Creative Roles: The Slow Cooker

Via design feast

A series focused on the lively cast of characters whose roles make the play of Creativity were recently posted. Meet:

The Slow Cooker: “There is always a rush to make things—a desire for the instant gratification that creating can bring. This will likely always be the case, as our world dialogue spins around ‘attention spans shrinking’ and the ‘cost of entry lessening.’ But what if the fast and furious way of making was coupled with a slow and gradual path?”

Read the rest of The Slow Cooker here, and others in the series here.

Oldest wild bird in US is new mother

via wral

“The oldest known wild bird in the U.S. is a new mother. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist spotted the Laysan albatross that’s at least 60 years old a few weeks ago. It was with a chick at Midway Atoll, a remote wildlife refuge 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu. A U.S. Geological Survey scientist first banded the seabird as she incubated an egg in 1956. She was estimated to be at least 5 years old at the time. The albatross has since worn out five bird bands.”

Read the rest here.

Gothic Tuscan Condensed Ampersand

via letterpress daily
Gothic Tuscan Condensed Ampersand

Vegetarian Food & Nut Co. 1926

via shorpy

Note the different varieties of "Wantmor" peanut butter sandwiches! Read more about the image here; be sure to scroll down this page to the Comments section. Read the post “Nut’s to you!” about Ardil - The Forgotten Peanut Fibre.

Van Lanen, Matthew Carter, and Ampersands

Van Lanen deliberately printed off-register in two colors .

via imprint

An Interview With Matthew Carter:

“. . . The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin released Carter Latin (now called Van Lanen), your first-ever wood type. Can you explain who initiated the design?

MATTHEW: This project began in 2002 thanks to Richard Zauft who was teaching in Milwaukee at the time and advising the Hamilton Museum. He suggested to Hamilton that they should revive a few of their old wood types and commission a new one as a way of earning revenue. On a visit to Boston he invited me to take on the new design and I jumped at the opportunity, mainly out of curiosity about a kind of type that I had never dealt with before.”

Read An Interview With Matthew Carter — here. The Van Lanen’s ampersand makes me stop, look, and smile.

Black Raven Brewing Company

spotted on the edible raven blog

Gray crest logo style t-shirt

“Ravens have long been held in high esteem by brewers, particularly in the British Isles. A famous London brewery once had a tame ‘mascot’ raven named ‘Joey’ that was thought to bring the brewery good luck. Many years ago while home brewing, our brewer/owner came across an old photo in an online stock photo database entitled ‘Brewer with tame raven.’ That photo was the inspiration for continuing the mystical brewery–raven connection, hence the Black Raven Brewing Company.”

More about their story here.

Keep Calm and Carry On

In light of the recent announcement by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed budget for 2011-2012 that would cut annual state funding for Penn State roughly in half, and President Graham Spanier’s response, I was inspired to update the classic British poster from WWII.

Desktop image in red, that I am using at work.

. . . and a version in blue.

In my opinion, the best thing I can do is ignore the swirling and escalating rumors, do my job, step up to the plate when necessary, and just keep focused on the task at hand. I do not get a lot of foot traffic in my office, but perhaps anyone who sees my desktop [for now] will be influenced.

. . .


From wikipedia: “Keep Calm and Carry On was a poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of World War II, intended to raise the morale of the British public under the threat of impending invasion. It was little known and never used. The poster was rediscovered in 2000 and has been re-issued by a number of private sector companies, and used as the decorative theme for a range of other products. There are only two known surviving examples of the poster outside of government archives.

The original 1939 poster

The poster was initially produced by the Ministry of Information in 1939 during the beginning of World War II. It was intended to be distributed in order to strengthen morale in the event of a wartime disaster. Two-and-a-half million copies were printed, although the poster was distributed only in limited numbers. The designer of the poster is not known.”

Read the rest here. More about the original 1939 poster here and here, and also here from the BBC. Parodies of this poster design can be found here, here, and here. The original wallpaper design that I modified for the top two wallpapers can be found here.

