New York Public Library to hold 500-person scavenger hunt in honor of 100th anniversary

via mybug 

“It's every book worm’s dream—a night at the New York Public Library. For the first time ever, the library said Thursday it will let select members of the public roam its main branch for a special after-hours event.

On May 20 the 42nd St. location will host a giant, modernized scavenger hunt to help commemorate the library's 100th birthday. ‘Find the Future: The Game’ will allow 500 contestants, split into teams of eight, to search for historic objects within the library, according to the library officials. The groups will use smart phones to get clues, leading them to items like a draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jack Kerouac’s glasses or Charles Dickens’ letter opener, fashioned out of his dead cat Bob’s amputated arm.”

Read the rest here, visit the New York Public Library site here; registration to participate starts at 9 a.m. today.

Visibility: Spotty

via shorpy

“Washington, D.C., circa 1911. ‘Flights and test of Rex Smith biplane flown by Antony Jannus. The plane with Rufus R. Bermann, wireless operator, and Fred Aubert.’ Whose somewhat pixilated appearance can be attributed to mold on the emulsion. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative.”

View full size here. I love the almost surreal effect that the mold has created — it reminds me of early transporting in Start Trek.  

How to Steal Like an Artist and 9 Other Things that Nobody Told Me

1 + 1 = 3

via HOW

“I love it when creative people explain how their creativity works. Artist and writer Austin Kleon gave a presentation called How to Steal Like an Artist and 9 Other Things that Nobody Told Me yesterday at Broome Community College in Binghamton, New York, and was kind enough to share the slides.”

See the presentation here.

“What is a Typeface?” Alex

via speak up

“On Wednesday, November 7th, 2007, the show Jeopardy presented its 5,328th show, the quarterfinal of the Tournament of Champions. In the Double Jeopardy! Round, the three contestants were faced with the following category: Knowledge of Fonts. . . ”

See the answers and questions, here.

Kurt Weidemann Passes Away At Age 87

via the font shop

“. . . During a discussion at Swiss Mediaforum in 2010 [Kurt Weidemann] literally said: ‘There are ten, maybe fifteen very good typefaces, with which one can at least make do. There are 30,000 on the market, of which 29,990 can sink in the Pacific Ocean without causing any cultural damage.’ ”

Read the entire post here.

Cryptanalysis: Help Solve an Open Murder Case

via Federal Bureau of Investigation

“On June 30, 1999, sheriff’s officers in St. Louis, Missouri discovered the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick. He had been murdered and dumped in a field. The only clues regarding the homicide were two encrypted notes found in the victim’s pants pockets.  Despite extensive work by our Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU), as well as help from the American Cryptogram Association, the meanings of those two coded notes remain a mystery to this day, and Ricky McCormick’s murderer has yet to face justice. “We are really good at what we do,” said CRRU chief Dan Olson, “but we could use some help with this one.” In fact, Ricky McCormick’s encrypted notes are one of CRRU’s top unsolved cases. “Breaking the code,” said Olson, “could reveal the victim’s whereabouts before his death and could lead to the solution of a homicide. Not every cipher we get arrives at our door under those circumstances.”

Read the rest, and see the other note here. More on the story from the NYTimes here, and a follow-up on potential leads here.

Happy Holi!

Holi Fingers by Shiva’s Smile

via imprint: Wunderkammer of Color: April 2011 Edition

“Happy Holi! Imprint blows you a floating dust-choked kiss as the Hindu Festival of Colors draws to a close. . . ”


Read the rest here.

Make a Custom Brush for your Watermark

via thephotoletariat
“Like many necessary tasks, uploading your photos to your blog can be tedious: after a while, all that resizing, tagging, and watermarking gets old. But there are lots of ways to make this process more efficient, and one of my favorites involves making your watermark a custom brush. Custom brushes give you more flexibility (color, size, placement, etc.), and you can watermark your images in a fraction of a second.”

Read the rest here.

Raw Color: Printing with Vegetable Ink

Inkjet print made with (C) Red Cabbage,
(M) Beetroot and (Y) Pumpkin.

via colourlovers
“The work of Daniera ter Haar & Christoph Brach, who have become better known by the name of one of their projects, Raw Color, is highly prismatic, covering the spectrum between art, design, photography and color research by mixing the powerful colors of vegetables, innovative color harvesting processes, with unique applications for print and textiles. The Eindhoven, Netherlands based team uses color as the connection between their different practices posing questions like ‘what is the nature of a color and what is the connection to its physical state.’”
Read and see more of this work here.

“If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far...

via quotevadis

“If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far go together.”

