Silk

via How About Orange
Silk is a site where you create artwork that resembles silk blowing in the breeze. Just click your mouse and drag . . .

Image of the Day: Gracie’s Corner

trueindigo captured this image.
More ampersands from the Upper East Side can be found here.

Image of the Day: Gloom

Thanks to trueindigo for capturing this image

Images of the Day: Green Men

Thanks to trueindigoo for capturing these images

Ampersand Cookie Cutter

via felt & wire
Alyson Kuhn writes on her blog, “I have always been fond of ampersands & have even gotten to write about them on occasion, including here. Today I’m pleased to introduce my new cookie cutter. Now I can have my ampersand & eat it, too!…”
The rest of her post, including Amper Sans Black and her thoughts on cheese & hampersandwiches, visit here.

Image of the Day: Psychic

Thanks to trueindigo for capturing this for me.

Tractor Supply Co. Receipt

This is real.

Image of the Day: Underwood Ampersand

Spotted in an antique store near Belleville, PA.
A few other examples can be found here.

Cover: Japanese Fairy Tales

via letterology

Another one of the old cover scans found here.

Cover: Training in Commercial Art

via letterology
Just one of the old cover scans found here.
My 1982 degree from the Art Institute in Pittsburgh is in Visual Communication, and I am fairly certain that initially my resume from that time had me searching for jobs as a commercial artist. It was many years later that I took on the title of graphic designer.

Image of the Day: Chili Peppers

Afternoon at my in-laws in Lewistown

Vegan Ipsum

Both Vegan Ipsum and Veggie Ipsum are simple placeholder text generators.

A bit of history of Lorem Ipsum found on the Straight Dope:
“... Lorem ipsum was part of a passage from Cicero, specifically De finibus bonorum et malorum, a treatise on the theory of ethics written in 45 BC. The original reads, “Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit . . .” (“There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain …”).

McClintock recalled having seen lorem ipsum in a book of early metal type samples, which commonly used extracts from the classics. “What I find remarkable,” he told Before & After, “is that this text has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since some printer in the 1500s took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged...”

Lewis Hine: Photographer, Activist, Character

An expert linotyper in a
Southern publishing house.

via nytimes
Read this post by James Esztrin on the role of the photograph in affecting social change.

Image of the Day: Swallowtail Beach

Observed on the beach in Poe Valley State Park

Image of the Day: Fuse Box Rust

Found in Poe Valley near some old camps.

Beach Poetry

via we love typography
See the original image on Anoukrandag’s Flickr Site. I wonder what it says...

Wayzgoose

via wikipedia
“A wayzgoose was at one time an entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen each year on or about St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August). It marked the traditional end of summer and the start of the season of working by candlelight. Later, the word came to refer to an annual outing and dinner for the staff of a printing works or the printers on a newspaper...”

I seem to forget about this holiday every year, but will try to get an early start for 2012.

Wayzgoose for Coventry printers at Stonebridge, c. 1907.

Images of the Day: Poe Valley Moss

With my camera nestled in some great moss behind the concession stand 

at Poe Valley State Park, I’m not sure which of these I like better.

Typographic Transit Maps

via a two winged fairy
“TRNSPRTNATION” is a series of typographic transit maps by Fadeout Design. The transit lines are made up of strings of text that list the stations of the transit system. Prints are available for sale on the website of Boston, Chicago, London, NYC, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Visit the site here.

Bookbinding: Everything you ever needed to know

via felt and wire
Craft Stew has more than 115 bookbinding projects, tips and tutorials that include stitching methods, glue methods, “unusual” methods, big books, little journals, and even how to bind a book by recycling an old book.
Visit Craft Stew here.

Seneca Lodge Postcard

One of our favorite vacation spots. 

I love this hand-tinted image of the main building and surrounding cottages.

Erasable e-papers

via printeresting
“Geek.com profiles a new erasable e-paper, which costs about two bucks for a single A4 sheet, but is good for 260 uses.”
Read more here.

Edison’s Mimeograph

via letterology
“Thomas Edison’s Mimeograph machine was licensed by A.B. Dick who invented the Mimeograph stencil in 1884. With Edison’s support the two of them began advertising in 1888 and sold the machines for $12 to $30 depending upon the size…”
Read more here.

Trust Your Soul

via the art of hand lettering

Image of the Day: The Printers Sink

Sink in our offset area splattered with Gojo cleaner
used to wash off the offset inks 

Image of the Day: Mouseover Hand

via a two-winged fairy and a raven who were searching for sparkly objects
When a cursor hovers over a hyperlink, a mouseover event changes the cursor into a hand with an outstretched index finger. This hand icon now graces my keychain. An online search revealed links to artist Susan Kare’s original Mac icons limited edition prints.

