How Do You Squarespace? Dana Tanamachi

Photo by Kelsey Foster

When you catch a glimpse of one of Dana Tanamachi's chalk drawings, two things hit you: how stunning the drawing is and the utter simplicity of the medium. The strong nostalgia about chalk on slate her drawings evoke almost make you wish you'd spent more time in trouble after school, writing lines on chalkboards.

The chalk drawings are Dana's after-hours, when she creates large-scale typographic drawings on chalk walls or portable boards all around New York City. By day she has a regular job at a boutique design studio, Louise Fili Ltd, where she focuses on restaurant and food packaging. It has only been three short years since Dana moved  here from Houston, Texas, for an internship at Good Housekeeping Magazine, which led to her first job designing Broadway show posters. 

The simplicity of why she loves chalk so much is striking. "To be honest, I love that it's so cheap," she says. "Many mediums require a lot of extra supplies and money... I only buy the dollar store brand and my only other supplies are old rags from around the house and a little step stool. Doesn't get much better than that!"

What has been your favorite chalk installation? My favorite installation thus far has to be a piece that I did for a Mad Men themed holiday party last year in Brooklyn. My friends are known for hosting amazing themed parties, so when they told me about the 'Mad Men Holiday Soirée' I had to get in on it. It was so fun to see all the gentlemen sporting their best Don Draper duds, and the ladies with their pearls and pencil skirts—all with my mid-century themed piece as the backdrop. 

What do you find yourself being drawn to typographically? Currently, I'm really drawn to hand-painted signage. Vintage or faux-vintage. I discovered Pete Vogel's work a little while ago and have been really inspired and encouraged, to say the least. He creates new signs inspired by vintage typography that are simple, yet stunning. Beautiful craftsmanship, too.

What's your dream project, or surface you'd love to cover? One of my dream projects would be to do a series of book covers in chalk. I just saw these incredible embroidered covers for Penguin Threads Classics and was really inspired. I love seeing craft, design and typography working so well together. 

If you weren't designing and drawing, what would you be doing instead? I know I'd definitely still be doing something crafty, that's for sure. I could see myself working with my hands —perhaps stained glass, mosaics, signwriting, calligraphy, or patternmaking/sewing.

How long have you been using Squarespace? How did you find us? I've been using Squarespace for about a year now. I learned about it through my friend, Eric Ryan Anderson, who uses Squarespace for his incredible photography blog, I've Got Friends.

Why does Squarespace work for you? Squarespace is a dream come true. I have tried a few different website-building services but always felt extremely limited in terms of design and usability. It works for me because I'm not someone who has the time or interest to spend hours upon hours online when there's work to be done and art to be made! My favorite thing about Squarespace is that it's built for visual people like myself. I have no background in coding or the technical side of websites, so features like the column width slider are lifesavers. Being able to preview what your changes will look like in real time is genius! I am also a fan of the way Squarespace seamlessly integrates with Typekit, which gives designers more options when choosing typefaces that best suit their site.

What's next for you? I'm currently working on a series of posters for a progressive Opera Festival which I'm really thrilled about. I’m also excited to be working on a fun piece for a vendor at the Brooklyn Flea (which is one of my favorite weekend spots in the borough!). As summer approaches, I'll be preparing to do installations for a couple of beautiful Brooklyn weddings—but I'd also like to use the spring and summer to rest a bit and take some long bike rides around Brooklyn.

Check out more of Dana's amazing chalk drawings on her website, www.danatanamachi.com, or follow her on Twitter @dana_tanamachi.

How Do You Squarespace? Enter the House of Brinson

They say that work life and home life should be kept separate, but for Susan and William Brinson work is all about what goes on at home. Susan is an art director and designer into all things crafty: sewing, paper crafts, letterpress printing. William is a still life and food photographer, who is always thinking about the next meal. Together they run House of Brinson, which merges both of their talents into one beautiful blog.

Susan describes this joint venture as having been a natural evolution: "Our relationship as husband and wife, and photographer and art director team, has always been there, however the blog is a visual manifestation of our collaboration." The end result is a mixture of elegance and simplicity, comfort foods and new discoveries. 

