Currently.

 Don Campbell speaks truth to power; provides local press with sense of humor: I benefit.

Here, We Tweet.

What is this?

The Porcupine is the personal bailiwick of Adam McIsaac, an advertising agent, musician, raconteur, boulevardier and gadfly currently living in New York. Here you will find dispatches relating to my pursuit of Parnassus, and a heaping helping of my considerable opinion. Should you want to see the kind of work I do to serve Mammon, you should proceed here.

Areas of Concern.

Archived by date.

2012

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2011

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2009

2008

Vetted sources.

Marie Watt – Celebrated Native American sculptor; wife.

Mike Dempsey – Lion of British communications design; gentleman.

http://www.pinch.nu">Pinch – My old firm, run by my old friend Eric Hillerns.

http://www.ianboyle.com">Ian “B-Reel” Boyle – Jolly, ethnically ambiguous San Francisco advertising agent.

Peter Jennings – The director and cinematographer, not the newsman.

Hawthorne Books – Superb regional literary press. My oldest and most faithful client.

Joe PosnanskiSports Illustrated writer, Kansas City Royals fan. A fine stylist.

Items concerning Music

Back and front cover of <em>Anthems of Potency</em>, available at your finer music venues.

Our record gets a review in a family newspaper.

Don Campbell speaks truth to power; provides local press with sense of humor: I benefit.
Posted in Music
02.October 2009
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Much love to Don Campbell, a superb musician and as it happens a scholar, for reviewing Int’l Male’s Anthems of Potency in this morning’s Oregonian. It’s an excellent review: excellent because he obviously understood what we were trying to do with the record, and excellent because he gives it an overall grade of B-minus, which bugged me until I thought: You know, it’s a fun record. But Exile on Main Street it ain’t. On that curve, I can live with a B-minus.

Briefly.

These kids scare the hell out of me. A while back, I gave some static to the Port of Seattle's rebrand. Recently, I found an alternate proposal made by then-UW-student Francis Luu that – well, my jaw didn't drop, I'm too old for that, but it was real good and startling in its completeness. This young man's book shows chops beyond his years. Check it out. And if you're in Seattle, hire him.

Much love to Powell's Books' Geoff Sutherland for pointing me toward David Mitchell in general, and Cloud Atlas in particular. It shouldn't be legal for a young man to write that well, and without fear.

Thorough, fairly wonkish interview with Salittobuono principal Marco Ferrari on his redesign of the architectural magazine Domus. I look forward to seeing one in the flesh: I can't read about architecture anyway, so the text being in Italian will not be an issue. via Gridness.

It's "sneak peek", you yobs. Not "sneak peak". Jesus.

Here's what I like about the Internet: everybody's kink has a home. Keith Houston shares one of mine: punctuation, and in particular the history of certain of its more exotic forms: the octothorpe, the pilcrow, and so on, which he examines in Shady Characters, his superb weblog. What makes this even better is that Mr. Houston is not a designer or typographer: he's merely (if there's anything mere about it) curious.

I enjoy the work of the Belfast-based Thought Collective (and the personal blog of one of its operatives); I am particularly interested in their as-yet-unreleased work for The Zimbabwean.

My friend Barb Tetenbaum had a nice little bit in the print blog Bangback the other day, including a snap of her lovely new studio designed by the lads at Vontundra.

I had the pleasure of working with Portland designer Jaime Barrett at my old firm, Pinch. One of my favorite things in her book was this examination of the Zeitgeist's progression through the 1970s and 80s.