We had the great privilege and honor of speaking at LEGO's internal Design Camp last week - a day away from the office for the creative team in beautiful Enfield, Connecticut. Scott Decoteau, along with the talented and generous crew at LEGO, were gracious hosts during our time in New England. Highlights of the trip included the LEGO HQ tour (wow), dangerously delicious indian food, bowling and sharing sentimental stories about the infamous drawstring denim LEGO bag.

To commemorate our talk, we decided to make some things. One of them being a poster of us creating our new mark out of 4,236 bricks - flown in from all over the world. After 2 hot days, 1 broken mallet (don't ask), 6 iced coffees and 3 blisters, the mosaic came to life. Extra special thanks to LEGO for supplying the baseplates.

Unfortunately these posters and prints are not for sale, but who knows - we may throw some in future IC poster orders ...

Our buddy Joby Harris, a visual strategist at NASA JPL, gave our Blast Off! pennant a tour of the facilities in Pasadena. Next time we'll accompany the pennant, but for now this is pretty freaking cool. Huge thanks to Joby for doing this! Above: The Mission Control Room.

The art studio:

At the Mission Formulation room:

At The Spacecraft Formulation Building:

The Mission Control Room lobby:

Misc. editorial work.

We got 6 inches of snow yesterday. So naturally Seattle is shut down and I'm chugging coffee while drawing in my slippers. Decided to dust off a few more Grandpa illos in the process. These 5 span approx. 5 decades, with the last one created the same year he passed away.

Well, The Spit Swap has come and gone. The 2-night stint with yours truly in Portland and Mr. Draplin laying it down in Seattle was one for the record books. Portland, I can't thank you enough for cruising out to The Ace to watch me sweat it out up there as I attempted to tell our scattered story. It was a fun night of sharing great conversations with real folks. I had a blast. And Portland - your art, design and illustration community is one to be envied. Hats off to you nice people ... Massive high-fives to Eric Hillerns for the hospitality and for dreaming this baby up. Seriously. Aaron Draplin (and family!) for the obvious reasons. The man has talent in about a zillion areas, including the English language. But you guys knew that.

And of course The Ace Hotel, Lloyd Winter, Duane King, 52 Limited, Always With Honor, Portland AIGA, Fort Port ... the list goes on. Thanks to everyone who helped out, brought beer, food, tweeted, you name it. THANK YOU!

A few rad shots of the night, courtesy of long-time broseph Mr. Arges:

We stopped by the mighty W+K to visit one helluva guy Lloyd Winter and to apparently have our socks knocked off by the sheer awesomeness in that building. Wow.

"Yup, that's a bear"

Before the gig started, we stopped by Instrument's new spot to see our buds and visit the infamous teepees. Incredible space. Incredible talent.

J.D. and Vince giving us the tour ...

"Is this thing on?"

We meet at last ...

Tyler and Elsa from Always With Honor with a touching and funny introduction ... thanks again, guys.

Zac strong-arming folks into buying paper and sticky things ...

"It's just a theory" ... Duane, Josh and a few others hear me out regarding my thoughts on relativity.

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Anyways, it was a rad night. Thanks again, Portland.

We'll have 100 of these 3-color silk-screened posters for sale at our Spit Swap gig this Wednesday. Printed by the fine folks at Seizure Palace right there in PDX. Oh, and we've seen Draplin's poster. Get ready, Washingtonians.

It's 100% official and tickets are now available. Draplin and I will be riding the rails and corrupting each other's respective cities October 19th & 20th.

Something awesome is unraveling. IC vs. DDC. Portland and Seattle. October 19th and 20th.

Here's a few fun character spots for a misc. newsletter, circa late 1940's to early 1950's ...

A mighty big thanks to everyone who came out to our Full Circle show/Leroy C. launch party at Super7 on Saturday night. We had a blast. And as you can see above, Leroy did too.

If you find yourself in SF anytime soon, the show will be up for a few more weeks.

Photos courtesy of Zac Schwiet, Kaiju Chronicle and Toybot Studios.

