Image of the Day: Angry Bunny Ornament

Measuring in at just .5" tall, this little printers ornament has a curious expression.

Camera Lingo Necklaces

via photojojo

“Masons have secret handshakes, conspiracy theorists have secret symbols. Photographers have their own secret code words; lingo that only serious snappers recognize. Show you're in the know by wearing the symbols of the craft! There are 4 symbols to choose from: JPEG, the no-flash icon, NEF, or CR2 (Nikon and Canon's respective RAW file format names).”

Find out more here.

Business Cards: Page XIX

[Top Row] Why is it “Tame -Ur-Bird” and not “Tame-Your-Bird”? The next card for mobile dog grooming is just so typical of desktop publishing with the two different styles of clip-art images. Equi-Knead—I never heard of equine sports massage—especially in Lewistown of all places—but I can see its value.

[Middle Row] Why would anyone name their company “S.N.A.T.C.H.”? The next card for “Rare Plant Research” is just an interesting field of study and makes me smile. Dog Waste Removal—a business that can only exist in the age of owners too busy and/or lazy to clean up after their pets.

[Bottom Row] Why would a computer consultant name their business “Medusa Systems”? I’d hate to see the screensaver they install on your PC — fears of turning to stone looking at it as it kicks in! The Curl Up Hotel, well the name is just simple and homey. The next card—what does it mean? Cheap nephew-art lips and a strawberry—Is it trying to be erotic? Why are the lips eating the strawberry stem first? This is for a fishing guide’s business card?

The Beauty of Maps: A Documentary

via swissmiss
The Beauty of Maps is a 4 part BBC series that was released almost a year ago. The documentary takes us through the staggering four million map collection of the British Library in London.


Discover more here.

nOtto’s Marcellus Shale Ale Label

 Label design . . . 

. . . final version applied to the bottle.

Pi & Piem

Letterpress poster by Amanda White

via green chair press

“For National Poetry Month I’ve been noticing where poetry showed up in every day life. Recently in the New Yorker, Calvin Trillin wrote about pi day and mentioned:

There is a form of poetry known as a piem, in which pi’s digits are represented by the number of letters in each word. The best-known piem renders the first fifteen digits of pi as “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics.”


Read the rest here.

Gender Stereotypes in the Language of Toy Ads

via boingboing

Transcribed boys’ and girls’ toy commercials were made into word-clouds. The difference is stark and immediately visible.

Read more about the project here.

Newspaper Blackout Poems

via felt and wire

“Austin Kleon has been creating newspaper blackout poems since 2005, shortly after finishing his undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University in Ohio. He was facing writer’s block, when he got the idea to make a blank canvas out of a newspaper. In an interview with PBS News Hour, Kleon says ‘I looked over at the recycle bin next to my desk and thought, “I don’t have any words, and right over there are millions of them.’”

Asked what he does now when he faces writer’s block, he says, “When I’m blocked, I don’t try to force it. I go do something else. I go for walks. Do dishes. Play the guitar. Watch a movie. Read a book. Doodle. Browse Twitter. As long as you show up every day, you can lose a day and still get work done.”

Though the words in the newspaper may not be his originally, the poems are always a reflection of Kleon. He doesn’t just summarize the initial article in a poem. Rather, he focuses on one or two words that really call out to him, and then he creates new meanings from a few already-existing words or letters.”


See more of his work here.

Image of the Day: Goss Fine Candies

Goss’ Peanut Butter Easter Eggs were certainly a part of our lives in the 1960s. Now some of our colored pencils are stored in this box.

The rabbit has some crazy ‘candy buzz’ reflections in its eyes! [Click on the image to see for yourself.]  I also love that every phrase has its own font.

Image of the Day: Pine Swamp Road

Inking Ampersands

For my birthday, my son and daughter-in-law gave me some metal and wood letterpress ampersands to add to my collection.  A few weeks later the head pressman at work [Ron] was cleaning out the area where we store leftover ink used on past printings.  I asked if I could have one of the containers in order to ink up my collection, and Ron’s eyes lit up when he saw the ampersands.

A little ink goes a long way. You can see some of the test prints I made of each individual ampersand.

I arranged the ampersands in a ‘cloud’ for printing, inked them up, then used a brayer  to get smooth impression.

Holding the group as I inked up.

Pantone 659; a pretty sweet color.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0, ‘Sleep’

“The 2011 Virtual Choir video features 2052 performances of 'Sleep' from 1752 singers in 58 countries, individually recorded and uploaded to YouTube between September 2010 and January 2011.”


Watch and listen the entire video here.

Wood Type of the Month: De Vinne

via International Printing Museum

Read this month’s wood-type column to learn what typeface was named not for the designer but for the man who foresaw the need for this typeface style.

Mercator: An Italic Hand

via letterology

A 1540 monograph of Gerardus Mercator on the lettering of maps in 16th C Netherlands and his treatise on the italic hand. One of only 3 known copies in existence. Mercator (1512-1594), a Flemish mapmaker is best known for the Mercator projection world map named after him.

See more images here.

Ampersand Punch

I have a couple of metal ampersand punches. They are identical to each other, but I received them years apart. Terri got inspired and used one on her belt. 

Image of the Day: Mad Mex

Word of the Day: Bumf

via A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

MEANING: Noun: Unwanted or uninteresting printed matter such as governmental forms, legal documents, junk mail, promotional pamphlets, etc.

ETYMOLOGY: Short for bum fodder, slang for toilet paper. Earliest documented use: 1889.

“A mortgage loan can generate 200 pages of bumf, most of it so boring and repetitious that no one has the energy or the time to read it all.”—John Gilmour; Lenders Use The Hoover Principle; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Jan 20, 2001.

Image of the Day: Periodic Table of Typefaces

I found some wall space at work to hang the recent gift of The Periodic Table of Typefaces from my in-laws. 

4CP | Four Color Process adventures deep inside the comic book

via letterology


[From the 4CP blog] “. . . Lately, I've been trying to master the relationship between dot patterns and the finite color value options of vintage four-color process. Typically there were only three basic values for cyan, magenta, and yellow: 100%, 50%, and 25%, which were combined to create the optical illusion of 45-65 colors. (70% was also used sometimes.) These values account for the way a constituent color may appear as large or small dots or as what looks like a solid color with dots knocked out of it.

When you blow up process printing, you eliminate nearly all of the intended colors. There is no illusion of anything anymore, and no human intention behind what you’re seeing. It’s just the rudimentary building blocks of an inexpensive mechanical printing process, thrown into accidental relationships at the microscopic level.”


Discover more images here.

Earworm of the Day: The Only Living Boy in New York

The Only Living Boy in New York written by Paul Simon was recorded on November 15, 1969 as part of the fifth and final studio album by Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Listen to it here.