Colby Brumit

visuals / words / information

November 21, 2012
by colbybrumit
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Handmade Colorado

Intro­duc­tory poster for the Hand­made Col­orado exhibition

For the last few weeks, I’ve been help­ing out with the design of Hand­made Col­orado. This is an exhi­bi­tion at Den­ver Inter­na­tional Air­port fea­tur­ing crafters and artists from through­out the state. It has been an immensely fun project! They have some really amaz­ing stuff in those cases… I am def­i­nitely putting a Valen­tich bag on my wish list. The exhi­bi­tion pho­tos I took (after a 5-hour flight! And at night!) turned out ter­ri­bly, but when I have some I will post them here.

I’ve also been upping my web design skills with this project. I have been study­ing HTML & CSS for the last year, but feel like I have dou­bled my knowl­edge of these sub­jects in the last three weeks. As the exhi­bi­tion has a QR code, many peo­ple will (hope­fully) be inter­act­ing with the site on their mobile devices. So I learned how to cre­ate a respon­sive web design that can be scaled up or down depend­ing on the user’s screen size.

The new site was uploaded today, and I hope peo­ple enjoy inter­act­ing with it. But there is no rest in my future… we are plan­ning a more expan­sive (WordPress-powered) site that has con­tent from the par­tic­i­pants them­selves. I have some expe­ri­ence with Word­Press with this site, but cre­at­ing, or even doing a decent job of cus­tomiz­ing, a WP theme is a huge under­tak­ing. I have been study­ing, learn­ing, exper­i­ment­ing and work­ing day and night on this. I first learned HTML in 1999 and it has been absolutely astound­ing to me how much more com­pli­cated web design is now in 2012. Back then, I loved exper­i­ment­ing with lay­out and image maps (remem­ber them?). I’d love to get my skillset up to the level where I feel like I am play­ing, rather than try­ing to solve a problem.

July 9, 2012
by colbybrumit
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caffeine

A cup of coffeeFor prob­a­bly the last 5 or 6 years, I haven’t slept.

Or at least haven’t slept nor­mally. Which, for me, means wak­ing up sev­eral times a night, wak­ing up at wildly inap­pro­pri­ate hours, wak­ing up well before my alarm, think­ing about real-life while asleep and never really feel­ing quite rested when I woke.

To rem­edy this, I started drink­ing cof­fee in ever-increasing amounts. Half a pot became one pot which became “one pot prior to leav­ing the house; cof­fee house stop on the way to work; office cof­fee all day; cof­fee house again in the evening.”

I loathe the with­drawal, and as any cof­fee drinker can tell you, the only cure is more cof­fee. I get so cranky! Every lit­tle irri­ta­tion feels like cause for revolt, and yet I have no choice but to pay atten­tion to every­thing except what I’m sup­posed to be doing.

So three weeks after quit­ting all caf­feine (reg­u­lar, decaf, soda, tea… all of it), I now know how sen­si­tive I am to it. I had headaches for the first 10 days, and still had poor sleep for the first three nights. Yes­ter­day after­noon, I had some choco­late. Sure enough, at bed­time last night, I’m won­der­ing why I can’t sleep. That’s how sen­si­tive I appar­ently am. For a brain that doesn’t really turn off, caf­feine is ulti­mately exhausting.

It’s unfor­tu­nate for me that cof­fee is just about my favorite thing in the whole world. But a good moti­va­tor to stay away from it is how well I’ve been sleep­ing. I’ve had about a week now of sleep­ing like I’ve never slept before. I can only imag­ine how much I need to make up in order to repair my body & mood after years of espress­ing away my fatigue.

April 14, 2012
by colbybrumit
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Status update

It’s been gnaw­ing at my brain for weeks: “I need to update my blog. I need to update my blog. [repeat]” So here I am.

I am actu­ally mov­ing next week­end! I’ve been orga­niz­ing and pack­ing my belong­ings these past cou­ple of weeks in prepa­ra­tion. It’s funny how quickly I’ve become a min­i­mal­ist again! “Do I want to move this? No. Do I want to take this with me? No.” I fan­ta­size about becom­ing a sort of dig­i­tal nomad, trav­el­ing around the coun­try with a lap­top, a back­pack and a suit­case… just the essen­tials. I’d rent people’s sub­lets and work odd jobs and make art and write in my journal.

Back in Decem­ber, I quit caf­feine, a wagon which I fell off of a few weeks ago with an inad­ver­tently caf­feinated venti decaf Amer­i­cano. So I’ve been chug­ging cof­fee left and right and the effects on my poor, appar­ently del­i­cate brain have been astound­ing. My metab­o­lism is so high that the ben­e­fits of caff only last a short while, before I find myself in with­drawl. And since I’m in with­drawal most of the time, I’ve become cranky, unfo­cused and an over­all Deb­bie Downer. So before I alien­ate every­one around me, I’m quit­ting. Had my last cof­fee yes­ter­day after­noon. I don’t feel great, but don’t feel ter­ri­ble either. No headaches this time, but have hit some mood bumps which I can only hope are the last gasps of caff work­ing their way out of my system.

My big free­lance project lately has been design­ing the album art & mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als for the Minneapolis-based band Murzik. This album comes out in May and it was really a fun project to work on:

album cover

February 1, 2012
by colbybrumit
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Little Free Libraries

a grassroots micro-lending organization

garden-themed Lit­tle Free Library

I stum­bled upon this great organization/idea and needed to share it.

Lit­tle Free Libraries are crate-sized DIY lend­ing libraries that one can build (or pur­chase) and install in a place to be accessed by the pub­lic. Your Lit­tle Free Library is stocked with books that you don’t actively use any­more, so that oth­ers can read and ben­e­fit from them. Users can check-out on their own, and either return the book bor­rowed, or replace it with a book that they’re ready to share.

Here is a news seg­ment about how they started:

via Library Stuff

I found a Warhol!

January 2, 2012 by colbybrumit | 0 comments

Campbell's Soup Can, Fort Collins, Colorado

This was the spe­cial sur­prise I found when I drove my friend Kenny back to Fort Collins today. I had seen it once before and thought it was just somebody’s homage, but when Kenny said it was a true-and-tried Warhol, we pulled over and I asked him to snap this photo of me.

The can was cre­ated for Warhol’s 1981 exhi­bi­tion at Col­orado State Uni­ver­sity, then re-installed in 2008 at their new art building.

1st batch of photos taken with my new camera!

December 31, 2011 by colbybrumit | 0 comments

Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado

I went out today to an aban­doned school near my house. I don’t quite have the huevos mas grandes to spe­lunker into the school and explore, but it sure is tempt­ing!!

Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
There’s an over­turned shop­ping cart at the top of those steps.
Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
The front of the school

Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
What climbed under the fence?
Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
111231_0023

Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
Front steps, groovy shadow
Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
The blue sign says that this is a Drug-Free Zone
Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado

Byers Middle School, Denver, Colorado
Pretty sweet for skate­board­ers I imagine…
Cool leaf/snow texture

This gallery contains 11 photos