Having a well-designed and comfortable office space is important. It is, after all, the place many of us spend the bulk of our time each week. At Toi, we’ve just recently moved offices, and we’re really happy where we’re at now—especially since we got the coffee machine up and running.

That said, this is 2012 and, for as long as I can remember, my “desk job” as a designer has never been tied to any specific desk. In fact, most of the Toi team tends to roam during the week, working from home occasionally, from airplanes while we’re on the road, and from coffee shops around town. Armed with MacBook Airs, MMT’s Mobile Monitors and iPhones, we get out of the office when we can to keep the inspiration flowing.

While most of us tend to work offsite in isolation, every once and a while we get out of the office together for a workday field trip so we can experience new things, eat (amazing) new food, and put our heads down and focus on some of our work in a brand new environment.

Today we went to Pasadena and camped out at Intelligentsia Coffee, downtown on Colorado Street.

If you live in LA and you’ve never been to Intelligentsia, you need to get off your couch and go right now. Order a cappuccino. They’re incredible. Promise:

We also had a chance to stop at Cousin’s Maine Lobster for one of their legendary lobster rolls—they ship the lobster overnight from Maine every day—for lunch. The lobster was melt in your mouth good, and the bread was absolutely incredible. I’ll be back for seconds (and thirds, and fourths).

I would show you what we worked on, but that’s a secret. We’ll be updating our portfolio with more new work soon, so stay tuned.

Workday field trips have actually become a fairly common once-a-month thing. So expect more notes from the field coming your way soon.

In the meantime, you should get out more.

What comes to mind when you think about the color red? Passion? Love? Coca-Cola? The White Stripes?

How about the year 1914? Because apparently red was a lot more prominent in the early 1900′s than it is now.

And this chart showing the last 98 years of movie posters proves it:

Created by Vijay Pandurangan because he needed to prove a friend wrong who didn’t believe him when he “mentioned how [he] felt that most movie posters these days were very blue and dark,” this is about as thorough as it gets. And it look great.

Bravo, Vijan!

(h/t Fast Co. Design)

Typography plays such an important role here at Toi. Often times, many young designers or print designers don’t have a strong grasp of typography on the digital front, when the same principles apply from the early stages of type and letterpressing.

Without preaching too much about the past, this quick film about letterpressing by Danny Cooke is definitely enlightening.