— African proverb

Gas Ghosting

via  thegraphicgroup

“Gas ghosting, also known as gloss ghosting, is the transfer of a printed image from the front of one sheet to the back of another. The transfer is caused by a chemical reaction when vapors from ink drying on one side of the press sheet interacts chemically with dry ink or paper coating on the other side of the sheet. Gas ghosting can also result when the ink drying on the second side is accelerated or retarded by fumes given off by ink on the first side. The problem is typically solved by changing the chemical properties of one of the variables in the process.”

I recently experienced this ghosting at work. Here are the specs:
Final size 8"x8" booklet cover
Printed two out
Sheet size 20"x28"
100# Productolith Dull Cover
Work and Turn
PMS 877 [Silver], PMS 295 [Dark Blue], flood dull varnish
Printed on Heidelberg SORZ
Wet trapped

The photo shows the gas ghosting of the lion shrine statue [it appears almost like a negative on the solid dark blue area]. It showed up predominantly only one side of the printed sheet. Next year, we plan on printing PMS 877 silver first, let it dry a few days, then come back with PMS 295 [dry trapping]; after that dries, run the varnish. This would be a very cool technique to do on purpose; I wonder if anyone has created a gas ghost intentionally on a printed piece?

More on ghosting can be found on Gordon Pritchard’s blog, “Quality in Print,” here and here.

A+B=C [Atoms+Bits=the neue Craft]

via Adobe Museum of Digital Media

“John Maeda, one of Esquire’s 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century, examines some of the history that connects the worlds of analog creativity and digital creativity. Set in the museum’s freshly constructed auditorium, the lecture is brought to life with interactive projections, animated infographics, video clips, and mini documentaries of various hands-based Rhode Island School of Design workshops, such as glassblowing and letterpress.”

Watch his talk, here.

Obsolete Occupations: 7 Short Films

spotted by a friend in NYC

“Buckminster Fuller famously said, ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’ And the new models of the digital age have been making increasingly more old-timey crafts obsolete. But there seems to be something remarkably poetic about these dying professions. Over the past few months, we been noticing– and noting — a number of beautifully shot microdocumentaries romanticizing this impending obsolescence. Today, we’ve curated seven of our favorites. . . ”

Read about and watch the seven short films, here.

Design Council UK Explains What Graphic Designers Do

via @Issue Journal of Business & Design

“Probably more people know what a microbiologist does than what graphic designers do. Undoubtedly your aunt and grandma – and possibly even your mother – don’t have a clue. They’ll look at a printed piece and praise the photography, the illustrations, the writing and sometimes even the feel of the paper, but they aren’t quite sure what role the designer played in this. That’s why we are grateful to the Design Council UK for producing a video that succinctly explains what graphic design is and what graphic designers do. We recommend that you forward it to every member of your family especially just before a holiday gathering, and perhaps selectively to a few clients.”

Watch it here.

Little Giants

via the daily heller

Miniature famous people made of vinyl in the Little Giants collection by Alphine Northcote are produced by the Jailbreak Collective.

See them all here. 

Weingut Ampersand

via creativepro

“While the word ’Weingut’ may not sound particularly lyrical to the ears of English speakers, the Weingut font family is certainly pleasing to the eyes. This decorative display typeface, created by Georg Herold-Wildfellner, blooms with delicate buds, leaves, and tendrils.”

“Weingut Script Flourish is a decorative display font with high contrasts, perfectly drawn to the tiniest details. The font is trimmed to fairly large font sizes and is highly suitable for chapter titles or book jackets as well as Headlines, Invitations and wine labels :), although also impressing with an astounding legibility in small typesettings. Inspired by the hand drawn Blätterschrift from the 19th century Mettenleiter’s Schriftenmagazin, its basic structure is related to the English Script. The creative process started in summer 2009 and after 600 hours of work, over a 2 year period, Weingut now unfolds to reveal all its charms.”

Read more about it here.

Vote for My Wife's Video . . .

My wife writes, “A couple weeks ago, the authors of the book Run Like a Mother boldly asked for short videos about how we run like mothers. A handful of us rallied: big thanks to all you cinematographers out there. There are eight videos on their site — each less than two minutes each. Check them out, then vote on your favorite at the bottom. The top three vote receivers win either a new badass mother runner hats or visor.” She’d really like to win a hat or a visor to keep her hair out of her face while running!

Her’s is #3
“Now I'm a Diva!”

Vote early, vote often!

Trompe L’oeil: Crows in the Hawthorn

Crows in the Hawthorn III

via John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries, 03.20.11

Ron Isaacs painted Trompe L’oeil constructions

See his Crows in the Hawthorn V
acrylic on birch plywood construction
21 1/2” x 19 1/4” x 5 1/4”


Read an interview with Isaacs here.

Paste Shortcut Illustration

via cmybacon

A wonderful little illustration by Brandon Ortwein.

Image of the Day: Centre County Cemetery

More ampersands found that day, here.