Clark + Huot Studio

Pass It Over:
Wrapping Up Pass It On

On Thursday, September 22, Clark + Huot played host to a gathering of Winnipeg’s most talented and respected designers, photographers, writers, and other creative types at Pass it On. It can be easily described as a night full of inspiring and entertaining conversation with VIP guests including Noam Gonick (Film director, screenwriter and artist), Joy Keeper (Actress), Andrew Chipman (Fashion blogger extraordinaire), Roy Liang (Fashion designer) and Takashi Iwasaki (Painter/artist). Today I want to share just a little about how this party started, who came, and of course, some photos taken by official party photographer, Leif Norman.

Before we get into it, I think it’s only fair that I acknowledge the brains behind the event. Thanks to Anthony and Chris for working around the clock over the last several weeks organizing and planning Pass it On. These guys did everything – from carrying tables to booking DJ Burglar, sending out invites to lining up a ridiculous roster of sponsors including Siku Vodka, Fyfe Printing, Aldine Specialty Printing, Holyoke Fine Papers, Unisource, Zagat, Vice, Disney, Fader, Teen Vogue, Hulu, TimeOut New York, Hallmark Channel, Cordenons, Bernstein & Andriulli, FiberMark, Current, and Domtar.

Each of our sponsors made a generous donation to Pass it On, resulting in a pretty spectacular spread of free swag. It didn’t take long for the table of books, paper samples, DVDs, pens, and other awesome sponsor take-aways to disappear into the stunning cotton tote bags our friend Paul silkscreened at Fyfe Printing, not to mention the beautiful posters.

Mark putting out the vibe at the water cooler near the swag table.

A nice close up of Fyfe Printing's handy work on the free tote bags and thank you cards.

While on the topic of printing, we’d also like to thank Aldine Specialty Printing for their generous and beautiful printing of the letter-pressed invitations! Anthony loved the poster so much he had it framed!

Anthony's pride & joy.

Leif Norman, our official party photographer, did a great job getting some photos in front of the step-and-repeat media wall, produced by Vincent Printing. The red carpet entrance really set the tone for the night and helped convey the sense that this would be a night to remember.

Group photo of the party patrol, testing out the step-and-repeat/logo wall.

Ed Huot & Peter Clark posing with our guests of honour.

Ken Gregory (artist)

Alan from down the hall

The early bird special. (From left to right: Ken Gregory (artist), Alan from down the hall, Christopher Kroeker, Ed Huot, Christopher Samms, Zana Joyce (Duck Wranglers), Mark Reimer, Peter Clark & Anthony Kowalczyk)

The Huots. (Left to right: Maureen, Ed & Maurice)

The dapper Steve Ackerman (photographer)

Your friendly neighbourhood photographer; Thomas Fricke.

Kegan McFadden (Platform Gallery)

From left to right: Mike Choi (musician, writer) & Andrew Chipman (fashion blogger)

Maureen Scurfield (Miss Lonelyhearts)

From left to right: Joy Keeper (actress), Noam Gonick (film maker, artist), Paul Scarth & Dylan Bekkering

Maureen Stern (Plug In ICA)

Our old friend Jadyn showed up!

Vic Hooper (Lambda)

Roy Liang (fashion designer) & friend

From left to right: Braden Alexander (Sandbox Magazine), Suzy Bodiroga (Sandbox Magazine) & Takashi Iwasaki (artist)

Tia Provici & friend

The party itself featured a steady stream of new faces as guests continued to walk in throughout the evening. People with all manors of creative backgrounds came to share their latest work, ideas, and opinions under the Pass it On banner.

The party in next to full swing.

The "red room lounge"

Nils Vik (left) of Parlour Coffee with Peter Clark.

Noam Gonick, Jonah Corne & Fraser Auld (DJ/The Hosers/Big Dancing) at the swag table.

Smoke break with Talia Syrie (The Tallest Poppy)

Spot the regulars in the red room.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Mike McDermott of Green Apple Skate Shop

DJ Burglar/Evan Burgess

Architecture students admiring Anthony's illustrations on our tote bags.

Mike McDermott (Green Apple Skate Shop) and Melissa Bortoluzzi (Sets on Fort)

Shoulder to shoulder.

*For the full photo set, click here.

Le’go My Baggo

Here are the final screen printed bag designs for our Culture and Cases books!

Clark + Huot Cases + Culture Books

Growl Movement

If you have not discovered the world of Growl yet, I suggest that you do.
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X that displays a small notification box in the corner of your screen. It pops up when you receive a new e-mail, the next song starts playing on your iTunes, or something happens with any number of applications you set it to work with. It is very discreet and stays on your screen for an amount of time determined by the user.

Click here to download Growl v1.2

And once you’ve got that going, head over to fixedgear.ca to download our web programmer, Chris Lobay’s, sleek Growl style. It’s called Basics 1.2 and what’s nice about his Growl style is that the application icon slides in all smooth and light and has a nice minimalist layout for the type.

Above is a screen cap of my Basics 1.2 style Growl working with iTunes. Make sure to give it a try. It’s pretty handy. Not to mention pretty to look at.

Meet The Meeting Room

We’re all chipping in to spruce up the new meeting room just down the hall. And we made a video about it. And here it is.

Furniture Fridays vol. 1

Every Friday the Clark + Huot blog will be updating readers on furniture design news and the progression of Staff Sofa 1, designed by Thom Fougere and Nils Vik of Keep it Cartesian.

Video one is Chris and Thom’s brief visit to JP furniture and repairs. Upon our brief meeting with the man himself, JP, I could tell you that he is quiet, hard working and old fashioned. Very old fashioned. Yet there seems to be an adventurous side to him. Despite the fact that in his 30 years of building furniture he had “never seen anything like this,” he was still willing to take on our challenging design – that is, after passively declaring the job to be impossible several times (both on and off camera). It was thanks to some persistence and reassurance of the fact that we were willing to do whatever it takes (give him money) to get the job done that changed the mind of the master craftsman.

More on Staff Sofa 1 to come.

Shaw Printing or: Come Shee What We Shaw!

Today we took a trip to one of our local Winnipeg printers. Not only do they print, but they also do letterpress, embossing, custom die cuts and basically everything you can imagine. So where is this illustrious printing plant located? Near the baseball stadium practically under the train tracks. Oh and it’s not so much a plant as it is a shop.

We came for business cards, but left with a bounty of great footage and photos of a tour of their shop. All we can give you so far are some photos, but video of these beautiful, rare machines and interviews (including an interview with someone who worked there for over 40 years!) are on their way!

Photos by Mark Reimer

Repost(er)!

We’ve all seen them. Do-it-yourself poster ads carelessly thrown up around the city. They are usually a desperate, last minute attempt to get rid of, find or advertise something. Visual jibber-jabber, if you will.

What Cardon Copy is doing is taking this non-sense and making sense of it all.

The process involves finding some fliers/posters/what-have-you, taking down the information word for word and redesigning them into a more powerful, eye-catching message. He then removes the original and replaces it with his own. Sort of like a poster redesign fairy.

Take a look at Cardon Copy’s gallery to see what I’m taking about.