But mostly the blog is just about what Susan and William are interested in at the moment, and that's what keeps it fun and interesting. It's also a great excuse for them to keep doing what they already enjoy: "We love entertaining and having people over just to hang out." You can bet that the beautifully decorated tables topped with delicious recipes get thoroughly test-marketed on their guests. After perusing their blog, it seems like an invitation to the House of Brinson would be a real treat.

Where do you find your design inspirations, especially in and around New York City? 

The number one place for me right now is the grocery store. We will often browse the grocery store for in-season produce that inspires us in some way. In the warmer weather, we move to the farmers market. I also like to go antique shopping, and am in constant awe of the different types of objects that were considered average and yet were beautifully designed.

What have been some of your favorite discoveries over the years?

I am always into something new. Canning would have to be my favorite discovery. I am amazed what you can do if you put your mind to it and try something outside of your comfort zone. 

I love that your new obsession is canning. What's the best tip you'd have for a novice canner?

Clean the rim of the jar before sealing and processing! If you put a lid on a sticky or food covered surface it will not seal, then you have to start all over again. I learned the hard way! 

There's a world of wonderful design on the web, which is somewhat overwhelming. What are some of your favorite sites?

The list is long! But here is a short list: Design Sponge, The Scout, and Kanye West.

How long have you been using Squarespace? 

About 6 months. Before we started our blog I was on Twitter and asked what everyone used. A fellow blogger suggested Squarespace, so I checked it out. 

Why does Squarespace work for you? 

Squarespace was a perfect fit for us because we wanted a low initial investment and I could adjust a template to make it look the way I wanted. We avoided paying a developer to code our blog. Because I have a design background I knew what I wanted our blog to 'look' like, and Squarespace allowed me to make visual changes without having to know how to code. 

What's your favorite feature?

The iPhone app all the way. I can maintain our blog and check stats on the go. It makes monitoring comments a breeze.

What's next for you?

We are going to focus on collaborations with the blog. We love to share lifestyle tips from cooking to design tips. We would like to invite fellow bloggers and friends to share their experiences. 

Totally Rad Websites

We've just launched a brand-new, "totally rad" site for Revision3's Totally Rad Show. There's a lot of great customization in this one to enhance user interaction — click 'Post a Comment' on the blog page to see what I mean. ;)

Here's more new Squarespace sites on the scene you might want to check out:

• Film Riot, from the Revision3 family 
• ABC News Radio is using Squarespace to unite all of their podcasts 
• Alex Albrecht, of TRS, Diggnation and Project Lore — and,
• Fox News's Clayton Morrison also relaunched his Grizzly Bear Cafe podcast site.

What are some of your favorite Squarespace sites? Leave us a link in the comments!

Squarespace Favicon Makeover

For those of you who have spent some time using Squarespace, you've likely noticed that we pride ourselves in always paying attention to the little details. Details in the design of our website, details in the design of our platform, and even the details in the design of our slick little Squarespace favicon.

We admired the icon design work of the team at Techlogica, and when they approached us with the idea of refining our favicon, we were anxious to see what they would come up with.

We asked Techlogica's Kyle White to share a bit about his motivation as well as the icon design process:

 "Squarespace always struck us as a high quality, next-gen web design framework (as it likely does for most).

However, we noticed the favicon being used didn't make use of the alpha channel, and was 15 pixel on one dimension (itwas an ICO with a 15x16 inner icon entry of type 32bit XP format). This left it up to the browser itself to either resample it, or show it 1:1. While the cube being shown is the best object to represent the framework, we thought there could be some areas for improvement.

The newly designed icon is still a black cube, but we made use of the full 16x16 canvas, shading all three visible sides with different gradient fills. You'll notice an inner stroke drawn at about a 30% opacity value over the inner shape, as well as an outer border of a dark gray tone. The edges of the icon are anti-aliased as well. All in all, we think the result is a more modernized take on what was already a great idea, and we believe it suits the Squarespace framework well."

Agreed--we all love it too!

You can see the progression of the Squarespace favicon designs in the image above. What do you guys think?