We’re really excited about boulderspace, a blog that we helped conceptualize and launch as a forum for discussion relating to development, land use, design, and other community issues here in Boulder and beyond. Prices downtown are creeping toward $1500 / sf, making living even in the most dense parts of town unaffordable for the average citizen (poor graphic designers included). When combined with the apparent lack of foresight and desire to create architecturally interesting structures on the part of the developers, lots of folks I know have been waving red flags for a while now. Hopefully the bouldersace blog will give people the opportunity to express their thoughts and concerns about the face-lift of our town that seems to be happening with very little community input.

Neighbor just launched version 2 of the Naked Candles website. Naked is now fully up and running in their Boulder production facility, making 100% natural soy candles out of 100% domestic ingredients and materials–0% Bad Stuff.

We recently wrapped up yet another coffee shop I.D. project over at Neighbor. It never ceases to amaze me how many great coffee shops can peacefully coexist in this town. It seems to all depend on a variety of atmosphere, and the Cup seems like it’s going to fill the lofty, downtown niche well, something no one else is really going for right now. Not to mention they serve some of the best shots in town, and that’s saying a lot.

Fellow Boulderite and designer-of-things Brian Wood is hosting a party later this month to celebrate the launch of his new apparel company, Side B Apparel. New boutique bakery Haute Cakes will also be showing off its goods for the first time. Stop by Cafe M (formerly Traveler’s Coffee Shop) on 14th Street in downtown Boulder on Saturday April 28th for Cocktails, Cakes and Clothes.

Quick thanks to Brian for the mention of T2P in his report back from SXSW in the Daily Camera a few weeks back.

Back from South by Southwest and busy at work. We had a great time on our first time around at SXSW and plan on doing it again, hopefully with some sort of wristband or badge. Without one, it took us two of the three days just to figure out the system and how to finagle our way into a couple of shows. We ended up seeing some good music though: Daniel Johnston through the open door of some industry-only gig at the convention center, The Black Lips and Deerhunter at a free daytime show, and The Black Angels (picture above) at the Flatstock Music Showcase on Saturday night. I would see all of these bands again the next time they pass through CO.

Tending the booth at Flatstock took up most of the day Thursday through Saturday and we met some great folks: Dirk Fowler, Bryce from Isle of Printing and Jon Smith from Seattle, who’s stuff we admired from across the aisle all weekend.

There’s a great little coffee shop hidden away in downtown Boulder that more people should know about. It’s one of those places where they know your name and what you want to eat or drink after the first few times you stop in. After a while you might get a nickname or have a sandwich named after you. My kind of place. Regular customers know how to navigate there, but they were in need of a little more presence on the street so that passers-by might drop in and realize what they had been missing out on. Neighbor created a new logo a while back and we all stood on the curb and got a little teary eyed when the sign finally went up in the window. Sidney’s feels all grown up now–hopefully not ~too~ many people take notice.

We’re heading down to Austin for our first pilgrimage to Flatstock, the big poster convention put on each year at SXSW by the API. We’re hoping to sell some posters, swill some margaritas / eat real mexican food, and attempt to see some music.

Some of the people who’s stuff we are looking forward to seeing: The Decoder Ring (these guys actually did the graphics for all of SXSW this year–way to go, F2 Design / Dirk Fowler, Lure, and Methane Studios.

We’ll be printing up some of the above posters to send down to Austin ahead of time to promote the show. If you live in Texas you should come.

Our good friend and former coffee shop co-employee recently struck out on his own and opened Ozo Coffee Co. We’ve talked for years about how when this finally happened (we always knew it would) that we wanted first dibs on helping out with the identity of the shop.

The Costa Rican heritage in the family of the owners, the custom blened house espresso (part Guatemalan) and the name Ozo led to a final logo reminiscent of a Maya glyph, and leaves the door open for further expounding on this theme on the interior.

The first pieces were in place on opening day–a freshly-skinned awning with a hand-painted version of the logo and an open channel neon sign. Ozo is also the only shop in town that can boast hand-printed punch cards, but we’re realizing quickly that our squeegee might not be able to keep up with their volume. Next up is a custom menu system. More photos:

Brad and I spent the last couple of days leading up to our show putting together a letterpressed, oversized “matchbook” that contains a checklist of our first 50 posters. We finished these about 20 minutes before 7:00 on Friday night. Click here for more pics