I'm really blown away by these maps and diagrams created by Levi Walter Yaggy, and published in 1887 in his folio book Geographical Portfolio - Comprising Physical, Political, Geological, and Astronomical Geography. Each page was 2 by 3 feet and the large graphics were intended to be used in the classroom as a teaching aid.

Life has been busy lately and it's been awhile since I've been able to work on a new drawing. This week I finally had a few free nights to work on something, and it felt so good to pick up a brush again.

This drawing will be used in a new print edition, inspired by a "science experiment" my wife Jackie did for Evelyn, our 4-year-old daughter. She put some white flowers in water, added food coloring, and left them for a week or so until the the petals began to turn the same color as they water.

I'm so sad to hear of IM Pei’s passing today, at 102. He was one of my favorite architects, and judging by the volume, fame, and international breadth of his work, I’m hardly alone. I still remember how much the East Wing of the National Gallery in DC blew my mind the first time I went there. Same for the pyramid at the Louvre.

The New York Times wrote a nice primer on his work here.

His style always kind of fascinated me, because on the surface he might have looked like another institutional modernist, with all those straight lines and concrete. At first glance some of his buildings appear to be cut from the same cloth as your elementary school or local post office. But then you look closer and you see his touch — there’s always a certain twist, a bit more playfulness and thoughtfulness and a certain perfectly-composed intricacy. Some of his buildings look like hulking concrete slabs from the outside, but once you step inside they turn into sunlight-filled greenhouses. The stuff he could do with water and glass was especially amazing. His buildings, despite their sharp, square lines, always perfectly suited their locations. He never seemed to solve a problem the same way twice.

I also love the way he would take on commissions in contexts he didn’t know much about, and then immerse himself in his clients' culture. He used the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Museum of Islamic Art commissions this way, as opportunities to learn and connect. One of my favorite things about design is the opportunity (demand?) it creates for you to learn, as fast and as deeply as you can, about the communities and cultures that you serve. I feel like he exemplified that: design as a way of understanding, a way of building relationships between different perspectives.

HTech's new road bike is absolutely stunning. It's an exotic aero road bike that looks as state-of-the-art as any of the bikes you'd see on the line at the Tour de France. But it's made mostly from trees.

There’s something that always intrigues me about using traditional or natural materials to build something technologically “modern.” I love the kind of yin-yang of technology and hand-craftedness on a bike that’s been designed with computers, wind tunnels, and CNC machines… and then finished by hand, slowly, with sandpaper and lacquer. There's over 300 hours of labor in every frame.

None of this is cheap. Each frame (just the frame, not a whole bike) is over $5K, which of course is money that would buy you a used car. But the fact that a small shop like this is able to offer such a frame at retail at all is pretty amazing. Considering that high-end road frames from major manufacturers like Trek routinely go for $4k or more, I'm actually amazed that a small-batch, hand-built frame like this can be produced at such "low" prices.

I believe we're living in interesting times for hardware makers and light industry. Computer-aided-design (CAD), 3D printing, and CNC machining tools have gotten more affordable and accessible, allowing small shops to produce small-batch and customizable product lines at competitive prices. Economies of scale are less critical than they used to be. The internet allows these shops to market globally, and there's affordable, efficent international shipping to fulfill orders almost anywhere, quickly.

If you have a crazy idea and a garage, there's no better time than now to have a go.