The Gutter Pencil

via Pippa’s Cabinet
Bridget Watson Payne writes, “When I was in high school I carried my pens and pencils loose in the small front zipper compartment of my jansport backpack. The pencils were for math class, but at sixteen they still carried an embarrassing aura of childhood with them, and so I made it a point to pay them as little mind as possible. As a result what I had were half a dozen pencil stubs--each maybe two inches long, eraser worn down to nothing, heavily chewed on (because, yeah, no, gnawing on your pencil isn’t infantile at all). My best friend Fern always teased me about them, referring to them as my ‘gutter pencils’ (the implication being, I guess, that they looked like I found them in the gutter)...”
Read the rest here. I used to have several very short, very chewed, yellow #2 Ticonderoga pencils in school; now I know that they had a proper name!

Yoko Ono: Hiroshima Day

via boingboing
“Artist and peace activist Yoko Ono (78), wife of the late John Lennon, was recently honored with the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize. The award honors artists whose work has contributed to peace. To commemorate this, The Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting ‘The Road of Hope: Yoko Ono 2011,’ an exhibit honoring the ‘spirit of Hiroshima that yearns for permanent world peace and prosperity for all humanity.’ The show is on display through October 16, 2011. It features new works by Yoko Ono inspired by the survival of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and by the disasters that struck Japan in March, 2011, ‘with hope for the future.’”
Read the rest here, which includes an interview with Yoko Ono; and her blog post “On Hiroshima Day August 6th 2011” here.

Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types

via a two-winged fairy
“This typographical trip will wow design fans... Innovations arrive several to a page, encouraging readers to muse on the power of type and all that letters and words can imply or insinuate.”
Discover more in this book here.  Another fun typography-inspired book by Sharon Werner is  “Bugs by the Numbers,” which can be found here.

Image of the Day: Passion Fruit Vines

In the backyard of my in-laws in Lewistown.

1971: Nike Swoosh

via imprint
“June 1971 is the date the Nike Swoosh was launched. Designed by Carolyn Davidson for $35. The origin of the mark goes like this: Phil Knight, the co-founder of Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) that evolved into Nike, wanted to differentiate BRS’s custom product from the ones they were importing from Onituska in Japan: ‘…so Knight turned to a graphic design student he met at Portland State University two years earlier.’ One day in 1969, the student, Carolyn Davidson, was approached by Knight and offered $2 per hour ‘to make charts and graphics’ for his business. For the next two years Davidson managed the design work on BRS. ‘Then one day Phil asked me if I wanted to work on a shoe stripe,’ Davidson recalled. The only advice she received was to ‘Make the stripe supportive of the shoe.’ Davidson came up with half a dozen options. None of the options ‘captivated anyone" so it came down to "which was the least awful...’ ”
Read the rest here.