National Postcard Week, May 2-9

Send your deltiologist buddy a handmade postcard next week. It'll make you both feel good.

Postcard by Rebecca at Rar Rar Press, who we met a couple years back at Crafty Bastards Art and Craft Fair.

Poop Rainbows, Part Doo

Since our Caldor post last week, visions of brown/orange/yellow rainbows have danced through our heads. They've been popping up everywhere we look, despite our best efforts to ignore them. Arrrgh. Someone please make them go away.

Clockwise from top left: Magnum P.I.'s awesome helicopter, pair of Jingas, Brad Keselowski's winning car from this weekend's Tallegega race, and our hometown Metro

Feel free to point out others in the comments section.

Weekend Fun

Fun in the shop this weekend. Here's Maria working the Pilot to make a baby shower invitation.

Paper is Crane Lettra (110#, pearl white); type is handset lead; size A6 with rounded corners

Drainspotting, part II

There's more than just one function to those wily Japanese manholes we wrote about last week.. Aya Tsukioka, a Japanese designer, uses them to avert theft. The New York Times ran a piece awhile back on her line of clothing and accessories that use stealthy optics to thwart crime:

"Take the “manhole bag,” a purse that can hide valuables by unfolding to look like a sewer cover. Lay it on the street with your wallet inside, and unwitting thieves are supposed to walk right by."

She also designed the backpack on the right that unfolds to reveal a replica fire extinguisher box. (Good for both kids who get beat up by bullies and for naive altar boys.) Her most ambitious clothing line features a skirt that unfurls into a full-sized soda machine. Amazing.

Brown Town

Brown is a favorite color of letterpress printers. Used right, brown adds the perfect touch of refined elegance. Used wrong, it looks like a poop rainbow.

I miss Caldor.

Tradin' Paint II

So while comparing Darrell Waltrip's paint schemes, I ran across a couple other gems worth sharing. Okay, I ran across a zillion worth sharing, but I'll spare everyone.

Talk about being true to your sport: what more perfect embodiment of NASCAR is there besides chew and brew? Behold two of the most iconic paint jobs in racing. "Handsome" Harry Gant steered his Skoal Bandit Chevy Monte Carlo (left) for over a decade in the Winston Cup series. Bobby Allison's 1988 Miller High Life scheme (right) literally glimmered with gold metallic paint. Yup, even them wheels.

Incidentally, you can thank ol' Bobby for the style of racing you'll see at Talladega this weekend. Twenty-two years ago Allison was involved in a crash at Talladega so horrific that NASCAR instituted the restrictor plate to reduce a car's top speed. Drivers could no longer travel at 200+ mph, but hey -- at least they could still enjoy some dip and a cold one!

Getting Started in Letterpress

Being a hobby printer is a huge leap that many want to take. And for most, it's a worthwhile and fulfilling avocation. But as with all commitments, it's good to look before you take that leap. One place that ties together all the disparate resources out there is this post from Joie Studio. (Its two years old, but still timely.) Pictured is a piece of her work -- which, if you follow her advice, you could be producing in no time at all. Well, okay, in some time.

Drainspotting

In a stroll down the back alleys of Flickr, it's easy to bump into a photo pool of Japanese manhole covers (they're the fancy ones pictured above). Photographers and designers alike celebrate that country's penchant for spicing up the streetscape with creative, colorful motifs. You can even find maps of exactly where these gems can be found. Stateside, we're fascinated to find that government-types care enough to create utility covers that willfully transcend their purpose.

A quick (and rain-soaked) survey of Duckpin Press' neighborhood manhole covers revealed the non-fancy type pictured above. In fact, our covers are exactly what you'd think they'd be: utilitarian, inconspicuous, and forgettable. Hunks of iron pressed into perfect circles with the least amount of embellishment. Some say SEWER or WATER METER while others stand resolute and silent, there only to serve one purpose. And that's how it should be.

Architect Louis Kahn famously asked, "What does a brick want to be?" His question speaks to the theory that design should be true to the materials that comprise it. It should also be true to its purpose. A brick wants to be formally stacked with others just like it in order to form a wall. That is its calling. And though that wall may appear mundane, it is the purest expression of the brick.

With our manhole covers, their workaday forms clearly speak to their pragmatic function. We make similar design judgments all the time in the shop. When setting agate type (the tiny, fineprinty stuff), you wouldn't think of adding a swash capital. Why? Because agate needs only to be legible, functional, and efficient. That's its calling. It would be antithetical for it to, say, compete with the headline. In design, we know not everything needs to fight for your attention.

So I'm with Louis Kahn when it comes to manhole covers: I'll take our unassuming -- but honest -- treatment over a contrived design any day.