Raven & Crow

From Raven & Crow’s blog: “Since they started scavenging from all those dead people during the Black Plague, crows and ravens have gotten some pretty harsh associations slapped on them. Harbingers of death, bringers of doom, jerky black birds, etc. Which is why, to this day, groups of crows are known as murders. Likewise, a group of ravens is called an unkindness. At our design company, raven + crow studio, we're proud to say that we make a point to work with companies and non-profits who are out to make the world a better place.”
Their blog is dedicated to all things kind in the realms that fascinate them: Design, music, culture, fashion, and, of course, vegan food. Visit Raven and Crow’s blog here, and their design studio here.

Image of the Day: Rooftop Sunset 2

Color Swatch Door

via a two-winged fairy, Design Sponge, and Gizmodo
Architects are designers, too, and Armin Blasbichler’s home in South Tyrol is a great example. The floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows are designed as Pantone-like swatches that reflect the colors of the landscape outside.
See more here.

The Subjectivity of Color Perception

via brain pickings
“How do ‘normal’ people see ‘normal’ color? Turns out, the answer isn’t as black and white. From the fine folks behind BBC’s excellent Horizon series — who have also pondered the nature of reality, the age-old tension between science and religion, how music works, what time is, and how money came to dominate the world — comes Do You See What I See, a fascinating look at the subjectivity and divergence of how we each see the world and the surprising power colors can have on our mood, cognition, emotion, and entire lives…”
Read the rest here.

Image of the Day: Rooftop Sunset

Emerald Green or Paris Green, the Deadly Regency Pigment

via jane austin's world
“Once upon a time green paint literally killed people. In 1814 in Schweinfurt, Germany, two men named Russ and Sattler tried to improve on Scheele’s green, a paint made with copper arsenite. The result was a highly toxic pigment called emerald green. Made with arsenic and verdigris, the bright green color became an instant favorite with painters, cloth makers, wall paper designers, and dyers…”
Read the rest here.

Deconstructing the Color Wheel

via neatorama
The colors we use today have fascinating origins based in treachery, lust, and mythology. Find out more as Mental Floss (via Neatorama) deconstructs the color wheel. Next time you use green, remember that pigment maker Carl Wilhem Scheele died of arsenic poisoning.
Read the rest here.

Images of the Day: Trompe l'oeil

A& A showed us this mural at the corner of 83rd and York

Note the sewing machine  in “the window”

Stairs flanked by friendly creatures.

You’ve Got a Friend T-Shirt

via jamestaylor

I love the retro-feel design of the “You’ve Got a Friend T-Shirt” supporting James Taylor’s recent tour.

Images of the Day: Green Man

Thsnks to trueindigo for capturing these images!

Wallpapered Dumpsters

via Pippa's Cabinet
Take a look at artist Christine Finley's wallpapered dumpsters. “Wallpapered Dumpsters transform environmental activism into unexpected beauty. This project is an inquiry into urban waste, free art, and notions of femininity, beauty and domesticity. Inspired by free and accessible art the artist states, ‘If we see dumpsters as works of art, we have raised consciousness...’
Read the rest here. Visit the Wallpapered Dumpster site here.

Image of the Day: Clothing Tag

The three-legged crow on a clothing tag.
Note the repeating background pattern is also the crow.

Pantone 100 Postcards

via Pippa's Cabinet
“Legendary color authority PANTONE and Bridget Watson Payne have teamed up to create this box of 100 postcards. Every card is a different brilliant PANTONE color. And the postcard box is also being published in Spanish, French, and German…”
Read the rest here.

Business Cards of the Day

South Side Tattoo and Body Piercing: Sometime, no matter how much you like a script font, you just shouldn’t use it.

Apple: Clean, classy, and a silver foil Apple logo. It just works. I have an older card from the early 80s at work that I’ll have to post again [lost when I deleted my old blog] as a comparison.

Houck & Gingrich: Simple, clean, Lewistown typesetting. At least it is all in the same font, though the letter spacing is a bit tight for all caps.

Pantone VISA®

Unbelievable.

Bodega Cats

via internets celebrities
For a smile, watch Bodega Cats by Internets Celebrities.

And while you have a few minutes to spare, also watch A Fare Slice? “In 1980, New Yorker Eric Bram noticed that for twenty years the price of a subway token had tended to match the price of a slice of pizza. Thirty years later, his hypothesis still holds true.”
Bodega Cats can be seen here; A Fare Slice? can be seen here.