Blog of Note: But Does it Float

But Does it Float is a blog filled with amazing imagery and links to even more. Just look what I found there!

Blog of Note: Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Jim Linderman documents an impressive variety of ephemera on his blog, Dull Tool Dim Bulb - he's got posts on fashion trends, amusing imagery, pulp illustrators and things you can make...and that's just the start of it. But there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a golmine in terms of links - I've found so many great blogs by clicking around here. Thanks, Jim!

Omnivore Books and Peter Pauper Press

Yesterday Mom and I headed down to Omnivore, the amazing cookbook store down on Cesar Chavez. We spent a while there, just basking in the treasures we found and admiring the cozy space, and finally we whittled down our stacks to the essentials. I got a small book from Peter Pauper Press - the recipes are so simple, and the illustrations are so beautiful.

Here are some examples of their 1950s graphic covers:

via radlibrary

via tinstars

J.K. Keller's Insecurity Envelopes

This guy is awesome. These laser cut envelopes by J.K. Keller are based on the patterns printed inside of those mundane office envelopes. I wish I got some mail in one - it's so lacy and delicate, less insecure and more dainty than one might expect.

Insecurity Envelopes

Stefan Sagmeister

I just got the new Stefan Sagmeister book, "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far," which I had seen on some other blog recently. I didn't really read the article, but I stared at the cover art for a really long time. I found the book the other day at a bookstore in Potrero Hill and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I like everything about this guy - his perspective, his execution, the way her writes - and the lovely chapbook-style packaging is an added bonus. Each booklet talks about one or two of his recent projects (he creates sentences out of unusual materials or circumstances), and the backstory adds a lot to each of the pieces.

Here's one of the pieces on his website: Being Not Truthful Works Against Me.

And here he is at the TED Talks!

I don't know what it is, but this man's work has profoundly changed me. I hope you'll take a look.

TED Talks: Jonathon Harris

I've been watching the TED Talks videos, a series of fascinating speeches by a variety of professionals in the areas of Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The TED Talks have been going on since the early 1980s, but now they're available to everyone on the web. I like what their website says:

"Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole."

Jonathon Harris' lecture on his work was particularly interesting: check out his projects, which include WE FEEL FINE and UNIVERSE.

His graphic sense is so engaging, and the recurring themes he points out - feelings of love, special moments among family and friends, milestones in one's life - help to connect the sometimes isolated world of blogs and filesharing sites.

Art is War

So my friends started a website called Artiswar - it's a user-based site for the discussion of design. As they (and I) see it, design has come to mean something sleek and commercial...but that's only a part of what it can be. They are hoping to engage people in a conversation about design's diverse impact. Art criticism is welcome too, as we all feel the line between design and art is best when left blurry. Come on over to the website and join up. Or just click around on their lovely layout.

Blog of Note: things to look at

Things to Look At is one of my favorite blogs. I'm always excited to see what they post - the images they find are so inspirational. While I'm not sure what this inspires me to do, I am going to keep looking at it in the hope of figuring it out.

Beautiful Bucks

circa 1882

circa 1890

I was looking for images of bald eagles for a project, and I came across the rag and bone blog. I've read a couple of posts before, but this one about the history of the American dollar was especially interesting. I didn't know the patterns had varied so greatly; I just know how sad I was when they issued the new $20 bill. Yuck. So here are some gems from the past. The post also shows a couple of bills with Martha Washington on the front. Check it out!

Olle Eksell

I saw this book on Olle Eksell at Rare Device last weekend, and I've been thinking about it for days. I like the way he uses color to define space; he seems like a good-humored person, someone I'd want to hang out with. Maybe it's because he did a lot of work for children's books, or maybe it's his use of ochres and pinks, or his scribbly handwriting, but there's something totally comforting about his illustrations. Something unmistakeably hyggelig. So I'm going back tomorrow to get the book. It'll be on my coffee table next time you come over.

Junk Pirate

I picked up this zine called Junk Pirate at Rock Paper Scissors this week. This guy, Pete Glover, collects interesting images - here are some playing cards from the color images section of his website. My favorite is the "awkward/pretty" one. It reminded me of this article on vintage playing cards I snipped from Martha Stewart's Living Magazine (dude, like i care. i know you read it too). Here are some images: