Wood Type of the Month: Goudy Bold

via International Printing Museum

Read 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.

1908: Many of These There

via shorpy

“November 1908. Lincolnton, North Carolina. Daniel Mfg. Co. Girl beginning to spin. Many of these there. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.”

View full size here.

Business Cards: Page XV

[Top Row] The Nut Ranch — this looks like just the start of the design process; “Hmmm... what were all the elements that the client requested on their card? I’ll place the graphic and set the type they wrote down on this scrap of paper. I wonder how it would look all stacked flush left? Not quite right; the balance seems to be off, the house seems lost, and the point sizes aren’t quite right. Oh, and they are missing the city, state, and zip code. I’ll get to that later. Hmmm... Let’s see, if I make the... [phone rings]. Hello? Oh, funny coincidence, I was working on your card just now! Oh, you need it NOW? I wasn’t really finished, but... well sure it looks okay, but... if you are sure. I’d really rather you see a proof before we print it. You don’t have a fax machine? How many? WHEN? Okay, I’ll literally burn the plate as soon as I am off the phone. They’ll still be wet when you pick them up, just keep that in mind.” 


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.

Image of the Day: Desiccant Beads

I just liked the random pattern created by these desiccant beads.

Image of the Night: Pie on Pi Day

Nothing beats sharing a slice of Mrs. Smith’s Cherry Pie served on Pi Day!

Savage Chickens: Pie Chart

Visit Doug Savage’s site here. Makes me smile, especially 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.

Spirit Photography

Houdini and ghost of Abraham Lincoln

via accidental mysteries

“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

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.