CMYK Highway

via printeresting

“Approximately 16,000 pounds of ink cartridges from the Flint Group, an Indianapolis-based company selling printing and packaging products, was bound for a newspaper company in Portland, Maine. Red, blue, and yellow ink cartridges were inside the truck, but Ferson said there is no evidence the yellow ink was released.

Go to the story here.

K Chronicles: Socks and the Sleeping Mouse

Yet another reason I really enjoy Keith Knight’s strips.

Image of the Day: At 25 or 6 Before

Taken at 35 m.p.h. on my College Avenue commute this morning. I am amazed how well the shot turned out!
“Ooops, I forgot the word ‘of’ — I’ll just add it above!”

What is Your Favorite Color?

via Triiibes Press

“Once a child was asked, ‘what is your favourite colour?,’ a common enough question . . . yet a stunning reply . . . ‘today,’ she said softly, ‘it’s yellow.’ I have remembered that forever and it has released me from the pain of choosing just one colour to be my favourite when there are so many to enjoy every moment.”

— Sarah Farrugia, Strategist, Thinker, Writer, Progressive

The Brilliant Line

via communication arts

“This collaboration between the Rhode Island School of Design [RSID] Museum of Art and RISD’s Interactive Media Department serves two separate needs: to entice visitors to the exhibition and to display at the exhibition as a way for visitors to learn more about the art and printmaking.

A map interface offers a unique user interface that allows for all the artworks to be displayed at the same time it offers information about their origination. There are two modes for viewing the artworks—one enables viewers to enlarge the art and the other allows them to analyze it by layering the etching lines to see how the artist built up the form within each piece. ”

Read the rest of the post here. Explore The Brilliant Line here, enjoy the “Analyze Lines” option, and watch the video of the engraving process.

Image of the Day: Electro • Touch

Rufous rust, yellow peeling paint, and a cool name —Electro • Touch — all topped off with a lightning bolt with indigo highlights! Spotted near where I park at work.

Ads Worth Spreading

via TED

“The 10 winners of TED’s inaugural Ads Worth Spreading initiative have been announced from the stage. Selected from more than 1,000 submissions from around the world, they are some of the most creative, compelling and out-of-the-box communications of the past year. The winners are a truly diverse group — from major agencies to tiny boutiques to college students and non-profits, hailing from around the world.

Chris Anderson had this to say about the effort: “We’re seeking to reverse the trend of ads being aggressively forced on users. We want to nurture ads so good you choose to watch – and share. On TED.com, ads run after our talks, not before. As well as avoiding the annoyance of interruption, this positioning means they can run longer than the TV-standard 30-seconds. And that’s the key — in 2-3 minutes, there’s more time to tell a story, share an idea, make an authentic human connection. These winning ads, many of them long-form, powerfully demonstrate these strengths. We think they represent an exciting new way for companies to engage with the world in the internet age.”

Read the rest here, and watch the videos here.

Edinburgh Civic Survey (1949)

via Ace Jet 170

“This huge book (280 x 360mm & 111 pages) is full of the incredible post-war maps of Edinburgh. Prepared by Patrick Abercrombie and Derek Plumstead for the Town Council, the book contains detailed data for traffic, health, education, recreation, population density and so on, beautifully depicted in a series of maps, charts and diagrams.”

More about the book can be found here. I especially love the compasses that sit at the foot of each map under the key.

Kodak Moments

This weekend has been filled with Kodak moments. My father-in-law is working on recreating the top portion to a wooden tripod that was built before 1914, and he shared his progress with us.

On the left,  a similar tripod top found at an antique store. He is using this 1914 version as a guide for recreating a larger version. He fabricated the brass fixtures himself.

The Folmer & Schwing tripod top -- with an ampersand stamped into the wood.

Close-up of the ampersand.

Demonstrating how the top goes onto the legs of the tripod.

