Drew Estate Cigar Box Tape

My fascination with cigar boxes spans nearly the length of my life. One of my first pencil boxes in elementary school was a cigar box, though I don’t recall the brand. Through my youth, cigar boxes were stacked on my father’s workbench, corralling errant bolts and unmatched screws, oblivious to the wonders inside. And last weekend at a wedding, the betrothed couple gave gifts to their groomsmen, concealed in elegantly crafted wooden cigar boxes. This wonderment naturally increased when I found an enjoyment of cigars, it’s true. Though not significantly.

This is a strip of cigar box tape from Drew Estate. You may recognize their name because of their popular brand of Acid cigars. The tape is die-cut to a certain length, like postage stamps, and designed to be cut from a dispenser. Ostensibly, it seals a cigar box to help maintain humidity and prevent tampering and contamination. But the tape unmistakably serves the same purpose as the object it binds: to enhance the beautiful mystique of the cigar box.

Unique Business Cards

(via ViralNova)

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As my studio works with creatives for design and development, we often send archived resources through email. Up until recently, I always just thought that my developers were more organized and less rash than my designers. However, last week I learned that I’d mistaken a bug in Microsoft Outlook as creative absent-mindedness.  Read more

Salon de Guerre

Michael Kronenberg

I recently went to a Portrait Painting Marathon and Salon de Guerre, hosted by Dr. Barnaby Ruhe, at the Westbeth Artists Housing (original headquarters of Bell Telephone Laboratories) in the West Village. Essentially, it’s a studio where a bunch of artists set-up easels and pour wine and socialize about the art world while musicians play and aficionados pose, drink, and discuss trends and installations. It was very Basquiat, but on the other side of the island and nobody overdosed on heroin. My favorite quote of the evening came from a woman named Maggie, who said: “I moved to Manhattan, expecting it to be like this every night. It took 20 years, but now I’ve found it.”

Other artists include Eileen Coyne, and Emmanuelle Linard. Above is a painting of me by Michael Kronenberg.