I love to travel.

Feet at Jamaica Station, the largest transit hub on Long Island and one of the busiest railroad stations in the country with over 200,000 daily passengers

My dad spent a decent portion of his career traveling to interesting places. At the end of every one of his trips, my brother and I would wait with gleeful anticipation to see what exciting souvenir he had brought home for us.

Night at Madison Square Garden, above Penn Station in NYC

Because of that, it’s no surprise that my dream is to live on a different continent in a country that doesn’t speak English at some point in my life. Until then, I’ll give you feet pictures from my domestic travels.

Feet taking a break in Maryland.

Feet Portraits
My Feet series will introduce you to the places my feet go and other feet they meet. Some people take pictures of food. I take pictures of feet. There’s more to come. Enjoy.

I love public transportation. Yes it’s dirty and unreliable, but the true gems of public transit are the people. Recently, I started cataloguing some of the amazing things I overhear. Its fun already, isn’t it?

As I sat in the (very public) Minneapolis-St Paul airport waiting on a flight to LA, I felt like there couldn’t be a more appropriate place to post my third installment of Things I Hear on Muni. Unfortunately, the free wifi didn’t agree.

“I’m gon’ make me some key earrings!” exclaimed a woman who gleefully discovered a set of lost keys.

It was a little more than a month ago that I purchased my ticket to TYPO on a whim. Yep. Lots of money out the door for a design conference. But as my husband said (read: justified the purchase to me after experiencing a spell of buyer’s remorse) “We live in San Francisco. You need to take advantage of things like this.” And he’s right.

For those of you who may not be familiar with names like Neville Brody, Erik Spiekermann, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Michael Bierut, Jessica Hische, and many others, they are the Steve Jobs’ and George Lucas’ of my design world. I’m going to see these people talk. In person.

To make things more exciting, a couple of weeks ago, I answered a call for volunteers for the TYPO Press Team. So now, not only do I find myself attending TYPO, I’ll be blogging / tweeting throughout various sessions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts during the 2 days. And I get a free ticket for next year’s conference. Worth it? I think so.

If you’re sad to be missing the action, you can follow my tweets at @bfrancesi or catch me on the Font Shop blog.  I’ll be in design heaven.

Word Poem #5: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Word Poem #4: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Word Poem #2: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Read the full interview of Marjane Satrapi on The 99%

Word poem #1: An experiment in human typography

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

The most successful book is that which inspires you to put it aside and create.

Thank you to my sweet, thoughtful husband who surprised me with Typography Sketchbooks, curated by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico.

I have horrible luck with bikes. A few months ago, St Patrick’s Day to be exact, I was in a bike accident that temporarily cost me my sense of taste and smell. And no doubt a few brain cells. Since then, I’ve vowed to stay away from them.

A friend recently sent me a link to this bike helmet by the Swedish company Hövding, and it just may have me re-thinking my vow. It’s a stunning feat of a marriage between technology and fashion.

And that dress! Eat your heart out.