Happy Friday, everyone! and it’s the 4th of July weekend!

For the happy holiday weekend, I’ll bring something from happy place… the Disneyland. yay. I love it there and it’s been more than 6-7 years since the last visit so I really wanted to spend a day there while we were in LA… :) This time, though, I looked at more designs and types and I was actually really amazed how well everything is designed and put together. It must have been so fun to work on the designs at Disneyland…

The entrance: this image here is a bit small to read, but it says “Population 500,000,000″ — is that how many people Disneyland can hold? Also says “Elevation 138 feet”

Cute postal box:

aww Churros… Love this design!

I know this font, it fits the restaurant.

Jedi Training Academy (!!) — I thought the logo is pretty cool. and yes, I am a Star Wars fan.

(look at all the jedi-to-be!)

Nice wood sign.

Hand-drawn (I think) sign.

and one of the Disney classics… Pirates of the Caribbean. (The ride had some new additions.)

Love this waiting line information board.

The reflection was kind of crazy, but I thought this poster was cool.

One of many bathroom signs. They were all different in each different area.

and another Disney classic… Haunted Mansion sign. (I also know this font, but the decoration around the sign really makes it)

While waiting in a line, looking at these were fun — simple and designed well.

Another nice sign on wood.

Big Thunder Mountain Rail Road!

The Happiest Turkeys on Earth! Seriously. (read the descriptions) Happy turkeys get very cool sign, too.

These are so well designed and I thought it would make a great letterpress poster… I want to print something like this soon…

Very cool.

A big letter R from Disney’s California Adventure:

San Francisco wall art… (I miss you, SF)

Another great Churros stand design. Color combination is awesome.

Hope you enjoyed my finidings… wishing you all a happy 4th of July weekend!!! See you on Monday :)

Posted under trip, typography

These plates by May Luk Ceramics are so lovely.

Alpha plate:

also, comes in a heart shape!

I’m sold…

Posted under typography, wish list

After we got off of the cruise ship, we went to Huntington Beach to hang out, have lunch, walk around… our friends’ flights weren’t until later of the day so we hopped on a car from Long Beach to here. I loved the drive along the sea, palm trees, sunshine… aww California goodness… I miss it…

and I saw lots of surfers, too. In the ocean and on the street:

Cool graphic. These were everywhere on the street.

Huntington Beach bench :: HB

No smoking, No bicycle, No skateboard:

There was this huge Pelican watching the beach…

Ruby’s Surf City Diner: love the colors!

sometimes, graphics are all you need:

Chopping board:

I love this sign! Some letters are missing so it’s drawn in, some letters are falling… but how perfect this imperfection is! I love that.

Lots of cool colors around the beach, it’s very eye catching.

Rusty sign:

Love this yellow on yellow blind emboss types, too…

It is July 1st today! Yes, summer is here!

Posted under trip, typography

I found lots of types, arts and designs on my trip and I would love to share them all here for your inspiration and for my inspiration… I know I can use some of the elements for my design someday… I think it’s also a fun way to show where I have been for the last 10 days :)

I’m going to start from the beginning of my trip… We arrived at Long Beach Airport in LA.

Nice Helvetica welcome board:

and I also saw a different welcome sign — it says the same thing, but you see how it feels so different with different fonts?

found art – it looks interesting and very conceptual piece.

From the Queen Mary restaurant menu (before we get on a cruise ship, we stopped by Queen Mary hotel):

I love this sign. Very vintage and cool.

and this is the cruise ship we took to Ensenada, Mexico:

It was a 3-day wedding cruise, stopped by Ensenada for one day, went to this gorgeous place for a wedding.

The hand-written/drawn house sign:

The patio/pool area:

Oceanfront area:

From the house backyard — Cute turtle statues:

Love this mini bicycle with plants:

Love the patterns and colors! So pretty…

One of the dining areas in the house. Isn’t it gorgeous?

The wedding was beautiful as you can imagine :)

and… right before I got back to the cruise ship, found this wall and the public phones — love the color combination!

I saw lots of hand-written ads on the street on the way to the wedding venue, I wish I wasn’t in the car so I could have taken more pictures because they looked so cool…. next time, maybe… :)

Hope you enjoy so far — more to come!

Posted under trip, typography

Hello! I am back from vacation now, a lot to catch up, feeling a little tired and overwhelmed with what I have to catch up with, but we had such a nice time with friends, different cities, weddings were great, got lots of happy energies…. it was a great trip :)

I took a lot of pictures and I will be sharing them here all week this week! I need sometime to sort everything out, though… (I took 419 pictures, apparently.)

