Graphic Novel With Thought Bubbles Visible Only Under UV

via make
“Printed with a third ink — invisible without a UV light source — the comic book ‘SVK’ has hidden layers which are only revealed with a UV light source…”
Read a bit more about it here. I haven’t seen this graphic novel, but I do like this interesting use of printing and viewing technology.

Wood Type of the Month: Antique Tuscan

via International Printing Museum
“Read this month’s wood-type of the month here to learn what 1800s wood-type font was used recently for the title poster for a movie about a country music singer...”

Images from Old Books

via Brain Pickings

Detail of the title page from
De Studio Literarum (1536)

The site ‘From Old Books’ features over 3,100 high-resolution free images scanned from more than 180 different old or rare books, with extracts, by Liam Quin.
Visit the site here.

Business Cards of the Day

I really like that the Digimarc card utilizes their our technology of using an embedded imperceptible digital watermark. Learn more about Digimarc here.

AA Taxi — “[From one side of a fictional phone conversation] We need to keep the name and web address ABOVE the bricks in the stadium photo... no, no, no, you cannot crop the taxi’s wheels. I do not care about the photo’s proportions! Absolutely not,, we cannot reshoot the image so that it works, no one cares about proportions. Look, I do this all the time in Word — just stretch the image so that it fits the card, it’s easy! No one will notice that now the Joe Paterno statue looks like he is barely 5 fee tall and weights over 250 pounds or that our cab looks like a flattened low-rider. Perfect! Print ’em. Wait, you are charging me for these changes? But it is MY card...” Ah, taxi stories. They generally last just about two weeks and then fade away.

Every time I look at The Enchanted Kitchen card, I think of Bewitched. Which led me to this site of Mischa Ho’s font Witched. Even though it isn’t Mischa’s font, it still reminds me of it.

Hotel Manor was a welcome break at the end of a 26 mile bike ride. If you are up near Slate Run, be sure to stop by— they have a nice menu and a perfect location overlooking Slate Run and the rail trail. Their paw-print HM logo is just a bit too forced for my liking though.

Tattly: Temporary tattoo store

This one makes me smile — 5K1 N !!!

via swissmiss
“Tattly, temporary tattoo store for design-minded kids and kids-at-heart, is the brainchild of swissmiss and all of the tattoo designs are created by all-star designers…”
Read more about the designs here and visit Tattly here.

Quoins

Image from Brad Cornelius’s photostream.

via lawsonarchive
“In the past four centuries, very little tight logical change has been seen in the quoin, a simple item of composing room furniture used in preparing type for the press. The word itself, a variant of coin, has been used by printers since the 16th century. It is been discussed by the writers of printing manuals since Moxon’s treatise, Mechanick Exercises, first appeared in England in 1683….”
Read the rest here. Quoins are expandable metal or wooden wedges used by printers to lock up a form within a chase. More images of quoins can be found here and here.

July 12, 1960: Etch a Sketch Goes on Sale

via wired
“The technology behind this children’s toy is both simple and complex. Simple, in that an internal stylus is used, manipulated by turning horizontal and vertical knobs to ‘etch a sketch’ onto a glass window coated with aluminum powder. Complex, because the Etch a Sketch employs a fairly sophisticated pulley system that operates the orthogonal rails that move the stylus around when the knobs are turned…”
Read the rest here, and view a gallery of images here. As a child, I was fascinated by the silver powder inside of Etch-a-Sketchs.

1930s London Zoo Sign Writer

Looks like he painted a mean ampersand!

via buzzfeed
See more photos of Pauline Locke’s grandfather working at the London Zoo in the 1930s, here. He is using a Mahl stick!

AntiMosquito Fumigator App

via swissmiss
“The app claims to keep mosquitos away as long as you keep it running in the background. It emits a high-pitched sound that humans don’t hear but mosquitos do and not appreciate…”
I wonder if this app works!?!

