The Mystery of the Missing Moon Trees

via wired
 
“15 years after NASA astronomer David Williams started searching for them, hundreds of trees grown from space-faring seeds are still missing. The moon trees, whose seeds circled the moon 34 times in Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa’s pocket, were welcomed back to Earth with great fanfare in 1971. One was planted in Washington Square in Philadelphia as part of the 1975 bicentennial celebrations. Another took root at the White House. Several found homes at state capitals and space-related sites around the country. Then-president Gerald Ford called the trees ‘living symbol[s] of our spectacular human and scientific achievements.’ And then, mysteriously, everyone seemed to forget about them.”

Read the rest here, visit his site here. Fascinating; a moon tree is less than an hour away in Hollidaysburg, PA.

What is the Financial Times and Why is it Pink?

via the financial times

The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 23 cities around the world. Its primary rival is New York City-based The Wall Street Journal. Since 1893, the Financial Times has used its distinctive salmon-pink newsprint as a distinguishing trademark to set itself apart from other daily news publications.

Tea Fortune of the Day

James Taylor

via james taylor

Watch footage from James Taylor’s December 2010, BBC Interview from the Barn as part of The Lennon Legacy. If you want to cut to his intimate solo performance of his favorite Lennon tune In My Life, you can skip to: 28:47. Watch it here. This song is one of my favorites as well. It was quite moving hearing this Beatle’s song played at a memorial service a few years ago for a fellow graphic designer who died quite suddenly. The acoustics in the spiritual center were perfect that day as I sat listening among friends and aquaintances gathered that day.

James Taylor: I Met Lennon's Assassin
Singer-songwriter James Taylor tells BBC’s Tom Brook that he was accosted by Mark David Chapman the day before John Lennon’s murder. Watch the interview here.

You can also see James Taylor’s performance of Let It Be honoring Sir Paul McCartney at the Kennedy Center Honors. Among the many artists joining him for the evening’s finale were Mavis Staples and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler. Watch it here.

Full Moon

A wonderful site to explore with a calendar of full moon times and dates for 2011, a place to sign up a little reminder via e-mail that says: “Tomorrow is full moon!”, and more.

Midget & Giant

via swissmiss

“Ryuji Nakamura created this miniature paper model house to sit ontop of his iMac, in front of the iSight webcam. It transforms a webcam view into something straight of out of Alice in Wonderland. How can this not make you smile?”

Making Handmade Books

via feltandwire
“For those of you interested in bookmaking, you might want to pick up Alisa Golden’s Making Handmade Books. This comprehensive guide has instructions for the novice and professional. The book features 100 different types of bindings/structures, including folded books, glued books, accordion books and a lot of variations on each book type.”

Read the rest of the post here.

Savage Chickens: Behold!

Made me smile; visit Doug Savage’s site here.

Black History Month: Interview with Roy Eaton

via creativity online

Geoff Edwards, co-founder of DOJO, interviews one of the first ever African American creatives Roy Eaton. Eaton wrote the campaign line for Texaco: “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star,” Advertising Age named that Texaco jingle from 1962 as the foundation for one of the twentieth century’s top 100 creative campaigns.

Read the rest here, and visit his web site here.

Daily Drop Cap: Black Treacle E

via dailydropcap

yecatching. . . .Alison Carmichael’s drop cap has the perfect amount of whimsey and playfulness—she works in a multitude of styles and mediums for her lettering, including ketchup and black treacle.

More daily drop caps can be found here.

Business Cards: Page VI

Clean, simple design, and colors for the DeFrancis Studio as well as The International Hotel cards. A nice embossing treatment on The Catfish Institute card. While at a graphic design studio in the late 80s and early 90s, Bruce Cramer shot photos for several publications we produced. He is still in the area and now part of KB Pictures. Wow, the torn paper look of the AGFA rolodex card is just confusing—why torn paper?

