Today we took a trip to one of our local Winnipeg printers. Not only do they print, but they also do letterpress, embossing, custom die cuts and basically everything you can imagine. So where is this illustrious printing plant located? Near the baseball stadium practically under the train tracks. Oh and it’s not so much a plant as it is a shop.
We came for business cards, but left with a bounty of great footage and photos of a tour of their shop. All we can give you so far are some photos, but video of these beautiful, rare machines and interviews (including an interview with someone who worked there for over 40 years!) are on their way!
Let me introduce you to our guest blogger Gabrielle Begue. She is a freelance writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She’s a big fan of neutral tones. On her blog, Object Lesson, she gushes about the awesome appeal of objects. Now, here she is…
My boyfriend is a graphic designer. He is also a raging type nerd. It’s impossible for us to walk down the street without stopping to dissect the kerning of a laundromat sign or marvel at some insane hand-painted lettering in a deli window. “Look at those serifs!” “Jesus, that is the craziest ƒ I have ever seen.” “Ugh, why did they choose Comic Sans? They’re basically asking us not to eat here.”
Now he pop quizzes me on fonts. We’ll be walking to dinner and, even if I’m in the middle of a sentence, he’ll point and say, “Name that typeface!” Now I do know a few fonts – as a writer and editor I am intimate with Times New Roman, which I know makes him cringe – but I can’t readily recognize them, especially not under the gun like that. Over time I picked up some names that I would just throw out, hoping one would stick. My first choice is usually Hobo because I like to say “hobo.” I also like to say Bodoni (a.k.a. the Vogue typeface) because it sounds like what a surfer would call a donut or a hot girl. Recently, though, I’ve become a little more savvy thanks to the sometimes illustrious, sometimes weird, always memorable origins of the fonts’ names.
So, like a weakling who’s been bullied and takes it out on his little sister, I’ve constructed my own brief pop quiz for you readers, culled from the copious signage of Brooklyn.
Answers at the end of the post.
Here we go:
1. First, I’ve learned that this is like the cardinal sin of type treatment: vertical type. As my boyfriend would say, “Barf!” But looking beyond that, this type shares its name with a very generous New York neck-beard enthusiast whose wife invented jell-o.
2. Let’s focus on “beacon’s” (unless you want to show off and name the second one, too). If asked, this typeface would probably choose to sit in a Wassily chair and rationalize this very rational choice in crisp, steely Deutsche.
3. Duh, easy. This one’s a movie star.
4. This font probably hasn’t shaved in a long time. By the way, it’s inexplicably popular in my neighborhood. I chose this business because I like the alliteration.
5. Bonus round. Can you name ALL THREE fonts on this awning? I sure as hell can’t.
So how did you do?
1. Cooper Black
2. Bauhaus
3. Helvetica
4. Hobo
5. Anybody’s guess.
We’ve all seen them. Do-it-yourself poster ads carelessly thrown up around the city. They are usually a desperate, last minute attempt to get rid of, find or advertise something. Visual jibber-jabber, if you will.
What Cardon Copy is doing is taking this non-sense and making sense of it all.
The process involves finding some fliers/posters/what-have-you, taking down the information word for word and redesigning them into a more powerful, eye-catching message. He then removes the original and replaces it with his own. Sort of like a poster redesign fairy.
Thom, Peter and Chris go to a local antique warehouse and explore most of the 6 floors in search of some nice office chairs for our meetings. Pack rats rejoice!
We found a dinosaur’s mummified body! And by we, I mean humans. In Montana!
In the photos above you can see paleontology’s latest breakthrough. His name is Leonardo, a Brachylophosaurus.
With his mummified dino body, paleontologists were able to get well acquainted with stomach contents (a salad of ferns, conifers and magnolias), skin texture and x-rays of its inner workings. Leonardo was apparently mummified through some sort of cement like grave. Possibly during a flood. I’m no scientist, so I suggest you read up on it from the pros.
So we’ve been putting out open calls for contributors to our blog on craigslist for the past week and needless to say, I’ve received some very strange replies. Naturally, we’ve been doing the classy thing and keeping it to ourselves, but this one is just too good to not share. This is an actual response. Wether or not this person was serious is debatable. If only there was some way to tell…
A simple board game with beautiful design, extensive terminology (leaner, column, reaction, conversion, kiss, etc) and its own philosophy. Did I mention that it’s based on science? Magical science!
This game is based on the idea that polar opposite magnetic charges will repel. The object is to successfully balance one magnetic disc on another disc’s magnetic field (thus creating a “leaner”). Once you get good at this, you can start strategically placing your discs and leaners to cause your opponent to trigger a “reaction” (discs go crazy and stick to each other). This creates a “column” which means big points for whoever didn’t cause the reaction. It’s all very fun.
So naturally I brought it to work for everyone to enjoy. Here are some stills of our enjoyment (for your enjoyment).
Ed had just got back from New York and to our surprise, so did New York! And London. And France. Oh, and Tokyo.
I am talking, of course, about Industrial Facility’s “City in a Bag” for Muji. These wonderful and well designed wooden desk ornaments allow you to recreate some of the world’s most famous cities. Or, if you’re feeling creative, redesign some of the world’s most famous cities. Here’s what we did with them..
Everybody Look At Your Hands is a blog dedicated to the design of Penguin’s book covers of the 50s to late 70s and early 80s. It’s populated by my own collection of Penguins and updated almost daily. It also justifies my addiction to these modern classics.
So click on the mock-book cover above and feel free to judge some books by their covers.
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