Your Friends & Neighbors

09/05/2026

As some of you may know, I helped out with the recipe development, photographed all the dishes and designed this cookbook for Dr. Florence Rothenberg, founder of the Heart of Northside. It's a thrill to see it for sale at Morsel & Nosh!

We're excited to announce that the Heart of Northside cookbook is now available at Morsel & Nosh at 4183 Hamilton Ave.!

Almost a year in the making, this cookbook is a true labor of love that comes straight from the community, providing a variety of simple, heart-healthy recipes made with wholesome ingredients that come from grocery stores located right in Northside, including Morsel & Nosh!

The recipes are inspired by the Mediterranean diet, which is the only diet out there with clinical trials to back up its claims! This is a diet (really, a comprehensive set of principles) that, as a cardiologist, I’ve recommended to my patients.

How perfect to share a shelf with the one and only Nutrigirl and her whimsical notecards!

Please purchase your copy and let us know what you think of the recipes. And make sure you pick up some tastiness at Morsel & Nosh, which is a great store for culinary ingredients AND soups and sandwiches!

Enjoy your long weekend, neighbors!

07/23/2026

This custom wallpaper was a fun project for Heyday, a burger joint in historic East Walnut Hills!

Heyday is located at 1527 Madison Rd., in a building that was once home to an advertising agency and production company founded by Frederic W. Ziv, the famous producer considered to be the “father of syndicated television.” This new custom wallpaper, designed by Maya Drozdz of Your Friends & Neighbors, shines a light on this little-known bit of history!

Ziv opened his own advertising agency, the Frederic W. Ziv Company, in 1930, focusing on radio rather than print advertising because there was less competition in radio. He developed the slogan, “The Freshest Thing in Town,” for Rubel’s Bakery. As part of the campaign, Ziv developed a 15-minute, five day a week radio show based on the cartoon character “Freshie.” He marketed the show to multiple bakeries outside of Cincinnati, marking the beginning of radio syndication.

Ziv Television Productions was founded in 1949, producing nationally syndicated TV shows like The Cisco Kid, Highway Patrol, Bat Masterson and Sea Hunt. He hired young actors for his many shows: Clint Eastwood, Mary Tyler Moore, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford and James Garner, to name a few.

By the 1950s, the company was the nation’s largest privately owned TV film firm, with nearly 2,000 employees. Ziv sold his company to Universal Artists in the early 1960s and began teaching broadcasting at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music - CCM in 1968. He passed away in 2001 at age 96.

Keith Pandolfi of the Enquirer - Cincinnati and Kentucky recently named Heyday's House Burger one of the 10 best burgers served by Cincinnati area restaurants. Have you tried it yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

07/18/2026

Thanks to Building Value for highlighting my kitchen remodel! The general aesthetic direction was a Plain English Design-style kitchen that looks like it may have always been in this corner of the loft, executed on a relatively shoestring budget using only high-quality materials.

06/25/2026

Proud to have worked on this Northside-centric cookbook. Please head to www.heartofnorthside.org/cookbook to order your copy!

Have you ordered your copy of the Heart of Northside cookbook yet?

Please head to heartofnorthside.org/cookbook to place your order!

Almost a year in the making, this is a true labor of love that comes straight from the community, providing a variety of simple, heart-healthy recipes made with wholesome ingredients that come from area grocery stores, including Lierer's Market, Morsel & Nosh, Darou Salam Halal Market, Francis International Market, and Dean's Mediterranean Imports' new Northside location!

The book also references the offerings at the Northside Farmers Market, Healthy Harvest Mobile Market and the Freedom Tree Edible Forest Garden, a grove of edible fruit trees along the Mill Creek Greenway Trail that honors the freedom seekers who crossed the creek on their way to points north.

The recipes are inspired by the Mediterranean diet, which is the only diet out there with clinical trials to back up its claims! This is a diet (really, a comprehensive set of principles) that, as a cardiologist, I’ve recommended to my patients.

Occupational Therapy students at Xavier University researched local businesses and ingredients, and developed the initial recipes, chef Aden from Have a Hankering tested and refined them, and friends and family performed the taste tests.

Maya Drozdz from Your Friends & Neighbors photographed everything and designed the book, with supplemental photos by Josh from Haven Photo (and also yours truly!).

06/22/2026

I had the honor of designing the first wedding that took place at the Heart of Northside. Special thanks to Alison Ford Photography for documenting this happy day!

04/02/2026

Welcome to our bathroom! What was done and why is kind of convoluted, and hopefully the photos can do much of the talking.

Aside from undoing some water damage and adding storage, this room needed a serious dose of personality. Bathrooms are hard-working spaces, but they don’t need to be joyless!

The quirks start at the 15-inch threshold that’s stained turquoise with SamaN, and then the Forbo Flooring Systems linoleum checkerboard takes over. I’m obsessed with so many details in this space, but this whole flooring situation is truly my favorite.

The ceiling is 14 feet high, and the walls are a combination of brick and 8-foot tall drywall. The shower enclosure is now the height of the drywall, and the shower head and storage niche are higher than normal because Mr. Vicious is 6’4”.

The shower has 3 types of tiles in a little stripe motif. This was a bigger pain to install than I’d imagined it would be, but it looks amazing!

The shower curtain is actually a pair of 8-foot tall cotton panels from Spoonflower, designed by Mercedes Cortés Cortés [scale and colorway customized for me]. We’re using a small wool rug as a bathmat.

The formerly useless bumpout now houses the litterbox, with napkins as curtains, plus a butcherblock counter that was left over from our kitchen remodel, stained to match the vanity.

