- Modern Alchemy is closing, for personal reasons related elsewhere. Thank you so much for supporting this adventure for 16 years. Over and out. ###
- I am very grateful to the organizers of Cleveland’s first full-fledged LGBTQ pride festival since the COVID-19 pandemic, for employing me to design so much graphic art for this year’s event. From the program book to massive stage banners, to maps and signs, seeing my work so many places made this already amazing event even […]
- I presume that Modern Ideas was my first use of WordPress. It was more than a dozen years ago so it’s a little hazy. Lately I have been thinking how much has changed. Back in 2009, I installed WordPress to add a blog to my studio web site. The main site was still html and […]
- Encouraged by the Fair Districts Competition, I have attempted to draw legislative districts for the state of Ohio. I have drawn a state senate districts map, and a Congressional districts map; below are notes about the maps, followed by some general notes about getting hands-on with redistricting. In drawing this potential map of 33 Ohio […]
- This weekend was Pride in the CLE, and it was an honor for me and my work to be included. I contributed some design components to the very improvised mid-pandemic 2020 event, too, but this year I was onsite, providing social media updates and taking photos. So I have photos of designs, banners, even Jumbotron […]
- I have been doing this—my formally incorporated freelance practice—for just over 15 years now. A lot of my ten-year post still applies today. Five years ago I wrote that “the current modernalchemy.biz recently passed six years old […] I should freshen things up anyway, one of these days.” Made it with a few months to […]
- My freelance practice web site, modernalchemy.biz, is now on its third incarnation. This one is new in a few fundamental ways. It’s an acknowledgement that clients hire me, not the LLC I registered 15 years ago. It brings back an image-forward concept which I used in version 1.0, while for the first time adding a […]
- In 2020 I had something of a minor hit on my hands, with The Amazing Ballot Race. This was essentially a grassroots campaign to promote voting by mail; its precise definition and boundaries are somewhat vague, and expanded as it went along. By the conclusion of the campaign, I think around half of Cleveland’s Democratic […]
- Despite everything, my wheels mostly kept turning in 2020, including professionally. A diverse mix of projects and clients included the newspaper, aspiring and current officeholders, local government, grassroots activists, the solar industry… It’s a delight above and beyond this that one of my final paid commissions for the year was a true one-of-a-kind Xmas gift. […]
- I have not published any more ebooks of my own since Hancher vs. Hilton, nearly four years ago. But in the past year or so I have continued to land the occasional freelance ebook project, so I have a little sense of what’s going on with this format today. Fixed-layout ebooks seem to be the […]