The Daft Punk / Coke Connection

via creativity

“Coke is taking its inspiration from French synthpop act Daft Punk with these new limited edition bottles designed to mimic the helmets worn by the duo. From next month, the gold and silver bottles will be released at clubs and will also be packaged in a collector's box as a set, made available exclusively through Colette in Paris. A website, at Daftcoke.com, will also go live.”

Business Cards: Page X

[Top row] Nice color choice and handlettering for VIPPS card on a grey stock. The embossed “One” is done well, Wow, the next card, is hard to sum up—the salmon glow is intriguing. The card is embossed, but not very deep, with Fickle Enterprises California. Fickle Enterprises? Fickle Enterprises? Characterized by erratic changeableness or instability? “[In my head I hear the printer saying, “Sir, are you SURE you really want your business named that?”] Finally, why is there such a large space bewteen the capital S and the rest of the letters in Sawyers? And why is the state that is embossed say California, but on the card the address is Oregon?

[Middle row] Michael Fedorko was fellow student from AIP; I really liked the serif lettering arrangement of the last name. Tie One On has a cute name, but I guess the printer wasn’t able to center Avis Johnson’s name on the card — things like that just drive me a little crazy.

[Bottom row] Penn’s Farms card— very nice utilization of two colors on a white stock.

Houdini’s letterhead, 1920

via John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries.
Learn more about the letterhead here.

Gabriel Dawe Thread Installations

via COLOURlovers.com

“Using over 50 miles of string, Gabriel creates dramatic, almost other-worldly installations. . . ” I had previously had this posted on my older version of my blog, and when I saw it pop-up again on ColourLovers, I wanted to post it again.

Read the rest of this post here, explore more of his work here.

Revisiting “The Lottery”

via utne reader

“The cautionary tale of conformity in Shirley Jackson’s controversial short story is as relevant today as it was in 1948 . . . ”

Read the rest of the post here, and the short story here.

Earworm: Kashmir

Bond, an all-girl Australian/British classical crossover string quartet covers this song on their album Shine. Listen to their version here. Led Zeppelin’s 1975 version here. The riff has always reminded me of katydids on a warm summer evening singing to each other.

Geek A Week Trading Cards

via cnn

“Move over, baseball. The coolest new trading cards feature a Geek a Week. For the last 52 weeks, artist Len Peralta has been interviewing one geek hero a week, posting podcasts of his discussions online and designing the front and back of a trading card. (Comedic music duo Paul and Storm write the descriptions.) This week, nerdy retailer ThinkGeek debuts physical, collectible Geek a Week cards. The first installment features the first eight geeks in Peralta’s project.”

Read the rest here, purchase the cards here.

Business Cards: Page IX

[Top Row] Becky Ballato’s card—Love the idea of the free flowing shape of the two letter B’s and brush, hate the type treatment and font choice. The Cat’s Meow was a local florist that had a great shop to discover wonderful surprises in every nook and cranny of their location, but the downturn in the economy took its toll on them.

[Middle Row] Love the red shoes and use of negative space, hate the typeface and treatment. Bert Gries was probably my favorite teacher while I was a student at AIP. My class projects were just average, but he really made the process of package design inspiring. He also had one of the best classroom locations in the building; second floor looking out onto Penn Avenue. Joe Petrina was one of the best design students and classmates at AIP; he seemed to work so effortlessly and ideas just seemed to flow for him. If I remember correctly, he also had a great laugh.

[Bottom Row] A classic Mac in silver foil on black stock; this card just rocks. Ahh, Accu-Weather—I do not think I have every heard anything good about how graphic designers were treated when employed by them under a very confining contract. While at Graphics II, we did a bit of work from them, including cleaning up the [ugly] logo concept that was created by the owner’s mother. I think that billing issues eventually led to them leaving our fold of clients. AquaPenn’s card—nice blind embossing, the “non-photo” blue ink is just a tad too light for my liking.

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.

Homeland Security, c. 1942

via accidental mysteries

“The Second Word War, and the years leading up to it, was a time not unlike ours today. Just as our government today does it’s best to assure our safety from terrorists, the U.S. government 75 years ago was ever vigilant against Communist and German spies, or terrorist infiltrators trying to weasel their way into defense related businesses. So, they created these ‘100% foolproof’ ID badges, for surely anyone with a camera, pair of scissors and glue could not have faked one of these babies. And, I am not going to even mention the overwhelming pride and individuality an employee would feel wearing one. . . ”

Read the rest, and see more badges here.

Keep Fishing

via inHOWse by Sam Harrison

“I once heard author Ian Fraser tell of being on a fishing trip with fellow writers Mark Singer and John McPhee.

“It was a cold, rainy day, and we weren’t catching anything,” said Fraser. “After a few hours, Singer said, ‘You know, this is masochism.’ And McPhee laughed and said, ‘No, this is optimism.’”

I love Fraser’s story because it applies to the creative process.

Sometimes our luck seems to be running out when it comes to snagging a few fresh ideas. Or maybe we have ideas, but clients keep tossing them overboard.

In those sad times, it’s easy to feel a bit sorry for ourselves. To feel the world is against us. To feel we’re stuck in a masochistic business.

But if we let ourselves go there, we get bitter. And if we get bitter, we don’t get better. Instead, we become victims. And victims, by definition, are powerless.

“You have to believe in what you’re doing and not get bitter,” says Jakob Trollback, founder and creative director of Trollback + Company. “If you let it harden you, you’re going to just get old and dull.”

So the next time you find yourself planning a pity party, seek out some optimism. Take a break. Go for a walk. Visit an upbeat blog. Talk to a positive friend. Launch a new project. Start your day over.

