via International Printing MuseumRead this month’s wood-type column to learn about this popular typeface that was the darling of the liquor industry and was also used in the title of several movies.
Read more about Goudy Bold here.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Wood Type of the Month: Goudy Bold
via International Printing MuseumRead this month’s wood-type column to learn about this popular typeface that was the darling of the liquor industry and was also used in the title of several movies.
Read more about Goudy Bold here.
Business Cards: Page XV
The middle card is Nittany Valley Offset’s. I always liked the full-color ribbon effect with the subtle n [in blue to green] and v [orange to red] on this fold-over card. For a while they were going by NVO, and I guess this ribbon effect didn’t include an o.They are still one of the better printers in the region, but their new logo has taken a dive. Far right card: The drop cap T just overwhelms this card, and the double rule lines are just unnecessary.
[Middle Row] Gold foil on transparent red plastic, now THAT says sandblasting to me! [ *s ] Again, low light and even color blind people will have a trip with this card. Far right card, one of the many in my collection of my father-in-law’s. This was printed at Penn State Printing Services before I started there in ’93. The Lion on the shield is referred to the ‘buggy eyed lion’ — used when the logo is relatively small. Jim’s personal card is below this one, probably done at either Kish Printing or Lewistown Printing, but my bet is the latter. Hot type, multiple font faces, centered. Classic Lewistown Printing style. I loved taking projects to them while I worked across the street at Danks Department store as the graphic designer and later as art director. Seeing a Linotype in action while you wait for a proof to be pulled was stepping back into another era.
[Bottom Row] WC Fritos card from my joining the WC Fritos club. Next, I always liked this card from State College the magazine, most likely designed at Snavely, Vidar, and Associates. Good use of having items “on a grid” and sticking to it, as well as color choices and complementing fonts.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Image of the Night: Pie on Pi Day
Pi Day
A Brief History of pi
“Pi has been known for almost 4000 years—but even if we calculated the number of seconds in those 4000 years and calculated pi to that number of places, we would still only be approximating its actual value.”Here’s a brief history of finding pi on the Exploratorium’s site, more on the pi Day site. and a Facebook page.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Spirit Photography
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| Houdini and ghost of Abraham Lincoln |
“The late 19th century saw a rise in spiritualism in the United States and the world. Indeed, even Mrs. Abraham Lincoln was convinced that ghosts and spirits existed and this, in part, fueled others in similar beliefs. Photography at the time was still rather unaccessible and misunderstood by the ordinary citizen, their images usually taken by photographers in studios. Enter the dishonest photographer to the popular spiritual seance scene, and an opportunity for a past buck appeared. These unscrupulous photographers would bring a person into their ‘spiritual studio’ and a ‘mock’ seance was performed. Of course, when the photo was taken, the victim paid the money and instructed to come back the next day to see ‘what may have materialized.’”
Read the rest here, see more images here.
Creative Roles: The Slow Cooker
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.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
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.
Vegetarian Food & Nut Co. 1926
via shorpyNote 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.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Van Lanen, Matthew Carter, and Ampersands
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| 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.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Black Raven Brewing Company
spotted on the edible raven blog
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| Gray crest logo style t-shirt |
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.
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 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.
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| Desktop image in red, that I am using at work. |
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| . . . 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.
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| The original 1939 poster |
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.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Image of the Day: At 25 or 6 Before
“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
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Brilliant Line
“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.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Image of the Day: Electro • Touch
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.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
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.
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.
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| 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. |
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| The Folmer & Schwing tripod top -- with an ampersand stamped into the wood. |
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| Close-up of the ampersand. |
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| 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.
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.
[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.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer
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| My results playing 13 rounds this morning |
“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
Find out more about Ada Lovelace here, and here.
The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History
via makeNo. 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.
Friday, March 4, 2011
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.
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
[Bottom Row] Middle card: A sample card again. The angled torn paper really helps to make this card stand out.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
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,
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| 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.
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