News
February 18, 2007
posted by Natasha
OINK!!!!!
It's the year of the golden pig! So far this year, we've moved to a new office space, effectively separating our home & work. Our new NDG-based office is a blast! Spence, Emily, Dan, me and a whole lot of other people got together and renovated this loft which now houses Typeleft and four community organizations: Aux Pois Chiques, MUCS, The NDG Barter Network and US-El Salvador Sister Cities.
Also, Izaak and I have posted our latest creation for Coop la maison verte. It was a real pleasure to get to know peoople at the co-op better and working with Aimée and Jason was great! We are very pleased to be working with Etienne Martin on some web projects. On the horizon: an online store, more NASCO projects, new collaborations with Jason Delmarr, and much much more!
I'd also like to point out that Stephen Harper is directly responsable for the One Tonne Challenge for Youth web site being taken down. Obviously he's not reading this, but: Thanks a lot! We put a lot of work into that site!
October 20, 2006
posted by Natasha
The year in review!
Great news! During the next few months, we will be upgrading and updating the Coop la maison verte web site. It has been our dream for years to work with CMV! Our dream is finally coming true and we're very happy. This fall, Izaak worked with Jason Delmarr to put up the Pop Montreal web site for the 2006 festival. Also, The NASCO web site is evermore nearing completion. You can see what is up so far at: nasco.coop. In the past several months we also put up pacifico.nasco.coop, a NASCO "co-op rescue operation".
In other news, last winter we undertook our own kind of rescue operation! It involved a family of 3 little pigeons who were being evicted from their home in a neon sign above a local bar. They were cast - in a plastic bag - into a snowbank at the exact moment we were walking by. We rehabilitated the baby pigeons, watched them learn to fly and handed them over to Judi Collinge from Le Nichoire (Hudson, QC). She taught them to be afraid of cats and then released them back into the wild streets of NDG. If you want to rehabilitate a baby bird, you know who to call! We also have some great info we'll be posting soon on helping abandoned pets in Montreal.
Unfortunately, the past 10 months have not been all roses and awesome kick-ass projects. Our landlord, who shall hereafter be refered to as "Ol' Slummy", made last winter a total nightmare for us. Ol' Slummy refused to repair a leak which prevented us from using our bathroom and kitchen for four months! All is well now that we have taken legal recourse. The leak is repaired, the bathtub repainted, the new windows are installed. If any of you have questions about tenants rights just drop us a line!
Despite our (ultimately 6-month-long) battle for justice against Ol' Slummy and her less-than-competant handy-men, we were still able to produce some lovely additions to our portfolio. Coming soon to our web site will be a new "illustrations" section with our illustration collection and maybe some free graphics for downloading!
Typeleft has also switched over to using Drupal (drupal.org) as our content management system (CMS). Drupal offers a number of essential community organising tools for document sharing, online communication and data storage for member-based organisations.Drupal is open source software with a huge support base in the open source CMS developer community.
The most exciting news by far though is that Typeleft has a new office! We will be moving in the next month to a shared office space in NDG. Our office mates will include the NDG Barter Network, MUCS, and U.S.- El Salvador Sister Cities. We are really glad to be moving to such a vibrant neighbourhood and can't wait to get involved in local community initiatives there. More updates on this to come soon!
Thanks for staying tuned and be sure we will have more updates coming to you soon as we approach our 2nd anniversary as a registered partnership!
December 4th, '05
posted by Natasha
Finally! Open source software for graphic designers. Yes, that's right: the programmers have gotten it in their heads that graphic designers around the world are in need of non proprietary software. I think they're right, and it's high time too. The first ever of it's kind, the Libre graphics meeting (LGM) will be a chance for developers working on graphics apps to put their heads together for three days. Participants include developers for the GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus and Blender. We'll see whether or not the Xara people will be there - let's hope so, this is a huge step forward in their field!
The first LGM will be held on 17, 18 and 19 March 2006 in Lyon, France in the Ecole d'Ingénieurs CPE on the university campus at La Doua, Villeurbanne.
November 14th, '05
It's our Birthday! Though Izaak and I have both been working in this field for many years, Typeleft Publishing is 1 this year! One year ago, we got organized and registered our partnership with the Quebec government. It cost us $43 and a full afternoon. It was worth it though! This has been an amazing year! Thanks to all our clients for their support and encouragement!
hearts,
Natasha & Izaak
September 5th '05
There are natural disasters and other atrocities happening all over the world. However, it's shocking (perhaps not surprising) that despite America's wealth and gigantic military, they don't treat their lower class at home much better than abroad.
Mirrored below is a radio interview with Malik Rahim, telling his account of what people are going through.
August 4th '05
We're back from BC! What a great trip! We learned a lot about a lot of things, including farming, our bikes and how to survive four days on a greyhound bus!
As good as the farm life was, it's great to be back in the city. We're really excited about our upcoming projects. We hope that you'll check back here often to see what we've been up to - there's going to be some great new work up here soon!
Until then, we hope you're enjoying the summer & eating lots of fresh produce and leafy greens!