You’ve done it before and you can do it again. Ideas are swimming around in your mind and in the world around you. You can catch them. And you can sell them.

Keep fishing.”

Original post here.

Who is Bozo Texino?

via imprint


“Who is Bozo Texino? is a beautiful black and white film by Bill Daniels. Made over 16 years during Daniels’ sporadic boxcar riding (or train hopping) adventures across North America, the film focuses on the men (vagabonds, hobos, nomads, pick a name) who live (or once lived) this increasingly difficult life. Most pointedly, the film focuses on the marks they leave on train cars in chalk or paint pen.”


Read the rest here, watch the trailer here.

10 line Kabel

via letterpress daily

This capital Q by Hamilton Manufacturing Company just makes me smile.

Apple Memorabilia Loupe Mystery

via cultofmac


Read about the mystery behind this Apple memorabilia loupe here.

In the early 80s, I remember popping the clear plastic back off of a similar size and style of loupe and then inserting a customized round paper disk in it so that the loupe was clearly recognizable as mine. I'd change the artwork as the mood struck me.

Earworm: Genki Sudo’s World Order

via very short list


“ Genki Sudo is an overachiever: a kickboxer, Greco-Roman wrestler, and retired mixed-martial-arts star who was known for his splashy entrances and flashy moves. He’s also an accomplished actor, essayist, and calligrapher, and the leader of a pop group called World Order. And in this excellent music video, he’s taking New York by storm. Like many other overachievers, Sudo has a personal motto—in his case, a motto (“we are all one”) that didn’t make sense in the ring but sits quite comfortably with his career as a song-and-dance man. Among other things, this is one of the most carefully synced videos we’ve seen. (Did we mention that Sudo is also the group’s choreographer?) And yet it’s interesting to compare World Order’s New York video with a similar one they filmed in Japan: If you think New Yorkers are jaded, check out the (non-)reactions of Tokyo’s passersby.”


Watch Genki Sudo’s World Order in New York City here, other links can be found here for the Tokyo video, and more.

Business Cards: Page VIII

[Top Row] The warm grey on Tawn Chi’s card is spot on; the type treatment for the word CHI and the positioning of the type in the the lower right corner is lacking finesse. Brad Bean’s slide frames and string bean image makes this card memorable and always makes me smile.

[Middle Row] Rabbits, always a sucker for rabbits. I was given a gift of one of Jeanne Stevens-Sollman’s sculptures many years ago, and I treasure it to this day. Even though the next card is a sample, the hairline constructed letter using grey and wine inks is classic. Last card in the row looks a bit dated, but the design uses embossing and foil stamping to make the constructed shape ‘pop’.

[Bottom Row] First card, love the reversed signature in red, hate the type treatment below it. Anni Matsick’s card perfectly sums up her business, and makes me smile. 

Earworm: The Air That I Breathe

When our cat Birbanto decides to “shnub” his food, he channels part of this Hollies song:

“...Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you.”

k.d. lang’s excellent version is here.

Serif Tote

seen in HOW


Perfect for type geeks—the serif tote bag from Little Company. Makes me smile.

Visit their site here.

Type and Music

via The FontShop FontFeed


Always a good read, Yves Peters writes about type treatments on the covers of recent releases in his My Type of Music posts.


Read the rest here.

Producing a book, the analog way

via boingboing
A nostalgic look at what a it took to produce a book in the era before digital typesetting and printing.

Variations on a Theme

The latest in a collection of variations of my name sent by companies and corporations.

They have no idea who I am since they do not get my name correct; all they know is that this is a “valid mailing address.” [Oh, the things that one learns working in a print and mailing facility.] What becomes even more interesting is when your misspelled name is sold to a list, and suddenly there are mailings from multiple companies that bought that particular list. It is almost viral, since lists are constantly complied, bought, and sold by companies trying to capture segments of a specific marketing demographic.

Business Cards: Page VII

For the most part, the designs of the cards on this page utilize the white space very well — lots of breathing room around the logos and type treatments.

Two nice ampersands found on the Fish & DiRocco [why a swan image?] and Patz & Hall cards.

I've always loved the T.C. Lynch card [top row, middle]; great use of a perfect green spot color on the leaves. The illustration reminds my of an old woodcut design.

Ghosting: Mechanical Ghosts

via printersting


“A printing ghost is an unwanted image resulting from the printing system itself. There are basically two kinds: mechanical and chemical. Mechanical ghosts are usually visible as soon as the press sheet lands in the delivery section of the press. There are three types of mechanical ghosts: starvation, blanket, and plate.”


Read the rest of the post here. Part Two on Chemical Ghosts can be found here.

Highland Hall Moon Tree

This afternoon we decided to get out of the house for a bit, and go see if we could find the Moon sycamore tree in Hollidaysburg. It was sunny outside, but very windy when we located Highland Hall.

Highland Hall, now shuttered with a large “For Lease” sign on the property.

Our camera was set-up on what was the base of the “Pioneer Family” statue.

The Moon sycamore, now 35 years old, looks to be healthy.

Base of the “Pioneer Family” statue on the left and Moon sycamore on the right. We discovered a trashy little geocache tucked under one corner of the base as we were leaving. Driving out of town to our next stop on our trip, we discovered where the statue has been moved to outside the court house, just a few blocks away from Highland Hall.

American Ballet Theatre swings into action for London students

via YouTube


“The American Ballet Theatre and U.S. Embassy London invited students from across London to watch them rehearse for their UK performances. Afterwards some of the students got to participate in a question and answer session with members of the production.”


Watch it here. Screen capture of my son, Arron Scott, in Tico Tico from Paul Taylor’s Company B.

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.