JOYENGINE: cause sharing is cool

Our buddy Oscar is taking his mythical illustration skills over to Adobe Illustrator.  But, there’s no need to be alarmed, he’s not gonna stop drawing any time soon.  He’s just growing as a visual artist and filling his proverbial quiver with a few new arrows.  We’re all about it.  Seems like all the time he’s been spending with Hanel (and yes, Alex’s site is still down for “remodeling” but we’ve seen the new version - it’s hot and it’s droppin’ soon) and Kluver is having an influence on him.  Good things tend to happen when you mash up some seriously creative minds.

Our friend Oscar Woodruff draws a lot. And he’s really good at it. A recent Woodruff encounter with all around rad arty dude, Alex Hanel (who happens to also be plotting world domination… alongside Lifter Baron, of course, as well as some other peops we like to hang with…), resulted in Alex recommending that Oscar look into obtaining a Moleskine Pocket Japanese Notebook. The Moleskine Pocket Japanese book offers a unique accordion style design influenced by the horizontal scrolls and folding screens of traditional Japanese art. Hanel figured it’d be perfect for Oscar’s wild, narrative illustration style, often spanning multiple pages of paper, or bar coasters, or napkins, or pretty much anything you can draw on. Woodruff went out and got one, and he’s kinda been crushing it. See for yourself… Oh, and if all goes to plan there may be a Woodruff show full of these notebooks in the very near future. Our mouse-soft fingers are crossed.

Oscar’s Moleskine all accordian’d out. We had to get on a ladder to snap the pic!

Our good bro, Alex Hanel aka Ihatealex who was on his way to becoming “we” hate Alex due to his lack of correspondence, finally checked in and in fine form. We received this postcard yesterday, rad (the red lettering is all custom cut vinyl!)… considering he must’ve sent it while he was in Bangkok, Thailand and he’s now bouncing around Japan. It’s always good to hear from Hanel. While we’re stoked for him in regards to his travels, we can’t wait to catch up and hear about his east asian adventures.  Miss ya bro.

Alex Hanel of ihatealex.org (the infamous reverse engineering meets street art blog), is while being our close friend, a bit of a pussy. He’s a great guy, loves art, is a talented artist himself, he’s a sick-ass software engineer, but yeah, he’s still a bit of a pussy. Alex hired Scot Lefavor and all of his JoyEngine blog poster-boy fame to handle his new blog header. Ya see, Mr Hanel is a bit of a hater. He likes to dis on shit just cuz he can. While we’re on other side of the fence and really get off on pluggin’ shit for the positive, Alex doesn’t, or at least doesn’t often, and it’s for this that we really love him. So, here’s the kicker - Lefavor designed Hanel some really wicked cool blog headers - totally in line with Hanel’s bloggin’ steez. While the bottom version didn’t make the grade with the Mr. Hanel, the top version did (which by the way is a pretty spot on portrait of Mr. Hanel). It’s my personal fav too. However, it only went live for a day. I’m gambling here, but I think I know the reason why. Alex claims he saw a drop in traffic due to the arguably risque nature of Lefavor’s graphic. I think that’s a load of shit - well, not totally. I think Alex did see a drop in traffic, and I do think it was due to Lefavor’s graphic, but my gamble is this: The drop in traffic was due to Alex’s Mom getting pissed over the content of the header and chosing to blacklist her sons site. Mom’s lack of visits (which on a typical day are probably in the hundreds) resulted in some pretty poor analytics, thereby prompting Hanel to drop the graphic.

The funny thing is this - I can really feel for Alex, cuz damn, if my Mom stopped coming to the JoyEngine site our traffic analytics would look like shit too. So, in a nutshell we’re proud of Alex - in the end his traffic is back up (Thanks Mrs. Hanel) and we’re all basking in Alex’s blogging return to glory now that Mom is back on his site.

SPECIAL NOTE:
“Mom (My Mom, not Hanel’s), here’s that “shout out” you we’re bitchin’ at me about the other night. While a lot of the people that visit our site don’t know it, we all do around here, you’re a big part of JoyEngine, too. Thanks!” - TEEBEE

ihatealex.org | scotlefavor.com

Our homeboy, radical out of the box, creative intellectual thinker, Alex Hanel, editor in chief of ihatealex.org is back on it. He’s ranting and raving like all forward thinking participating members of our mash-up culture should be, and he’s got some DOPE shit to say. READ HIS BLOG. 4REAL. I just popped into the shop, checked my email, and noticed that Scot Lefavor sent me over a mock-up of Alex’s new logo and blog header. It’s so fresh and spot on that I had to jump over to Alex’s blog to imagine just how rad it’s gonna look once it’s integrated. The power of intelligent art is astounding. Nice one Scot. I can’t wait to see your new Alex Hanel artwork up on homies site. Word. Alex’s most recent post was so inspiring that I had to write something myself before headin’ home. This is it. It may not be worth much to most, but I’m confidently stickin’ to it. Here’s what Hanel had to say about the new apple phone, “I haven’t seen anything too impressive lately or worth writing about. I guess the iPhone was announced. I only have one thought about the iPhone, it’s going to be the most stolen item of all time. Walking around holding the average Americans weekly paycheck in your hand is just begging for an ass beating.”

By the way, if you actually blogged, I mean seriously blogged about the new apple iPhone release and took yourself seriously, I mean seriously in the mainstream “coolhunting/trendspotting” kinda way. Ha! Who didn’t already know. Can you call yourself a “coolhunter” or “trendspotter” when the “fresh” content that drops on your website, drops on every other “coolhunting/trendspotting” website worldwide at the same time. if you ask me, the latest and “freshest” …I mean most “cool” trend in the world of “coolhunting” and “trendspotting” is COOLHUNTING & TRENDSPOTTING. What does that say about “cool”?

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL ARTISTS. THEY’RE ACTUALLY “COOL”. AND NOT IN THE “TRENDY” KINDA WAY.

ihatealex.org