Gandhi’s Words in His Own Type

via @Issue Journal of Business & Design

“Leo Burnett India ad agency commemorated the 141st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth (October 2, 2010) by creating an alphabetical font in the Devanagari script in the style of Gandhi’s trademark wireframe eyeglasses. The special typeface was the brainchild of Burnett’s national creative director KV ‘Pops’ Sridhar, who wanted to inspire younger generations with the teachings of Gandhi. The glasses symbolize Gandhi’s vision and his visionary thoughts on truth and nonviolence. Sridhar explains, ‘The way he saw the world is completely different than the way we do – and hence the glasses, to subtly nudge people into thinking like him again.’ Gandhi had originally given the glasses in the 1930s to an Indian army colonel who had asked the great leader for inspiration. Gandhi reportedly gave him his glasses and said, ‘These gave me the vision to free India.’ ”

Read the rest here.

Moby: Free Download — Be The One

via moby

“[Moby’s] next album is called destroyed and it comes out in the middle of May sometime. Musically it’s very melodic and atmospheric and electronic, and if i had to sum it up I would describe it as: ‘broken down melodic electronic music for empty cities at 2 a.m’. In addition to the album [he is] also putting out an e.p. ‘e.p.’ means ‘extended play,’ another vestigal descriptive term from the halcyon days of vinyl. The e.p contains 3 songs: Be The One, Sevastopol and Victoria Lucas.

More info to download the free e.p. can be found here.

The K Chronicles: Life's Little Victories

  

Visit here to see the Life’s Litttle Victories.

Nancy Wu’s Letterpress Business Card Collection

Visit the Felt and Wire site here to read more about Nancy Wu’s connection to letterpress and business cards, and to see more wonderful designs.

Save as WWF

via swissmiss


“The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.”

Read more here and here.

via printeresting

“In terms of moveable type, Dutch artist Silas Nout’s Zitletter is cumbersome but functional. Perfect ‘furniture’ for any letterpress shop.”

Check out the pictures here to see the impression it leaves on the carpet . . . squee!

Tin Foil Beets

Hey folks! This is not RGBisMe posting but true indigo. When the unfortunate unspeakable incident of deleting the original After Image blog occurred, I stepped in as a back-up administrator to safe guard that it would not happen again.

I promise I will not be posting banal things regularly (or even irregularly). I am taking a moment to resserect a family favorite "go-to" After Image post. RGBisMe posted a recipe for Roasted Beets that changed the lives of many of us. I used to have to look it up on the old blog to remember how to make them. Here they are, straight from the original Post Punk Kitchen recipe.....

TIN FOIL BEETS

Unwrapping a tin foil beet is a lot like unwrapping a present. Well maybe not really because you know exactly what’s going to be in there, but it’s still somehow such an exciting surprise. Roasting brings out the beet’s sweet flavor so they’re like precious rubies in a candy box when ready to eat. I usually do two pounds at a time on a weeknight or Sunday afternoon, and use some of them that evening as a side dish with whatever I’m eating. Then I refrigerate the rest and use them in salads or just for a quick snack throughout the week.

The cooking method and time really varies depending on the size of the beets you’re using. If using small beets, say golf ball size, and they are very fresh, then don’t both to peel. Just slice in half, wrap and roast. And remember to save the beet greens to saute with some olive oil and garlic. But if using those big honkers of a beet that you’re more likely to find come January and February, then it’s a little different. Peel them and then slice top down into segments (like orange slices) that are about 3/4 of an inch thick at their widest. If a beet is especially big, say softball sized, then I sometimes will slice widthwise, too. Then, keeping all the slices together in a neat package, place on tin foil and wrap so that it can easily be unfolded from the top.

Roasting time will vary, but I do at least an hour at 425 F. They’re ready when easily pierced with a fork. Be careful when handling, because there will be a lot of red beet juice just dying to drizzle out and stain your countertops. Although maybe that could look cool.

My current favorite quick treatment for roasted beets: toss with fresh orange juice, toasted sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. Salt to taste and add a little Sriracha and you’re as good as gold. Or garnets.

Sydney Underworld of the 1920s and ’30s

via Very Short List


“You may think of the mug shot as the zero degree of portrait photography—no more than a process, an activity not unlike delousing, only superficially connected to the art practiced by Nadar and Steichen and Avedon. And that is true in perhaps 90 percent of cases. But over the course of time, there have here and there been photographers who brought to the process an extra dose of insight that might be called art. In the early twentieth century, the police in New South Wales, Australia, had such an artist—or artists (no names have survived).

