From the Office of Beth Mathews

Greetings!

Early this year, the great Herb Lester, known for their travel and guides to the world’s curiosities, hired me to design and illustrate a Twin Peaks guide called Into the Pines: An Unauthorised Guide to the Real Locations of Twin Peaks. Oh, the pressure I felt with this one! This series means so much to David Lynch fans, and there were so many ways we could have taken this design based on the series.

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When Herb Lester approached me about this project, they suggested it reflect a vintage 1950s American travel brochure. But Twin Peaks' settingis funny because sometimes it's hard to tell whether it's set in the 1950s or the early 1990s. The brilliance of that set design is that it reflects how many small towns in the US feel… a bit hard to tell the difference between one decade and the next, which can create charm or spookiness, and Twin Peaks nails those feelings.

So off I went to research vintage travel brochures from the Pacific Northwest, since Twin Peaks is set in Washington state.

I quickly realized that if we were going to reference vintage brochures, I needed to get comfortable with the fact that the references call for a whole mix of type treatments on the front, and I needed to let go of any sort of design “system.” I found a Twin Peaks fan newsletter from 1991 that used a typeface that looks like logs, in honor of “the log lady” (IYKYK). So I brought that typeface into the cover to honor the fan memorabilia over the years, and I loosely interpreted the “Welcome to Twin Peaks” opening-credits sign on top of a wood-paneled background to honor the Great Northern Hotel, which was covered in wood paneling.

A quarter of the way through the design process, it was time to start the map and guide layout. Thinking about the famous Double R Diner, I was reminded of diners on road trips, where paper placemats on the counter would have ads for local businesses and a town map. I thought this could be a clever way to bring in the more obscure Twin Peaks locations, knowing the fans would enjoy the details. It was a design challenge to make these ads look “homemade”! Like perhaps they were created in Microsoft Word.

Adam and Tree Carr wrote this incredible guide, which officially comes out on October 13th, and you can pick up a copy here!

Into the Pines

I've spent a lot of my time lately preparing for the Adobe Illustrator lab I’ll be teaching at Adobe Max in November. It’s a bit wild to design every day and know the programs with my eyes shut, but then when I try to speak the process out loud, I’ve realized that perhaps I don’t actually know the names of some of the tools or panels or whatever other technical name I’m supposed to say! “Just click on that…thing” isn’t going to cut it, so I have been rehearsing with my junior designer dog, Snacks Mathews, and he seems to enjoy it.

I’ll be teaching four 90-minute sessions, and there are about 25 spots left on 11/11 in the 3:30 time slot! If you’re coming to Adobe Max, I hope you’ll join me, and you can hear for yourself my new and improved technical language.

Designing Vintage Inspired Graphics

What the Heck Am I Inspired By

• Last month, when news broke that AI was taking over the world, Dan saw a post for a local venue hosting a soul music dance party, spinning Stax Records-specific records all night. So we got dressed and went dancing at 10 pm. It was so much fun, and if the robots are going to destroy us, might as well dance through the madness! Here’s a Stax Records playlist to get your own groove on.

Stax Records Hits & Classics

In the Kitchen

It took me 41 years to realize how great a slow-cooker can be. You’re telling me you can just pop some chicken thighs into the slow cooker and, 6 hours later, feel like a genius for cooking such an easy meal? This recipe got me hooked.

I made this recipe last week when we had some friends over for dinner and wanted to experiment with using up the rest of the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, and whipped up this salsa-ish sauce to go on top!

• Half a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 6 chiles de árbol (rehydrated by soaking in hot water for 30 minutes)
• Splash of white vinegar
• Tbsp brown sugar
• Some olive oil (just use your intuition here!)
• Blend it all in the mixer and voila! A delicious salsa to go on top of your slow-cooked chicken

Around Town

I finally visited the International Print Museum in Carson, CA, for their annual Wayzgoose Celebration. They had hands-on workshops and tons of items for sale at deep discounts. It was such a thrill. I bought some metal type and snagged a copy of Lino Type Faces for $40, which typically costs $140-$240! I also took a workshop on using a Ludlow printing press, invented in 1906, that creates actual lines of metal type for printing. The wonderful, but old-guard, man handed me some hot metal type, and after I held it for a while, he said, “Some people get nervous about holding these things because it’s lead, but I’ve known men to live into their 80s who handled this every day just fine.” So did I get lead poisoning? We shall see. My ephemera collection is under the bed if someone wants to inherit it.

The Grand Finale of this Newsletter:

• Each election cycle for the past decade, we’ve participated in Vote Forward,where you write a handwritten letter to voters who may be undecided or just haven’t voted in years. If you’re looking for an actionable way to help your cause, check it out!
• A good friend of mine recently brought to my attention a way to help a few disabled children in Nepal. She visited a home for disabled kids in Nepal about 20 years ago and has stayed in touch with them ever since. It’s a wonderful organization where kids live in the home if their family is from a rural place where services for disabled kids aren’t available. Because of changes in government rules, they’ve had trouble finding sponsors for the kids. They are looking for sponsors for 4 of them, and it costs $ 1,250 to sponsor one for a year. If this speaks to you, you can learn more here!

As always, thank you for being here. I find that with all creative endeavors, there are highs and lows in the rhythm of the output, along with personal pressure for it to be good, so I appreciate you hanging in here with me each month. Take care of yourselves, and if you’re in the U.S., just hang on for the political ride, check in with your neighbors, muster up your courage and voice, and we can weather this storm together.

Love,

Beth

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