The Johnson Box

Frank Johnson

I didn’t realize that this technique of marketing had a name until I was working on a PowerPoint slide last week.

via wikipedia
“A Johnson Box is a box commonly found at the top of direct mail letters, containing the key message of the letter. The purpose of it is to draw the reader’s attention to this key message first, and hopefully grab their attention, enticing them to read the rest of the letter. The Johnson Box is named after direct marketer Frank Johnson, who is credited as having first used the Johnson Box to improve response to his offers for American Heritage magazine. He does not claim credit for creating the device, claiming to have only popularized it.” Johnson died at the age of 88 on March 6, 2001.
See an example of a letter, believed to be from 1959, that contains a Johnson Box at the top, here. More on Johnson can be found here.

Image of the Day: Mt. Nittany View

People for Bikes

via freezethawcycles
“...We’re all united by a shared passion: bikes. Bikes keep us healthy, carry us from point A to point B, save us from high gas prices, and make our air cleaner and our roads less congested. Bikes fill our lives with adventure and excitement, relaxing our minds and energizing our souls. Peopleforbikes.org is dedicated to channeling that passion to improve the future of bicycling. Our goal is to gather a million names of support, to speak with one, powerful voice—to make bicycling safer, more convenient and appealing for everyone. Simply put, we believe that life is far more enjoyable when it’s experienced on two wheels. We believe that by coming together, we can make our world a better place to ride.”
Find out more here. 

2-Foot Hand-Cut Playing Cards

via cmybacon
“Paper artist Emmanuel Jose is working on a year-long project hand-cutting a 2 foot tall deck of transformation playing cards out of paper, 1 card each week for 52 weeks. When his deck is completed, Emmanuel hopes to get it printed as a regular deck of cards and have a show to display his papercut designs...”
Follow his progress on his Tumblr blog, Ncyclopedia.

Loving Day: Anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia

Mildred and Richard Loving

via the daily heller
“Loving Day is a global movement to create a holiday that celebrates the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. Mr. and Mrs. Loving were a young couple who were arrested for their interracial marriage, which was illegal in Virginia (as well as in most states at some point). The celebration was founded by Ken Tanabe, a designer, animator, and art director that works in motion, identity, print, experience design, and interactive media...”

Read the rest here. Visit the Loving Day site here.

Christopher Jonassen: Worn-out Fryingpans

via tasteologies
Christopher Jonassen’s investigation of worn-out fryingpans reminds me of looking at images of distant planets and other celestial bodies.
See the images here.

1910: Moisant and Mademoiselle Fifi

Another image of John B. Moisant and Mademoiselle Fifi, aviators, ca. 1910

Old English type body sizes

via typoretum
“Prior to 1737, little standardisation existed in the sizes of printing types and typefounders cast types to their own sizes and dimensions. In this year, the Parisian typefounder Pierre Simon Fournier introduced a new system that he derived from dividing two inches of the pre-metric French foot into one hundred and forty-four equal parts. Fournier gave the resulting unit a name – ‘points’ – and they measured 0.137 of the English inch, which is close to the present point system…”
Read the rest here. I love that the term Nonpareil is equivalent to 6 points.

Chop vs. Rubber Stamp

via printeresting
“Near the beautiful Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing, one might wander past this public sculpture resembling a enormous traditional Chinese chop. It looks as if a giant person just stamped her seal onto the sidewalk.

Not to be outdone by anyone, Cleveland, OH, is quick to point out that they own the largest rubber stamp. Although to my knowledge it has never used on a sidewalk or paper, this Claes Oldenburg sculpture does appear to be bigger…”
Original post here.
http://www.printeresting.org/2011/07/05/dispatches-from-china-really-big-chop

Linotype: The Film Interview Excerpts

via letterology
In honor of the 125th anniversary of the Linotype (July 3rd, 1886) the producers of Linotype: The Film have released a few teaser excerpts of interview footage.
Read the rest and watch a teaser here, and find more videos here.

Chili Peppers and Scoville Units

Trinidad Scorpion Butch T

via make
“…The Ghost pepper Bhut Jolokia (“bhut” means ghost in Hindi) has fallen from the top. Earlier this year, Australian pepper grower Marcel de Wit unveiled a super pepper, called the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, which tested hotter. Just two weeks ago came news reports that a Taiwanese farmer, Yeh Wu Shun, claimed his new cultivar is even hotter, scoring 1.5 million units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness. (By comparison, a really hot jalapeno scores around 8,000 units.)”
Read the entire post here.