Unlike the mug-shot convention of portraying the subject head-on and in profile, the protocols were much looser, so that the accused were sometimes pictured once in close-up and once full-length. And the setting was often a courtyard with a skylight, which softened the contrast. Most important, though, the person behind the camera was someone who recognized the humanity of the varied persons who appeared before the lens, who were sometimes monsters and sometimes innocents, but all of whom deserved consideration. (If not always sympathy; in some shots the photographer apparently declared his or her distaste for the subjects by positioning them in front of the toilets.)

The results are extraordinary—not just a panoramic view of the Sydney underworld of the 1920s and ’30s but a catalogue of astounding faces, fully and spontaneously reacting to someone on the other side of the lens.”


Read the rest here, visit La boite verte’s gallery of Australian mug shots here.

Image of the Day: Best Friends

Best friends watching the world go by.

Valentine Post Card

Just one of the many nifty Valentine’s Day cards my father-in-law gave out this year. He discovered these treasures in an antique co-op in Mifflin County.

Love Knows No Bounding Box, Pt. 2

The final four!

The ambigram printed 8-up on a sheet of temporary tattoo paper from  http://temporarytattoopaper.net  I let it dry for 36 hours.

I trimmed the paper and the adhesive sheet in half, and the peeled back the the adhesive sheet to begin to apply it.

I gently rubbed the adhesive sheet with my fingers, and used the tip of an X-Acto knife to poke any air bubbles and worked them out. I gave a good final rub with an 30-year-old burnisher used in the past for transfer lettering sheets. I let this dry for 18 hours.

Cut apart

And trimmed close to the edge of the artwork. It seemed like leaving .187"+  around the artwork is the best idea, since the adhesive material can sometimes tend to curl back on itself when you remove the clear backing. Things you learn upon “doing.”

My first attempt failed as it was way too humid in the bathroom after our shower, and the tattoo curled up on itself.  My second attempt -- success! 

Indexed: What’s held dear

via indexed
Visit Jessica Hagy’s site here.

Shorpy: Poe House: 1930

via shorpy

“Richmond, Virginia, circa 1930. Edgar Allan Poe’s mother’s house. 8x10 inch acetate negative by Frances Benjamin Johnston.”

View full size.

Highlights

I think I actually remember this cover!

via WWdN: In Exile

“Last night, on the way home from dinner, I asked Anne, ‘Do you remember Highlights for Children?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said, ‘I remember how I hated going to the doctor when I was a kid, until I started reading Highlights in the waiting room.’ ”

. . .

Read the rest of this fantastic post by Will Wheaten here. I had a subscription to Highlights as a child though I do remember seeing copies in the dentist’s office. I actually know one of the illustrators that works for Highlights — Anni Matsick. We first worked together back in the mid-1980s when she did freelance black-and-white fashion illustrations for me. She’d supply the finished artwork of models wearing the clothing we were advertising for sale at Danks Department Stores, and I’d create the color “mechanically” with dozens of overlays of amberlith and rubylith that would then be supplied to the newspaper for printing. It is still crazy thinking about creating color combinations in my head, using reference books of percentage combinations of CMYK inks, but all physically amber and red on clear plastic sheets designated to be shot in the darkroom as percentages of C, M, Y, or K. It was always exciting seeing the finished printed piece right off the press.

Image of the Day: Snow and Ice

This was taken a few days ago in the parking lot where I work — finally got around to downloading it off of my camera.

Mr. Frisky's Pre-Press Quiz

via raintree

“Now hold still—this won't hurt a bit . . . maybe! Mr. Frisky wrote a few questions covering some of the more problematic areas we’ve encountered with client-prepared files over the years. Simply answer all the questions and click the button at the bottom and Mr. Frisky will score your quiz. If your score is 70% or better, chances are good we won’t have too many problems with your files. A lower score generally indicates that it may not be wise to try to design and prepare your graphic files on your own. This quiz is for informational and entertainment purposes only. No wagering, please.”

Take the quiz here. Below is my score, what is yours?

12 line Trafton Script

via Letterpress Daily


Simply wonderful to take in, view it here.

Savage Chickens: Productivity

Visit Doug Savage's site here.