Our buddy Josh surprised us with a nice little gift last Saturday in San Diego. Killer engraving by Garrett Patz.

We're excited to announce that we'll be showing a collection of work at the Super7 store in San Francisco, opening on April 23rd at 6PM. We'll also be debuting the first colorway of Leroy C., the newest member of the IC family! Super7 will have a limited amount on hand to take home.

We'll be sharing a collection of 20+ posters and prints, including a number of illustrations from our late grandfather, Alfred Paulsen. As someone who influenced our work tremendously and spent much of his young adult life in the bay area, we thought it would be fitting to include some of his work in the show.

We'll also have a few new limited Leroy C. prints available. Come out and say hi!

Another spot circa 1970's. Client: Unknown.

Last year, our buddy Josh Higgins asked if we'd cruise down to his city sometime to tell our story and flash some .jpg's on a big screen. We happily agreed, so here we are. We're excited to bring our dog and pony show to the beautiful city of San Diego on April 2nd. We'll be speaking at the legendary Casbah club, but what we're most excited about is The Black Heart Procession will be joining us to shut down the evening. Oh, and a little bonus for you early birds: The first 200 folks through the door get an 18" x 24" silk-screened poster, namely the one you see above. Tickets are $10 advance/$12 day of show and you can purchase them here.

Another spot from Grandpa. This time it's Newton. Date: unknown. Publication: unknown.

Found this one just in time. Happy Halloween everybody!

This has been sitting on my desk for 8+ years, so I've been meaning to post this for awhile. This is our Grandpa's old business card for 'Imaginators', his DBA for freelance projects.  I always thought 'Imaginators' was a great name as a kid and have since just assumed someone else has snatched it up. Turns out that I'm right, but it doesn't appear to be for anything substantial. I'm not 100% sure if Grandpa created the letterforms by hand or not, but I've always felt like it fit his style really well.

'Slide and Vu-Graph Illustration' - I love seeing that.

More editorial goodness from Grandpa.

These 3 pieces are some of my favorite from the AP vault. Not only are they a fun batch of mix-n-match monster features, but visual proof that buried somewhere deep within my DNA lies that love of creating monsters. My beloved grandmother recently just turned 86, and as my mom put it - we are 'attempting to mine her memory as much as possible' in regards to grandpa's work. There is just a lot she doesn't remember. My uncle states: "I'm not sure what the purpose was. He may have used them as examples when he was negotiating or demonstrating options to a client". Ahh, character comps. Sounds familiar.

Grandpa was always larger than life to Ryan and I. His career laid the foundation for our love of art. Unfortunately during most of our youth, we lived in different states and didn't get to see him as much as we would have liked. We grew up in Central Oregon while our grandparents lived in a little town called Oroville, about 90 miles south of Sacramento. I remember the yearly visits and the family gatherings at Christmas, but like most families at that time, we didn't have the money to travel often. Unfortunately, my memory of art conversations with him are fairly limited. I just remember always being in awe around him. He had a deep, soothing voice that commanded the attention and respect of everyone nearby. And I remember him always smiling and laughing. I like to think that had something to do with loving his 'job'. But on the other hand, I'm not convinced that artists really differentiate 'job' from 'life'.

In 1989, my father landed a new job in Sacramento. Relocating from a sleepy town in Oregon to a larger city was a big culture shock for me. And ironically - shortly after that, grandma and grandpa actually relocated to Washington state. Grandpa passed away in 1995. I was 20.

At the time of his passing, I was playing music and touring. Being in a band was my life. Art (visually at least) was on the back burner . I knew that it was something I was going to circle back to, but it wasn't in my immediate future.

Now that I'm 35 and have been doing this 'professionally' for almost 10 years, you can imagine how many questions I wished I would have asked him. It's something I can't spend a lot of time thinking about because of the obvious reasons.

I am grateful to have most of his pieces that he left behind, and the many family members who are helping to remember/research where and when these amazing illustrations came from. Many, many, many more to come.

Thanks, grandpa.