Red Pepper Flakes. A blog by Imelda Suriato

I won a Jaap Vliegenthart print!

Woohoo!! I won this beautifully awesome, 17×25″ signed and editioned Jaap Vliegenthart print!

How? I received an email from Monaco Reps on Tuesday announcing the launch of their blog, Look Here. I click to see because I liked Bobbi Brown’s Pretty Powerful campaign. I then scroll to see what the new blog is about. Then I saw the JAAP VLIEGENTHART Giveaway! post which said they have fifteen signed and editioned EAT ME prints to send to the first fifteen people who email them.

So I did (Subject: I’m up to the challenge: I want the Jaap Vliegenthart!). Never thought I get anything because I’m just one of those people who never won a raffle or a lottery, although I did win $10 from a $1 Mega Million ticket (yeah, small woohoo…).

Then I received an email a day later saying “Congratulations, Imelda, You made it in the first fifteen emails!” and that my print will be mailed as soon as possible!

Yes!! I won something awesome! And it’s perfect for the dining room!

Making sweet real web fonts

The days of HTML built-in fonts are now over. Well, sort of.

Typekit, a product of Small Batch Inc. (who is now not so small anymore after their first round of VC funding), is offering beautiful, real fonts for use on the web. This means headline or title graphics don’t have to be created and there really is no need for sIFR anymore.

The best part: The subscription-based service offers Open Type fonts from some of the world’s best type foundries to be used gloriously on the web.

The fee is very minimal, but if you’re a super-starving designer, you can start with their free trial package.

Then comes Google Font API and Directory. No worries, Google isn’t trying to bully Typekit. Both companies openly collaborated to get Typekit Font Events into the open source project WebFont Loader. To boot, Google’s web fonts can be accessed from Typekit so if you’re using both services, there won’t be any compatibility issue.

So it looks like Typekit and Google Fonts are making sweet, sweet real web fonts together. The best part, of course, is the fact that designers will now be able to explore web font usage without having to worry about production, search engine-friendliness, Mac vs. PC font fibs, and the need to buy every single font you want to use for comps.

Yes, I’ve been there, knee-deep in “beg, borrow, steal” font territory. Can you smell the freedom now?

Quote du jour: Sirs, you are imbeciles

“These five paintings are unsellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles. Now return them.”

—Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr, director of the neighboring Palais de Tokyo

How so French! And appropriate for the stolen Picasso & Matisse. Five paintings worth over $100 million from the Paris Museum of Modern Art swiped even though the museum had reported problems with its alarm system two months ago. Seriously? Something worth looking into perhaps?

But Monsieur de Saint-Cyr is right. You can’t do anything with them except hanging them in your house. I personally would and happily.

Read the full story.

4Real: Strap-On Tank

One of the best post titles I’ve found: “Strap-On Tank Converts Any Car Into Badass Monster.” How can you beat that?

Apparently some Russian DIY-ers found a way to turn wimpy cars into an all-terrain super badass. Watch it in action. It’s totally awesome!

The Faces of 2009

Interesting project by designer Richard Holt. These are faces that made the news in 2009, made from the news of 2009. Taken from the Evening Standard’s headline board outside the tube station, which he diligently photographed every day for most of the last year.

Can you guess?