We also set-up the Crosley slide and negative scanner on their Mac as well. Above is the set-up using a Kodak Transparency Illuminator to view the slides. The slides here were processed October 27, 1965 and cost 10¢ for first class shipping.

More on Kodak’s Folmer & Schwing Division, their professional apparatus division, can be found here.  See a Kodak Folmer & Schwing No 8 Cirkut Outfit Cycle Graphic wooden tripod here.

Elsa Mora’s Papercuttings

The Ride

via a friend

Visit Elsa Mora’ blog dedicated to the magic art of papercutting here; more of her work here. Makes me smile.

Pillows and Maps

via The Bright Side Project

“Cath Young of My Bearded Pigeon creates organic throw pillows that are so beautiful you may not want anyone to touch them. The combination of vintage images and modern organic textiles are inspired . . . ”

Read the rest here, and visit My Bearded Pigeon here.

James Blake’s CMYK EP

via printeresting

“This release from James Blake was apparently issued in three transparent vinyl colorways . . .”

Business Cards: Page XIV

[Top Row] White on tan can be elegant, but never works in low light situations.

[Middle Row] The type stacking treatment almost works for The Dwelling Place -- it was a great store in Lewisburg none the less. Creative Lighting -- I was 99.9%% sure this design is from Art Nouveau design, and modified for the card. The type on the card is just a bit too crowed overall. A quick Google search for “light bulb ephemera + art nouveau” led me to this 1907 ad for AEG metallic filament lightbulbs. Thanks, Google!

[Bottom Row]  pictureline — I'm not usually a big fan of all lowercase type treatments, but this works.

Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer

My results playing 13 rounds this morning

via nytimes

“Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. Test your strategy against the computer in this rock-paper-scissors game illustrating basic artificial intelligence. Choose from two different modes: novice, where the computer learns to play from scratch, and veteran, where the computer pits over 200,000 rounds of previous experience against you.”


Play it here.  Now I wonder how the computer would do playing Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock?

Contest for Pi Day

via green chair press

“The websites Serious Eats and Instructables have held a Pi Day Pie Contest the past couple of years. (Pi Day commemorates the mathematical constant π — 3.14159… — and is held on March 14.)”

Read the rest here, and find out how to enter the 2011 Pi Day Baking Contest here. Visit the official pi day site here,  and read more about the background and history here.

Ada Lovelace Day: 7 October 2011

“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. This year Ada Lovelace Day will be held on Friday 7 October. Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.”

Find out more about Ada Lovelace here, and here.

The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History

via make

No. 2: Grace Hopper
“In addition to inventing the first computer complier in 1952, Admiral Hopper developed COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), was credited with popularizing the term ‘bug’ and ‘debugging’ – reportedly when she had to remove a moth from the inside of a computer, was instrumental in the creation of FLOW-MATIC language for the UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II computers and was quoted as saying ‘It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.’”

Read more about Admiral Grace Hopper, and the other 14 women, here.

Earworm: 56K Modem

Digital Detox

via utne reader

“The National Day of Unplugging (NDU) is observed from sundown Friday, March 4, until sundown on Saturday, March 5, NDU challenges us to turn off our smartphones, shut down our laptops, and unplug our televisions to observe a modern day of rest. Developed by Reboot, a nonprofit organization that aims to reinvent Jewish traditions, the NDU is for people of any faith or no faith. The 25-hour period is guided by Reboot’s Sabbath Manifesto, which encourages a weekly “time-out” following ten principles: 1) Avoid technology; 2) Connect with loved ones; 3) Nurture your health;     4) Get outside; 5) Avoid commerce; 6) Light candles; 7) Drink wine; 8) Eat bread; 9) Find silence; and 10) Give back.”

Read the rest here.

Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century

Via creativepro

The documentary film, Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century, is now ready for DVD release and select theatrical screenings.

Read the rest here, more on the documentary here, and preorder a copy here.

The Fading Sounds of Analog Technology

Via NYTIMES by David Pogue

“As digital technology takes over, we're losing the sounds of analog technologies. And sometimes that's a real loss. A dial tone can serve a useful purpose . . . ”

Read the rest here.

