New Year's Update!
Updates on Dracula Daily, other projects, and a short story we commissioned from Robin Sloan
Hello! Welcome to our (infrequent) Studio Kirkland newsletter. You probably signed up because you followed Dracula Daily.
Today we've got an update on that project, a couple of other things we cooked up, and a big project release today that we’re pretty psyched about.
Who are you again?
We are Matt & Erika; Studio Kirkland is our little house brand that covers the different creative projects our family tackles. We're always making weird stuff. Matt runs Dracula Daily, which is how you probably got to this email list.
Dracula Daily Book update
The book is well underway. I turned in the manuscript in October. The Dracula Daily print edition is going to be so great - it's the full text of Dracula, as presented in the emails. It's in our strictly-chronological order, arranged by date, so you can replicate the email experience with the simple technology of a bookmark. And best: it's got hundreds of reader responses - jokes, memes, original artwork - all generated in 2022 by the incredible community of people who all read Dracula together.
This week: first draft layout is ready, we're looking at cover designs, discussing final paper sizes. We're on track to have this in our hands in Fall 2023.
Big Squid
Erika and I like to take weird art classes as date nights. That's normal, right? I recommend it.
This spring at the Lawrence Arts Center, we signed up for a window display course, led by Nick Stahl (who does design work for a few local business darlings) and Rosa Nussbaum (who makes supercool inflatable and soft sculptures - her soft sculpture class this spring was also amazing).
The assignment was a group project: in just a few weeks, dream up and execute a window display for Love Garden, the beloved music store downtown. Their logo is a squid.
So: we made a big squid.
Maybe not a huge conceptual leap, sure - but this was super fun and we are really happy with it when we see it downtown. The eyeball swivels around and watches you; it’s a multi-layered plexiglass dome that’s backed by a custom video (produced with help from this director). I wrote more about this on my site and there are a handful of process photos and video there too.
Four Dots Shop
This year Erika soft-launched her secondhand business under the new brand Four Dots Shop. She's got a host of cool finds and a deeeep bench of purses and leather goods. The instagram is the homebase really - follow that and you'll see all the good stuff @_four_dots_shop.
In the Stacks
A BIG thing I'm excited to announce today is a short story that we commissioned from Robin Sloan, and a little book we printed to give away to clients and friends of my software company (Brand New Box).
To celebrate the new year, we commissioned a short story by Robin Sloan, best-selling author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore and Sourdough. It's a love-letter to Lawrence KS and a celebration of learning new things. We printed a small run of nice editions and gave them to clients and Friends of BNB. You can read it here.
We also made a little online synthesizer and wrote about the process making this on the BNB blog, and some thoughts about commissioning artwork on Matt’s personal site.
Whew.
That’s it! Thanks for reading, feel free to reply to this newsletter if you have questions and stuff.
Happy New Year - and here’s to learning new things in 2023!
Studio Kirkland