Walking versus running

via bobulate

“It was 9AM and too early to be walking there on a Sunday. Walking down Central Park West in a satisfied way, the way you do when you’ve finished something, when much of a city is still asleep, when it’s too early for blocking the box or street cleaners, and pigeons are still meandering, and sound and light rise like hot symphonies from the grates.

But that didn’t stop the looking. People, out to get a part of that morning — catching the best of it before the rest of us use it up. Looking. Some who passed gave an odd once-over. Unusual.

What makes one suddenly noticeable? What makes something suddenly stand out?

Grabbing the pole on the train home, regarding the stares of now others who joined, I looked down. Bronze medal and ribbon around my neck and still holding token wilty carnation, I was in running gear. Covered in awards that every runner gets decked out with when she finishes a mini race around the park.

The difference between other runners and me: I forgot to remove these before leaving.”

Read the rest of Liz Danzico’s post here. As Miles contently slept on my lap this morning, I really enjoyed reading this post which reminded me so much of my wonderful wife.

Bizarro: The Gift

via BizarroBlog

“. . . Here’s a cartoon about that person (or people) in your family that give you gifts that they think are perfect for you but could not be further off base. I once mentioned to my Aunt Sharon that I liked ‘kitsch art’ and for my next birthday she sent me some ceramic tiles with food printed on them, the sort you're supposed to hang in your kitchen. True story. I wouldn’t tell this story if there was any chance of hurting Aunt Sharon's feelings, but she's in solitary confinement now with no access to the Internet, so it’s safe. Hope you're warm and well-gifted today.”

Read Dan Piraro’s entire post here. This cartoon, and the story behind it, rings so true with the relationship I have with my mother.

Flying Wish Paper

via santa

“Think of a special wish. . . your fondest dream, your deepest desire, your ambitions, concerns or burdens—and write it down on the Flying Wish Paper®. Shape your paper into a tube and place it on the Wish Platform®. Light the top edge of the tube and watch it burn down in a small, beautiful flame. At the last moment your wish magically lifts off the platform and rises to the heavens!”

Santa discovered this present at The Nittany Quill, a fun little shop nestled in the heart of State College. Learn more about Flying Wish Paper on their site.

Toynbee Tiles: A Mysterious Puzzle that Spans the Globe

via wired

“Though these modern days of the 21st century are filled with many puzzles, there seem to be few true mysteries anymore. As a professional puzzle designer and follower of puzzle hunts, I have personally witnessed how drastically the connectivity and community of the internet, the power of Google, and the sheer volume of information readily available to all makes the solving of many brainteasers almost trivial. Throw in the fact that most puzzle memes, alternate reality games, and online mysteries invariably end up just being marketing campaigns for soon to be released (and too often forgotten) films or television series, and one begins to wonder if any modern day, genuine mysteries truly are left.

The existence of the “Toynbee Tiles” might be just such a mystery. This world-spanning puzzle does not involve a musty old map from a remote archeological find. It is not written in an ancient language that few can read. It is not trying to get you to by a ticket to an upcoming summer blockbuster. And it is not giving up its answers easily.

Rather, these linoleum plaques which have been embedded in the asphalt roadways of major cities throughout the world for over two decades are a true conundrum of the present day. They are written in English (though proper grammar and syntax is often lacking), they are fairly easy to access (if you know where to look), and they have attracted the attention of many puzzle enthusiasts in the age of the all-knowing World Wide Web. However, despite all of this, no one really knows what the hell is going on.”

Read the rest here. More on Toynbee Tiles can be found here, a NPR story here, and a trailer for the film “Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles” can be watched here.

The K Chronicles: Purple Wheelchair

Yet another example of why I love Keith Knight’s K Chronicles.

