Andrew Bannecker

Illustrator: Andrew Bannecker

I love discovering beautiful design in unexpected places (like during a 10 hour flight). On our flight to Copenhagen, I fell in love with the cover of the Hemisphere magazine. After a little investigating, I was able to find out who the illustrator was.

The bearded guy and smoking girl with the umbrella remind me of hip Portlanders (even though Portlanders don’t use umbrellas).

Greetings from Scandinavia

We’re back from our amazing Christmas trip to Scandinavia. Here are just a few highlights from our trip.


One of my favorite souvenirs was this delicate, beaded band that I purchased while in Stockholm at Lo. The background is the torn cover from the airplane magazine, Hemisphere.


This is Lo resizing my ring. She was so sweet and charming. She gave us a glass of glögg while we waited and chatted.




Last May, I saw this cool Japanese book about Scandinavian patterns and textiles on the blog, Book By Its Cover. After many phone calls (Kinokuniya and Amazon.com) and Google searching, I pouted and reluctantly gave up since the book was out of publication. So I freaked out and bought this tea towel and jar at Design Torget in Malmö.

Arapahoe Acres, Denver

While in Denver for Thanksgiving vacation, we drove to Arapahoe Acres, a dreamy little neighborhood filled with beautiful 1950s modern homes. The street signage was classic (Jetsons?).

Mathilde Aubier

While collecting imagery and inspiration for a holiday project, I found French illustrator Mathilde Aubier in one of the file cabinets in the art buying department. I love her style and use of real elements/photos! I haven’t seen anything similar to this illustration style. These would make great holiday window displays.

Oh Joy!

Our etsy shop went live on Wednesday and the lovely Joy of Oh Joy! featured our Gocco drawstring bags on her site. Guess how many hits we had on our Design Night site? 525! Amazing. Thanks, Joy!

Surprisingly people are buying only the Dala Horse bags.

Saturday Photoshoot

Got up early this morning at 7:30am to catch the soft morning light...why couldn’t the soft morning light come after 10am?

I shot the photos at my office (large windows). It took 2 hours to get 6 final shots! I forgot how much time it takes to gather everything (leaves, seeds, pods, rice, etc.), to set up the shot, to tweak, tweak, tweak and to cleanup. I’m super happy with the photos, lots to choose from.

Free People

Tomorrow I’m submitting a painting into the Free People Illustration contest. My theme was based on “What’s in my bag?”. Here’s a couple of samples that I painted for one of the components. After this is done, I’ll pick up where I left off with the gocco printing on drawstring bags.