Image of the Day: Officina Typographica Constellation

My homage to Officina Typographica also known as Atelier Typographique.

Image of the Twilight: Crows Off to Roost

When I left work a few days ago, a steady river of crows flew overhead from the Penn State Aboretum / Toftrees wooded area toward main campus. The birds just kept coming, and I believe that there were hundreds if not close to one thousand crows on their way to roost. I pulled out my camera, and took a shot with an extended exposure. When I opened it up in Photoshop later in the evening, I was amazed to see how they looked like flying pieces of paper. With a few adjustments to color and contrast, the results are above.

Ganesh: A Holy Holiday Leaves a Mess

via npr
“Ganesh is a Hindu festival that takes place at the end of each summer, particularly in Mumbai. Traditionally, clay statues of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of beginnings and remover of obstacles, are placed in homes and worshiped for the duration of the 10-day festival. At the end, the statues are immersed in water (such as a river) and left to float away. The festival has modest origins. First organized in the 1890s, the idea was to invoke Hindu symbolism to foster a sense of nationalism in India's struggle for independence from Britain…”
Read the rest, and see more images, here.

Cover: Japanese Fairy Tales

via letterology

Another one of the old cover scans found here.

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.

Angry crows dive-bomb officers in Everett, Wash.

The Twa Corbies (c.1919)
by Arthur Rackham

via boingboing
“An Everett, Washington police department is under attack by a flock of crows. According to the Associated Press, the birds have been ‘swooping down and dive-bombing the officers as they walk to and from their cars’ in the police station parking lot…”
Read the rest here.

Smithsonian: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

I recently spent a few morning hours exploring the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum with my daughter-in-law and wife. We took our time wandering through the two current exhibitions “Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels” and “Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay” as well as the gift shop. It was interesting to see the many influences of the world on the designers in the exhibitions, and then back again as their designs influenced the world. I was particularly impressed by the Chinese Magician pocket watch, the transforming zipper jewelry, and the Bronx Cocktail bracelet. The old ledgers documenting the design process were a very nice addition as well.


I hope someday to visit the the Museum’s Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints which is currently closed. It houses more than 160,000 works of art dating from the Renaissance to the present related to the history of European and American art and design. The collection includes designs for architecture, decorative arts, gardens, interiors, ornament, jewelry, theater, textiles, graphic and industrial design, as well as the fine arts. You can browse through their holdings here.

The gift shop is a visual feast as well, with such wonders as the Hazelnut Box with Miniature Knife and Yoshida The Crow Model Airplane. “The Crow design was the first such model plane to ever be built and flown in Japan. It dates from 1889, when its inventor based his model on the crow’s wing span after studying them in flight.”

A Crow Chick Visits

A big thank you to true-indigo for taking these movies.

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

via bibliodyssey

“Peter Pan first appeared in a section of The Little White Bird, a 1902 novel written by JM Barrie for adults. The character's best-known adventure debuted on 27 December 1904, in the stage play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up' The play was adapted and expanded somewhat as a novel, published in 1911 as Peter and Wendy (later as Peter Pan and Wendy, and still later as simply Peter Pan). Following the highly successful debut of the 1904 play, Barrie's publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, extracted chapters 13–18 of The Little White Bird and republished them in 1906 under the title Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with the addition of illustrations by Arthur Rackham...”
Read the rest here, and see the fifty Rackham illustrations for ‘Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens’ from Harvard University Library here.

Close-Up

via John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries, 05.15.11

Crow Thought

via John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries, 05.15.11

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.

As the Crow Flies Moving Announcement

via FPO

A smart die-cut chip board project that makes me smile. Fuszion’s office was moving five blocks down the street and needed a moving announcement that would stand out.

Read about this project and see more image here.

Image of the Day: Crow

This is just one of the many friends, which included a raven, that came by today for breakfast.

I really appreciate the generous gift of peanuts from my in-laws so that pictures like this are possible. 

Sunset Crows

The sun prepares himself to set

and fills the horizon with colors 

that would have delighted sailors of yore.

My friends fly off to join the local murder of crows 

dotting the top branches of the thin tree line.

Like tiny beads of thick black acrylic paint 

on the very tips of a paintbrush,

they are poised above 

a newly stretched canvas of sky.

Painting by Sara Rogers