· SFZF X Treasure Island

If you want to see me rambling in my position as de facto SF Zine Fest spokesperson, check out this video from the Treasure Island Music Festival on Rhapsody Blog... I make a couple of appearances, pontificating on zines, the Fleet Foxes, and garlic fries.

· New Distraction

The confluence of my recently getting an iPhone and my new semi-lengthy train commute to school has conspired to create a new distraction for me. I had never owned an iPod or other portable music player (not even a CD player... the last such technology I had was a cassette Walkman that I brought with me on a trip to Europe, long long ago!), and I have spent the last month belatedly catching up to the widespread reality of being able to hear music on the go, which has been rather amazing, I must admit!

But, the best thing has been some of the various podcasts I have begun to subscribe to... many of them are just versions of radio shows I already listened to, either online or on an actual radio station, like This American Life and All Things Considered... But there are a few new ones I am beginning to explore as well. My favorite recently is the New Yorker's fiction podcast, wherein one of the magazine's impressive stable of writers chooses a story by a different author from the archives, reads it, and discusses it with Deborah Treisman, the magazine's fiction editor. It serves a bit like a succinct and delightful book club; the two always have good points to make on matters of style, language usage, etc. I was esp. impressed with this month's pick by Tobias Wolff: Stephanie Vaughn’s short story “Dog Heaven.”

It's sort of funny, though... I almost never read any fiction in the actual magazine!

· Support Small Press Poster

Support Small Press Poster
Originally uploaded by francois vigneault

The SF Zine Fest is hosting a zine library at the upcoming Treasure Island Music Festival. We are styling the whole affair with a" vintage library" look, and we will have some posters designed by some local cartoonsts and zinesters; this is my design... I was inspired by the wonderful posters of the WPA from the 30s and 40s, some of which are delghtfully guilt trip laden!

· New Website!!!

If you are at all interested in me, and what I do (even a little!), you'll want to take a look at my new website, tourdefrancois.com! This is my first portfolio site, and also the first site which I have designed myself... nothing fancy, but hopefully it should be easy to navigate and peruse some of my illustrations, comics, and various other projects which occupy my time. I'm also going to be updating this blog more often, so keep an eye out for some new art projects and comics cropping up here in the coming weeks... Promise!