Blogger Interview: Ellie Snow of Mint!

Ellie Snow runs a design blog called Mint — a blog which is constantly updated with a ton of amazing content. Being named one of Times Online’s top 50 design blogs in the world! Mint recently went through a little re-design and it looks better than ever, so now you definitely have to take a visit! Besides the blog, Ellie also runs an online shop, called Hello Tenfold. There you will find all your custom paper goods. All images below are taken from her Flickr.

Handmade Mint business cards

Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like?

I grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. I rode my bike everywhere and spent a lot of time at the beach by default, but I was one of those weird kids who hated the beach. I read a lot and I was pretty quiet.

Did you go to design school?

No, I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and majored in printmaking. Partly, I was intimidated by design schools when I was coming out of high school, but I also liked the idea of being able to take a bunch of random classes in all kinds of disciplines.

Tell me about Mint!

Mint’s my design blog, and I post a few times daily on art, design, handmade and vintage things. I started Mint soon after I began working as a graphic designer. I was spending a lot of time online trying to cram in a design education by studying other layouts and typography, and I wanted to start a blog to keep track of it all. Then I got addicted to the community aspect of blogging, and felt like a lot of doors started opening up for me.

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Photographer Interview: Jeremy O’Sullivan

Interview with Beijing-based photographer Jeremy O’Sullivan. This guy has got a great eye for photography. The photos below will prove this statement.

Thank you very much for doing this interview Jeremy, especially because you can’t even reach the site, since all WordPress blogs have been blocked in China, as you mentioned. What’s that like, not being able to reach certain sites, since China has blocked them? Here in Canada nothing is blocked (as far as I know).

Well there are always weaknesses to any fortification (in this case ‘the great chinese fire wall’ being the intangible line in the sand), so it’s pretty common practice to access blocked sites in china via a proxy server. They can be a bit of pain to use but at least it rules out a total information void.

In saying that however it is a little disturbing how far these recent blockades are going now. I think Flickr might well be on it’s last legs in china, farm 3 & 5 have been blocked in Beijing for the last 6 weeks or so. The recent isolationist trend of the Chinese government (in regards to the online censorship of foreign sites) is not a cool ploy. The world needs a visible china and likewise the people of china need a continued opening up of dialogue with all of the rest of us.

Anyways, tell me a little bit about yourself!

New Zealand is my home, I grew up in a wooden house with roots stinging through its walls. Later my family moved to the seaside and penguin’s replaced the roots as our inner wall companions. I got a degree in sculpture and I tried my hand at art making for a while before falling into a more or less sedated life as a tape machine operator at a post production company. Through a somewhat odd tale of religiosity & riot I ended up tumbling my way to Beijing. That was about 3 years ago, currently I’m teaching kids language skills and marching noise skills at the aerospace institute. Photography is something that has grown out of these dynamics like a pole from a flag.

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