Plaid Again Design Co.

Art & Photography of Gordon Eckler

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Berlin Day 2 — Our last full day in Europe on this trip. We walked to a graffiti covered area filled with little shops and an art gallery called “Urban Spree”. Beautiful street art and awesome little gallery and shop. Then we made our way over to another park/memorial to the Berlin Wall and a divided Berlin.

Just a little north of downtown is a park that was once the “kill zone” of the Berlin Wall. It was the space between the two walls where border guards were told if anyone ever entered to shoot to kill. Seeing it gives you a real sense of what it was like to be caged in (or out) and what people really went through to get into West Berlin and freedom.

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Berlin day 1 — we cranked out most of the real touristy stuff already. Check point Charlie, Reichstag and it’s glass done, Brandonberg gate, east side gallery, chucks of the Berlin Wall, and then walked around town searching and exploring. Our hotel is directly across the street from the East Side Gallery so we got to walk around the walls early in the morning with no one around. It was awesome. The city still has a war-torn feeling as you walk around it. Mae and I keep talking about how different Berlin and Munich are. Feels like two different worlds.

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2 days in Munich, Germany — We spent the last two days walking around town and drinking gut bier. We hit 3 Biergartens for drinks and food. Overall the locals have been so nice and not mean to two Americans who know little to no German. Our second day in Munich was “mein vierzigster geburtstag (my 40th birthday) and it was just want I asked for, German food and German bier in Germany! Now we’re on our last ICE train ride headed to Berlin!!

I’ll post way more photos after we get back to Oakland and I’m able to use a computer. These are just a few high from each city we stopped at. And, Mae and I are already making a list of where we want to see in Europe next. It’s so easy to get around by train and we’re both amazed at how many people here, in 3 different countries, speak such good English. Even strangers off the street. We’ve met only a small handful of people who didn’t know any English at all.

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1 day in Frankfurt, Germany — It was more of a pit stop on the way to Munich but ended up being a beautiful town. Delicious food and lecker bier. Frankfurt has more of a city feel with tall buildings and what feels like a financial district. It was pretty hot the day we were there so it felt like summer for sure. Kids playing in fountains, grown men walking around eating ice cream, and cold beirs in the old town.

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2 days in Brussels — we boarded a train in Paris to Brussels to eat chocolate, drink beers, and look at beautiful old buildings. While in town we learned in the Manneken Pis, an 1618 statue of a boy pissing off a ledge. Then... we started to see him everywhere!

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Paris Day 3 — First hard lesson learned, if you don’t prepurchase tickets to the Louvre, you ain’t getting in. But the Pompidou is a solid back up plan :) The museum has beautiful views of the city from the top floor. Tomorrow we take the train to Brussels, Belgium to eat waffles, chocolate and hella beers.

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Paris Day 2 — Mae and I walked another 26,478 steps (11.8 mikes) all over the city. It’s chaos out there. Giant crowds, hordes of traffic, cops, bums, street kids, delivery people, and lots and lots of bad BO.

Paris is so fun.

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Paris Day 1 — Me and this beautiful woman boarded a 747 from Oakland to Paris late last Thursday night! Day 1 we woke up at 5am Paris time and walked over 31,000 steps (according to my Apple Watch) to what felt like everywhere. Paris is so much like NYC in my opinion. The people, traffic, food, street art, tourists from around the globe, it’s so awesome. Both Mae and I love it so far. I’m really surprised how far you can get in Paris knowing less than 10 words in French.

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This was my entry to the Pick a Portrait Challenge hosted by Adobe Create Magazine. I took the original image and drew on top of the image in Illustrator, added some flair, and then played with color using Adobe Capture on my iphone. 

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Did a shirt design for the Rally Health employees working on a project called “Neptune”. The pitch to me was “could you do something with the Greek God, the planet and hippos?” This is what I came up with 👀.

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Sneak peek at a shirt design I did for an internal team working on a project titled Thunderdome.

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A design for Rally Health to celebrate 20 Million registered users.

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Did some ink inventory over the weekend. I use the TW Graphics 5500 series flat poster inks. They don’t have a color books, so you gotta make your own. Workin on it little by little.

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Coffee cup with his java jacket.

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The brick was my first cell phone. I felt so fancy even tho I didn’t have text messaging. I remember thinking “who would I text with? I’ll just call them.” Oh how the world changed.

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I miss my Motorola sometimes.

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Fancy mug with his fresh new do.