Jesus Chicken, Ethics, and Gay Rights

via CNN
Chick-fil-A controversy shines light on restaurant’s Christian DNA
“The ongoing Chick-fil-A flap—which has gay rights groups blasting the restaurant chain for donating food to an anti-gay marriage group—may be a fleeting controversy for a privately held company that is more accustomed to fiercely loyal patrons and generally positive press coverage. But Lake Lambert, author of the book Spirituality Inc., says the flap may be a sign of more turbulence ahead for Chick-fil-A as it attempts to hold onto its conservative Christian business culture while expanding its chain beyond the Bible Belt. “If you have a faith-based corporate identity and you want to function in the national marketplace, you’re going to continue to encounter resistance to those values because not everybody is going to share them,” says Lambert. “The only other option is some sort of secular identity and that’s not where Chick-fil-A is going.” Lambert says Chick-fil-A is the most visible example of an American corporation trying to foster a specifically Christian identity. The company is privately held and family-run, making that task somewhat easier. Lambert says Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy signed what Cathy describes as a “covenant” with his children when they took over the company, to help preserve its Christian DNA.”
Read the rest here.
. . .

via nytimes
A Chicken Chain’s Corporate Ethos Is Questioned by Gay Rights Advocates
“. . . Nicknamed “Jesus chicken” by jaded secular fans and embraced by Evangelical Christians, Chick-fil-A is among only a handful of large American companies with conservative religion built into its corporate ethos. But recently its ethos has run smack into the gay rights movement. A Pennsylvania outlet’s sponsorship of a February marriage seminar by one of that state’s most outspoken groups against homosexuality lit up gay blogs around the country. Students at some universities have also begun trying to get the chain removed from campuses.”
Read the rest here.
. . .


in Time
Controversial Chicken: Chick-fil-A’s Gay Rights Rumble
“Chick-fil-A has long-been transparent about its Christian values. They close their stores on Sundays, a practice that has helped the chain garner the nickname ‘Jesus Chicken,’ and have even gone so far as to consider a potential employee’s marital status and civic and church involvement in their hiring process. But while the company’s beliefs come as no surprise, in sponsoring the Art of Marriage Conference, some say the restaurant empire took its evangelizing to a new level.”
Read the entire article here.
. . .


from change.org
“Take a look at an event scheduled for February 2011, co-sponsored by Chick-fil-A and the Pennsylvania Family Institute, the leading anti-gay group in the Keystone State and a group that has worked hard to try and pass a constitutional amendment in Pennsylvania banning same-sex marriage. The February event co-sponsored by Chick-fil-A is called The Art of Marriage, and it’s intended to be a launching point for Pennsylvania to return to ‘the biblical definition of marriage.’ Given the work of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, it’s hard not to see where this event is going to go—straight for the jugular of anyone who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples.”
Rest of the article here.
 . . .


Pennsylvania Family Institute’s site here.
On February 11-12, 2011, Pennsylvania Family Institute is sponsoring 2 conferences happening in the South-Central Pennsylvania region: Harrisburg/Camp Hill: Christian Life Assembly, Reading: Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church.
. . .


More can be found on the Advocate's site here. Chik-fil-A has a location in State College and on the Penn State campus. So far, I have not heard of any local news or ramifications of their sponsorship of the Pennsylvania Family Institute’s conferences, which surprises me.

Why Are Barns Red?

via the daily heller

“In American Barns and Covered Bridges (Dover Publications, 2003), Eric Sloane notes  that weather was an important consideration in planning a barn. The early builder mapped routes of sunshine, wind and water drainage. He paid careful attention to the health and comfort of his animals, as well as to the protection and preservation of barn timbers and stored grain. Early 18th-century bridges and barns went unpainted. The right wood in the right place, it was discovered, needed no paint. Even houses in the earliest settlements were not painted. Until . . .

As Grit (the magazine you could make extra money selling in your spare time) points out: ‘By the late 1700s, the art of wood seasoning gave way to the art of artificial preservation. Virginia farmers were the first to become paint-conscious. In Pennsylvania, the Dutch settlements latched on to the custom of red bricks, red barns, red geraniums, even reddish-brown cows.’

Red paint combined with linseed oil was also used to prevent certain organisms from decaying the wood. But there is more lore…”

Read the rest here.

Business Cards: Page V

More paper samples, but nice use of foil stamping on the first two cards in the right column; the gold foil on the green marble has an air of sophistication.

Tea Fortune of the Day

Periodic Table of Typefaces Wall Decal

via scribbleoneverything


The Periodic Table of Typefaces Wall Decal, pretty darn geeky. Find out more about it here, and here.