TWO new contributors we’re bringing on board! We’re very excited to have these two, so please show them some love!

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CAROLIN HARRIS | DURHAM, NC

Carolin is a graphic designer in the Bull City, living in bliss with her husband, baby daughter and their two dogs. She lives for beautiful design, type, packaging and photography—all while obsessing about running and yoga. A German at heart and on paper but a left coast-all-the-way lover, maybe one day you’ll find her back where she belongs.

JARED LAHAM | PORTSMOUTH, NH

Jared is a graphic designer + flash developer living in Portsmouth, NH (sharing a washer and dryer with Dylan and Kristy who live across the hall).  He loves contemporary art, illustrations, package design and creative typography.  When he isn’t designing, Jared enjoys camping, hiking, kayaking and anything else that involves a pocket knife, merit badge skills and his Nikon D90.  Jared also has an intense hatred of clowns, the store Papyrus and landscape paintings that your Nana might own.

It’s always exciting when we get the opportunity to give back and help out some of our neighbors. There’s something so great about the creative freedom you’re allowed when working with pro-bono clients.

We just completed this brochure/poster that celebrates the 23rd season of Manbites Dog Theater. Check them out, they’re kinda a Durham institution.

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We just got this stationery back from the printer for Solay Counseling & Research Center. This project was interesting because I had to [very carefully] figure out how to replicate the multiply effect as a two color print job. It was also exciting to print on the envelope flap. Now we just have to get the website launched!