Pictures are from the flight. I love looking out the window and see the sky, ground, the whole earth… it is always different, always inspiring to me.

Somewhere in between LA and Boston:

Somewhere in between Boston to New York:

(the window was really dirty – can you see?)

The best part of coming back from vacation was to see Maia!!! She had a great time also, with her best friend, Hime and her parents. We missed her so much!! Thanks to our petsitter, Mallow and Milo the Chinchillas were doing great, too! :)

Posted under trip

Happy Friday, everyone! Well… I am off to a vacation! I’m probably flying somewhere in US right now… going to Los Angels, cruise to Mexico, spend little time in southern California and then Boston… (2 weddings to go for 2 weekends, west coast and east coast) I will be back on Monday the 29th this month with lots of pictures, inspirations, found art and type, please check back then! I might post something here and there from my iPhone… or follw me on twitter for an occasional updates :)

Images are something I found in Lower East Side yesterday. Awesome type and design, caught my eye.

Have a great weekend and have a great week next week! xo Hijiri

Posted under typography

Yesterday, I was running around like a crazy woman trying to run all the errands, finish as many things as possible before I leave for 2 weddings/vacation on Friday… (yes, I’ll be on vacation! I sooo need it, I can’t wait!) and found cool type… I had to take photos… found some more… had to take photos… so here are my type finds from all over the Park Slope. (it is a huge area)

This big garbage bin had lots of cool type and texture…

Love this look.

Vintage looking Pharmacy sign.

Yes, it’s Record & Tape Center! aww so good.

This bar on 5th Avenue north Park Slope is covered entirely with chalkboard outside. Even their store sign is written in chalk! (and they still have chalkboards out, too…)

Love the hand-lettering.

What a fun idea! Especially for a bar – unfortunatelly, I didn’t find any chalks to doodle around when you are hanging around outside… oh.. that might not work out too well… I don’t know what the drunken people would doodle… :)

Have a great day!!

Posted under Park Slope, typography

Found this art on Park Avenue and 52nd Street (I think) in Upper East Side in New York. It caught my eye and I thought it looked like something really gorgeous…

something really pretty…

something beautiful…

and I was right! This work was entitled “All Diamonds” by James Surls. I only saw this piece because I was crossing town on 52nd street to 3rd Avenue, but apparently, he has several sculpture work on Park Avenue.

Pretty Park Avenue church and buildings:

New York is a big city and I hardly ever go this side of town, but I’d love to check out more of his work. I think it’s unique and stunning.

Posted under NYC, art

I wanted to share another lovely website Randy and I launched recently: Suga Jewelry shopping site.

My friend, Suga wanted a very simple and clean website to showcase her one of a kind handmade jewelry and she also wanted to be able to sell them online so we’ve been working with her on this website… we are still working on some features, but overall, it came out really lovely, simple and shows her nature inspired work very well.

Homepage:

Store page: I love how she used branches and wood background. It ties everything together nicely, I think.

Product thumbnail page: I love this page. So clean, simple, very easy navigation, not overwhelming shopping experience (like some websites are…)

Product detail page: everything is made to order! Her work is so cute!

About page: you can find out more about her here.

It’s so nice to see it live and I’m so happy to get to help her and work with her! Please check out her website at www.sugajewelry.com :)

Congratulations, Suga-chan!

Posted under project

Good morning! Hope everyone had a nice weekend…

Over the weekend, lovely Victoria, Randy and I finally launched sfgirlbybay! We’ve been working on this new site for a long time so seeing it’s actually live makes me so happy :) When she said “let’s go live” I felt like the wedding day finally arrived or something because we’ve been planning for a long time, making sure all the details one by one, and yes, it was stressful at some point when I had to deal with PHP and CSS madness, and of course it was such a fun process designing and awesome to work with Victoria (like old days! It’s really fun to work with her!), and the launch was just beautiful! We are still working things out here and there, but I think she is happy and she is getting lots of good comments from her readers and that really makes me happy.

Her new home. Very clean and I love the color scheme she decided to go with. It has a really nice feeling and makes me want to spend more time here.

I love how all the categories are organized by polaroid films! So cute and so Victoria.

and of course, her famous “Sunday in the City” has its own section.

and there are more nice features…

If you haven’t already, please go to www.sfgirlbybay.com and look around her new site, you will have a great time. Congratulations, Victoria!!! Cheers to you, your successful blog and many more years to come!!!

Posted under project