Tomorrow is an exciting day for me — designer and Field Notes inventor Aaron Draplin is coming to Fort Wayne to speak about his “cosmic wit and wisdom on design”! This is his only tour stop in Indiana in 2013.

DDC vs FTW: A Night of Graphic Design Straight Talk with Aaron Draplin » 

It all started as Kickstarter campaign, and quickly met its funding goal and eventually, more than doubled it. Fort Wayne, though not a big city (we’re the second-largest city in Indiana, with just under a quarter-million people) has a talented, tight knit graphic design community. In fact, two of my best friends who form the creative partnership pye,brown are the main sponsors of this event.

As a pledger, I’m getting a super-cool limited edition poster designed by a friend of mine Josh Tuck of Rustbelt Co (you may remember him from his review of Gridbooks), as well as a ticket to the event.

And what an event! According to the event page:

Let’s just say that Draplin is a colorful speaker whose passion for design and the work ethic of the American Midwest and its history shows though in abundance. Once you hear him speak, you will leave the premises fired up to create and make cool things.

I’m definitely going to bring some of my first-edition Field Notes cahiers to get signed, and hopefully — hopefully — there are some DDC branded bullet pencils that will be on sale with the other merch he’ll have.

Why do I think this? Following up my post about Pencil Revolution’s interview with Draplin about bullet pencils, I tweeted him to ask if he ever made them for his prodigious merchandise catalog. This tweet back from Aaron Draplin in September:

And then, as I was reading about XOXO, the big tech fest in Portland that just finished its second year, I found a photoset about it in the Flickr feed of Glenn Fleishman, owner of The Magazine. Draplin was there, and Glenn took a picture of the merch table he set up:

Wait, what’s that? There, in the mid-left of the photo:

Could that be? Bullet pencils?

No. It’s too thick and blunt-ended. After scouring the Merch section of the website, I realized it’s a Toothpick Canister.

As you know, I’ve been kinda obsessed with bullet pencils for a while. I’m definitely going to snag some of these puppies if he has them.

In any case: Be jealous, internet, because I’m going to meet The Man tomorrow!