I had the privilege of riding with New Orlean’s own, Black & Gold Bike Patrol, on Superbowl Sunday. Although I’ll always be a fan of the boys from big D, I thoroughly enjoyed spreading joy throughout the city with the crew on this historical day. Check out this video of the Black & Gold Bike Patrol parading through one of the finer establishments in New Orleans, Galatoires, to the merriment of all their patrons. Good times!

…on American Idol! For a brief moment this week, we caught a glimpse of our boy, Joe Martinez, from the “our contestants come from a wide range of backgrounds” montage on American Idol. Joe says, ”I’m a photographer”. And a damn good one too!

Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing him go on in the competition, but it was somewhat gratifying to see a glimpse of Mr. Martinez; especially since we waited in countless lines all summer long last year.

One of our favorite groups is back! This is the band that Georgios and I listened to non-stop during our first year at design school. I hope this new album, Plastic Beach, is just as good.

Name:
Skylar Morgan

Aka:  
doc.

Website:
www.smf-d.com
www.docbuilt.com

Where are you from?
Miles City, Montana

Who do you work for? 
I own two furniture companies, Skylar Morgan Furniture + Design (SMFD) and doc.

What are your Current Project(s)? 
New West Egg, White Provision, Ormsby’s Pub, Office Furniture for Armchair Media, Dining Table and Chairs, and Product Additions for doc.

Who would you love to work with?
e15 and Hans Wagner

If you had to give all your sneakers away to charity except for one pair, which ones would you keep? 
My hunter green Toms.

What’s on your iPod right now?
Avett Brothers and Ryan Adams

What’s your Favorite ATL food?
JCT and Serpas True Food

What’s your Favorite ATL hangout?
Ormsby’s Pub

What are your Pet Peeves?
Butterfly patches and air guitar.

Shout outs?
Shea at Intrinsic Architecture, Stephanie at State Design Co., Rob at Coalition Society, and Jesse at SMFD

Some of you know that I’ve been teaching a class at Portfolio Center over the past few months. This has been a new experience for me, as I’ve never taught before and it was only a few years ago that I was a student at PC. In my time away from the academic world, I started to miss it. Not only is teaching a chance to “drop-knowledge”, but I find it invigorating and refreshing. Perhaps I’m a huge design geek, but I enjoy talking about design with people who aren’t jaded with the industry. Rather, they are eager to excel at visual communication.

The name of the class is Entertainment Design (a broad name for “The Album Cover Class”). We focus on concept, branding, and typography for artists in the music industry; with the deliverables being album covers, packaging, posters, and various other marketing items. In the 1.5 quarters I’ve taught so far, we’ve had a live project for a major label artist and several guest presentations from my friends who work in the design industry.

I’m putting myself in the mindset of a student (which isn’t hard considering I used to go to school there) and trying to make this class-scenario a “dream class” for anyone with an open mind. If my homework assignments consisted of listening to music, going to the record store, and sketching (sober of course), I would have been more than happy to go above and beyond the call.

I don’t have many examples of student work coming out of my class because most students choose to photograph their packaging towards the end of their student careers. I was able to get one of my students (and new EC web-intern), Eric Dewyngaert, to send me a photo of his album packaging. It’s a new approach to The Deftones, titled “The Acoustic Experiment”. He asked himself, “What would happen if one of the hardest bands out there created an acoustic album?” He was able to track down live-acoustic performances of some of their most popular songs which were sonically peculiar and very intense. As you can see, Eric’s visual-reveal is what I envision being the result of many long recording sessions. Very cool.

Given that the name of the class is Entertainment Design, we may shift our focus in coming quarters to film and other performance arts, although I have a feeling that most of my students get a kick out of discovering new bands and listening to music as homework.

Also, there’s always an open invite to my buddies who want to drop in and give honest feedback! C’mon down…

Check out Don Cannon rocking a Process Love & War shirt at 0:11. Shouts to Joe for the heads up!

I just came across this photo on the interwebs from last summer when I was invited to play pick-up basketball with LeBron James while testing out his new kicks. You can see my arm (red arrow is pointing to it) at the edge of the pic. Haha…

One of our biggest pet peeves is being approached by people who say, “Hey, I really like Process so you should give me a bunch of gear to wear on stage during my shows” or “Hey, that’s really cool stuff, hook it up on the low-low”. There’s nothing more moochy, or irritating about a situation like that. The fact that a person thinks they are so wonderful, that they deserve the fruits of our labor for their own personal gain is beyond me. It’s disrespectful on all accounts. I realize, that’s the way things go sometimes. We’ve been in countless conversations like this over the years, and we’ve gotten pretty good at handling them…

On the flipside of that coin, if you have the privilege to meet Philip Christensen (General Manager / Partner at Graveyard Tavern) you’ll soon realize that Philip is nothing like the bro described above. Philip has been super-supportive of our brand, and you can tell because he wears our gear out and about all the time. Also, he mentioned Process as one of his favorite brands in his Blu Magazine feature.

His staff has always taken care of our crew every time we’ve come through their doors out of sheer kindness. That makes us want to work with them to further each others’ success. It’s great to know there are honest people out there who genuinely care about the well-being of others that work hard, the same way they do. Thanks Philip! Keep up the great work and we’ll plan on some big things for 2010.

I think this little rant of mine should spark a regularly occurring section on our site. I’ll highlight people that deserve a Shout Out. How often will this occur? As often as people are “doing the right thing”.

Check out our interview in the current issue of Blu Magazine. We talk to them about our design process (no pun intended), future plans, and bear fights. You can pick it up all over Atlanta, or just read it online here.

Last night, I had the privilege to be a guest-bartender at D.B.A. Barbecue in the Virginia Highlands. This was the first time I’ve ever been on the other side of the bar, and it was quite an experience. I think I held my own, but you’ll have to ask my friends how I really did.

The drink highlights for me were:
-Larry Bomb (Crown Royal dropped into Red Bull)
-Whynatte Bombs (Jager dropped into Whynatte)
-A crazy Habañero-infused Moonshine + Strawberry liquor concoction

Thanks to Matt Coggin at D.B.A. for letting me in on some fun, and thanks to everyone who came out!