Letter Heads

via the daily heller

“You’ve heard of Dead Heads (followers of the Grateful Dead), well now there are Letter Heads (grateful followers of letterhead designs). I don’t think there are as many of the latter as there are of the former, but I heard a rumor that Jerry Garcia might have collected letterheads (but then again, it is just a rumor)...”

Read the rest, and see more great examples of 1940s letterheads here. I really like how the smoke curls up through the type on this letterhead. 

Finch Paper: 1930s-era Papermaking Film

via finch

“Newsprint was Finch Paper’s stock-in-trade when this film of the papermaking process was prepared in the early 1930s. The film traces the creation of Finch Paper from New York’s Adirondack forests to our mill in Glens Falls, where logs were mechanically ground up into pulp and then made into newsprint and, ultimately, newspapers. Although our basic approach to papermaking remains remarkably similar today, the technologies and our products are far different.

Watch it here, and contrast it with making premium printing papers here.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

via cnn

“The publication of Green’s Dictionary of Slang—a product of 17 years of work that make it the largest slang dictionary ever published in English—is for anyone who loves words and likes to laugh.”

Read the rest of the post here.

“The three volumes of Green’s Dictionary of Slang demonstrate the sheer scope of a lifetime of research by Jonathon Green, the leading slang lexicographer of our time. A remarkable collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language, it covers slang from the past five centuries right up to the present day, from all the different English-speaking countries and regions. Totaling 10.3 million words and over 53,000 entries, the collection provides the definitions of 100,000 words and over 413,000 citations.”

Priced at $450, you can order it here.

Business Cards: Page XIII

[Middle Row] Great color choices for the Newport Bay Restaurant card; it fits the rustic feel.

[Bottom Row] Middle card: A sample card again. The angled torn paper really helps to make this card stand out.

Happy Birthday Ira Glass

Ira Glass (born March 3, 1959) is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life, one of our favorite podcasts to enjoy on road trips.

You can learn more about him here, he answers questions about himself here, and listen to him interview his first cousin once removed composer Philip Glass here,

Ira Glass/Philip Glass Join Forces At Soho Apple Store Jan 21, 2010

Fishs Eddy & Vintage Metal Stationer’s Engraving Blocks

via pomme designs

“ . . . Dave, one of the owners of Fishs Eddy, made a fortuitous find on a recent buying trip to the Midwest: Vintage metal stationer's engraving blocks from the 1940’s and 1950’s! He came back with hundreds of initials and full addresses, most in their original boxes with handwritten names and dates of when they were last used.”

I had the great pleasure of seeing these engraving blocks in person with two of my best  friends. Fishs Eddy is a fascinating place to wander through. I noticed what looked like letterpress blocks nestled on an old desk surrounded by glassware. The outer boxes were curious as well with handwritten labels from the ’40s. I realized what they were, and while looking through the various names, monograms, and address blocks from the Philadelphia region, it was thrilling to even find a few that were still wrapped and taped closed, never opened since they were created by Baily Banks & Biddle. Priced very reasonably, I just couldn’t figure out what I could use these for, so I just appreciated them for their beauty and craft and continued exploring and shopping with my companions.

Earworm: The Chain

A few years after this album was released, I picked it up [along with a dozens other albums being discarded] beside a dumpster behind the Mifflin County Library. This  was before I drove, so I balanced the stack on my skateboard, and pushed them home through the back alleys to Walnut Street.

Listen to The Chain here.

Shackleton’s Antarctica in Color, 1915

via retronaut

“These are Frank Hurley’s famous early colour photographs of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated ‘Endurance’ voyage, as part of the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914-1917. Hurley was the official photographer on the expedition.”

Read the rest, and see more of Hurley’s color photographs here.

March 2, 1887: Birth of the Master Locksmith

via wired

1887: Harry Soref is born. The inventor will miniaturize the security of a bank vault into the everyday padlock.

Read about him here.