The chrome shower system by hansgrohe set the tone for the space, as did The Art of Danial Ryan prints above the toilet. I threaded red throughout after falling in love with the corner china cabinet [perfect toiletry storage, BTW].

The blue tile is from the same line as our kitchen backsplash [both on perpetual clearance at The Tile Shop]. Blue is one of the colors we agree on, and I love the faded, almost denim color.

I’m still looking for the perfect large artwork for the wall opposite the door, which would become the de facto focal point. I also want to zhuzh up the door and possibly the frame, maybe to match the boldness of the threshold.

Contractor: Lumi Home

Happy to answer any questions!

03/06/2026

Honored to have been part of this almost yearlong cookbook project, which is now finally complete! Order your copy here: heartofnorthside.org/cookbook

02/18/2026

Proud to have photographed and designed this cookbook, available soon!

Here's your (and our!) first look at the Heart of Northside cookbook! Almost a year in the making, this is a true labor of love that comes straight from the community, providing a variety of simple, heart-healthy recipes made with wholesome ingredients that come from area grocery stores, including Lierer's Market, Morsel & Nosh, Darou Salam Halal Market, Francis International Market and, coming soon, Dean's Mediterranean Imports’ Northside location!

The book also references the offerings at the Northside Farmers Market, Healthy Harvest Mobile Market: Northside and the Freedom Tree Edible Forest Garden, a grove of edible fruit trees along the Mill Creek Greenway Trail that honors the freedom seekers who crossed the creek on their way to points north.

The recipes are inspired by the Mediterranean diet, which is the only diet out there with clinical trials to back up its claims! This is a diet (really, a comprehensive set of principles) that, as a cardiologist, I’ve recommended to my patients.

Occupational Therapy students at Xavier University researched local businesses and ingredients, and developed the initial recipes, chef Aden from Have a Hankering tested and refined them, and friends and family performed the taste tests. Maya Drozdz from Your Friends & Neighbors photographed everything and designed the book, with supplemental photos by Josh from Haven Photo (and also yours truly!). Teamwork makes the dream work!

Stay tuned, as the book will be for sale soon. If you pre-ordered your copy, THANK YOU! You'll receive an email shortly about your copy!

02/08/2026

Someone asked me what inspired the tile configuration in our new bathroom, and if I had some visual references. No, not really! I peruse a lot of examples of other designers’ work, but my decisions are always rooted in the space and its users.

In this case, the bathroom’s footprint isn’t tiny but is dwarfed by its 14-foot height. It’s an odd duck of a space, and it’s taken me a few years to get a handle on working with these wonky proportions.

I have an ongoing fascination with patterns that don’t quite repeat, found in the work of designers like Hella Jongerius. I kept looking at the cabana stripe trend [see for some incredible examples] and thinking about stripes as a kind of punctuation, not a repeat.

The first slide shows my final tile selections, and the second slide is our kitchen backsplash. The two lacy field tiles are from the same line [notice the theme of elements repeating but not quite].

You can see some progress shots of the installation by LuMi Home Repairs. It looked rough for a while but came together beautifully when grouted with bright white grout. Even scaredy boy Charles approves!

I’m including some inspiration pics of similarly striped-but-not-quite examples that I’ve come across since our shower tile was completed last summer:

9. Daniel Slowik
10. Waldo Works Studio
11. Young Huh Interiors
12. Taupe Stories
13. Atelier Opale
14. Retrouvius
15. Black Lacquer Design
16. John Martine
17. Another Human Design
18. Jackie Barnes Design
19. Jo leGleud & Scott Maddux
20. Vaughan Design & Development

There’s obviously a lot of variety in these examples, but they all somehow feature stripes. And yet not quite.

The moral of the story, if it needs one, is that you can more or less create your own pattern/non-pattern out of whatever tile you like. In our case, it’s field tile with a tiny tile stripe detail that’s really just for the person taking the shower, because we can all use more moments of delight in our lives.

01/23/2026

2 years ago, I was asked to design the identity and promotional materials for the Clifton Home & Garden Tour. This would be the first time that the long-running home tour would include gardens [and Clifton has some amazing gardens, so the addition made sense].

I started developing the identity before the sites had been finalized by Ioanna Paraskevopoulos - Real Estate Agent and Aaron Weiner and, faced with tremendous architectural variety in the neighborhood, my mark loosely references circa 1900 typography that also loosely fits our current moment.

Clifton is an old Cincinnati neighborhood that has never stagnated, so I didn’t know if the tour would include Queen Anne, Art Moderne, Arts & Crafts, Victorian Gothic, or contemporary homes, or maybe even all of the above.

The identity had to account for any possibilities while rooting itself in the community’s overall history.

In my sketches, you can see that I was looking at vernacular typography, of the sort seen in advertising or storefront signage circa 1900. I also experimented with various dingbats and ornaments because, if there’s an opportunity to inject archaic typography, you should always try to seize it. 😉

The colors visually reference the garden aspect of the event. They look like May in Cincinnati! They look like an event to which you’d want to bring your mother on Mother’s Day, and I know that a lot of people did. In fact, almost 900 people attended, and over $30k was raised for the post-pandemic return of Clifton Fest, a beloved community event.

In all, I designed the logo, posters, yard signs, banners, program, social assets, and assorted graphic doodads. Tiny, huge, b/w, color, all of it, which is always fun. I also shot photos of neighborhood homes for the exclusive use of Ioanna Paraskevopoulos - Real Estate Agent in promoting the 2024 event.

Please head to the Clifton Cultural Arts Center for information about the next tour, coming up on Sun 10 May!