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?