Oliver Sacks: Prosopagnosia

via world science festival
The Story of the Living, Breathing Mirror
Living with the perceptual disorder known as prosopagnosia—the inability to recognize even the faces of people you know—can be difficult. But it can also be awkwardly funny, as the legendary author and neurologist Oliver Sacks recounts from his life experiences of living face blind.



Can I Catch Face Blindness?


Coping with Face Blindness


More on Oliver Sacks’ most recent book, The Mind’s Eye, can be found here. Watch short videos featuring Chuck Close here. I remember first seeing a painting by Close at the Carnegie Museum of Art in the early ’80s. It was fascinating seeing a large painting of his from across a massive room, and being constantly amazed as I walked up to within inches of it.

Becky Blanton: Secrets of Black & White

via colourlovers

“There really is no such thing as color. Color is just the reflection of light, which is why at night things are shades of grey, or black — there is no light to reflect. During the day, or with a flashlight, different substances or objects absorb and reflect different wavelengths of light, making us believe we are seeing color when we’re not.

The power of color then is its ability to alter our consciousness, our thoughts, our emotions, our perceptions. White is the presence of ALL color and the absence of all color. Black is the absence of all color and the presence of all color. If you mix all the primary colors — you get black. Yet you cannot mix any pigments to get white, although through additive and subtractive mixing of light you can. Where does the color go? And where does it come from?”

Read the rest of the post here, go to TRiiiBES’ Color & Form PDF here.

Marko Costanzo: Foley Artist

via wired

“If you want a film to really have visceral impact, the sound maketh the movie—and the foley artist maketh the sound. During a shoot, mic placement is optimized for dialog, and the quality of background sounds can suffer. That’s where the foley artist steps in, re-creating and recording those other noises, from footsteps to crackling fires, as discrete layers that can be edited into the scene. The practice goes back to Jack Foley, part of the team that transformed the 1929 silent movie Show Boat into an ear-tickling musical hit. Some say great foley is the stuff that goes unnoticed: the soft swirl of a waltzing dress. . . ”

Read the rest here.

Wood Type: 5 line De Vinne

via letterpress daily

I love the slight nick in the Open Counter.

Tekhelet, Snails, and the Midnight Sky

via nytimes

“One of the mysteries that scholars have puzzled over for centuries is the exact shade of blue represented by ‘tekhelet,’ which the Bible mentions as the color of ceremonial robes donned by high priests and ritual prayer tassels worn by the common Israelite.

Though scientists and scholars are still debating the exact shade of the ritual blue, the dye used is modeled after a 2,000-year-old textile, above, and is produced from sea snails found in Israeli waters.

What was known about tekhelet (pronounced t-CHELL-et) was that the Talmud said it was produced from the secretion of the sea snail, which is still found on Israeli beaches. Traditional interpretations have characterized tekhelet as a pure blue, symbolic of the heavens so that Jews would remember God. Not so, according to an Israeli scholar who has a new analysis: tekhelet appears to have been closer to a bluish purple.

The scholar, Zvi C. Koren, a professor specializing in the analytical chemistry of ancient colorants, says he has identified the first known physical sample of tekhelet in a tiny, 2,000-year-old patch of dyed fabric recovered from Masada, King Herod’s Judean Desert fortress, later the site of a mass suicide by Jewish zealots after a long standoff against the Romans.

‘It really is majestic,’ Dr. Koren said of the shade, which he said remained close to its original hue and appeared to be indigo. . . ”

Read the rest here.

Virtual Letterpress for iPad

via Mark Simonson Studio 

“LetterMPress is a virtual letterpress app for the iPad—at least that’s the idea. The project is using Kickstarter to raise funds to complete the app and to acquire wood type fonts to include (virtually) in the app.

... Not only will you be able to make compositions on a virtual press bed with virtual wood type, mix and apply virtual ink, and make virtual prints, if all goes according to plan, you will be able to send them your design and have it all done for real, with real wood type, ink, and paper.”

Learn more about the project here.