Look who’s back.
Bill Hicks said, “If you can be yourself on stage, nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered.”
👋, friends. My name is Joshua Blankenship. I’m a designer working out of my backyard studio in beautiful Greenville, South Carolina. I blogged near-daily from 2002–2011ish, then social media ate distribution and attention, and we all got lazy. I miss that era of the open web, discovery, and community.
We’ll see what this space shapes up to be, but for now, we’re gonna go Friday Five style and share interesting things I’ve found or made lately. Thanks for following along, feel free to forward to a friend or enemy.
Your new favorite band. I’ve been fairly obsessed with the band Sleep Token (especially the vocalist and drummer) for a few years — they mix all kinds of genres from progressive metal to ambient pop with sprinkles of jazz, R&B, EDM, contemporary worship, and somehow it all works. Contrastingly, opera signer Elizabeth Zharoff’s super-educational channel The Charismatic Voice has been reacting to singers in other genres like metal recently. She and deathcore vocalist Will Ramos do a deep dive on Sleep Token’s genre-bending track The Summoning that’s worth a watch.
Now that’s an office. Cosmos is building a Pinterest alternative, but I’m more interested in them tweeting What if we told you this is our office? because I wanna curl up and stay forever while viewing the tapestries.
Smarter freelancing. Independent web designer/developer and nice person Grace Walker released the freelance business course I wish I had when I was fumbling through my first years on my own. Fast Forward Freelance is $450 for hours of video resources, live video sessions, and a bunch of practical tools. Registration is open through January 29.
My voice is my passport. When I launched Vessel Company (real identities for fictional brands) I started making a bunch of promo images to further prove the point that forms can be created and filled with meaning. I figure there are enough of them now that they deserved their own page at vessel.company/id which a play on the idea of a company ID and the Freudian Psychic apparatus of the Id — the unconscious instinctual component of a personality.
A New Workshop. I opened Blankenship Workshop 7 years ago so it’s past time for a new studio website. Soleio once told me “your site shows work, but I have no idea what it’s like to work with you.” I’ve been figuring out how to articulate it ever since. The new site is full of that work (adding new things all the time), bringing brand identities and logos in one spot, but also a lot more background (including a link to my process deck I send prospects).
✌️Have a great weekend, y’all!