Boogity Boogity Boogity

As much of a goofball as you may think Darrell Waltrip is in the Fox booth, the guy was one hell of a driver -- and always entertaining. I remember watching him in Victory Lane at the 1989 Daytona 500 celebrating his win by doing the Icky Shuffle. His childlike exuberance was stunning, and was one of those moments when you realize that these guys really just want to have fun out there. But to have fun, you gotta have a sponsor painted on the hood. And car for car, I think Darrell had the best paint schemes out there.

The Pepsi Challenger Monte Carlo (top left) wasn't one of the best executed advertising jobs I've seen, but it's a good example of what was pretty much par for the course. For every iconic design (think Richard Petty's #43 STP), there were a dozen that we're lackluster. Compare that humdrum Monte Carlo to the Gatorade and Mountain Dew Buicks. Those paint schemes are classic, the white border perfectly framing the green fields. Those two cars scream speed just standing still, and yet were effective billboards at 180 mph. And I get thirsty just looking at them. (Nerd intermission: Note how the "88" retains its personality, yet is perfectly legible with those outsized counters -- important at top speed. Compare it to Dale, Jr.'s muddy 88. No way you're reading that when you're in the stands. You can do better than that, fellas.)

That 1989 Daytona 500 was the 17th attempt by Waltrip to win the Great American Race, and he did it in the #17. That car is known as the "Tide Ride," and for me is the best paint scheme ever to run. The car just glowed from its fluorescent paint job. You couldn't miss it on TV either, as it left long, orange contrails whenever it zoomed past the camera. Maybe it was just our crappy TV, but his Chevy looked like a comet streaking across the screen. That kind of cosmic speed would make me want to do the Icky Shuffle, too.

Better Make Mine Decaf

This tribute to Helvetica makes me laugh every time I see it. Raise a mug to your overcaffeinated typographer friend. If you don't have an overcaffeinated typographer friend, consider yourself lucky. They're really no fun to have around. Especially when they insist on calling out the typeface on every piece of signage they pass by. Wanna know how annoying that is? Ask Christine, 'cause Pete does it all the time. She likes to call it "Font Tourette's".

Now if we could just find this mug in Hobo....

"E"s and Carrots

Davey D. dropped by the other day with Evan, the cutest kid Bloomingdale ever did see. Just after he was born, Evan, mom, and dad all helped create his birth announcement. A variation of the announcement was included in the APA bundle last summer. For that version, I replaced the blind debossed "E" with one inked in transparent blue. (The humidity in the basement sometimes compromises the effect of a blind deboss.)

Can't wait until lil' E turns one and we can do another project for him. And I really can't wait until he turns 16 and becomes an apprentice at the shop. Someone's gotta distribute all that type!

Paper is Crane Lettra (110#, pearl white); type and ornaments are handset lead; big E is 16-line Clarendon; approx. 3.75" square

Don't forget to eat your veggies, kids!

Theresa Brown

LeDroit Park, home of Duckpin Press, lost a true champion last month. Theresa Brown, founder of the LeDroit Park Preservation Society, was the neighborhood's biggest advocate and a fierce watchdog of its architectural heritage. Terry pretty much single-handedly fought for LeDroit Park to be registered as a historic district. It turned out to be a prescient move given the encroachment the neighborhood was facing from all sides. And though we lost some grand homes, the housing stock remains remarkably intact. (Above is a mural showing the entrance to the neighborhood; below are assorted homes.)

Today, LeDroit Park's enduring scale and charm stands as a tribute to Terry Brown's work. Fortunately, she lived longed enough to see the fruits of her labor, and to the end relished sharing her neighborhood's story with all who visited. Recently, the Washington Post shared her story.

Happy Half, Jase

Most of the time half-birthdays aren't worth the calendars they're printed on. But when you're a lazy blogger, they're the perfect occasions to give a shout out to your family. Pictured is a birthday card we made for my brother James back in October. Instead of sending to his house in LA, we shipped it down to Florida where the family was meeting up to celebrate Mom's birthday. We didn't even consider the logistics of Jase attempting to carry such a monstrous card (16"x20") back on the planeride home. Doh!

Enjoy the day, Jase. You're already halfway there to getting another card. But this time we'll make it a normal size.

Paper is Hot Fudge-flavored Poptone from the French Paper Company; assorted wood type, metal stars; hand inked in 3 colors on the cylinder press. Approx. 16" x 20".

A Pattern Language

We make sense of the world by recognizing patterns, an exigency of survival we inherited from our Neanderthal aunts and uncles. (No, not the ones who came out the woodwork to swig down the open bar at your wedding.) It was a matter of life and death for them: interpret the repetition inherent in nature, or be eaten. Fortunately, in a life full of modern amenities like GPS, rifles, and open bars, we're allowed to be lazy. But that doesn't mean that somewhere in the backs of our heads we don't still have a taste for order, repetition, and structure. Well, given the fact that there are a billion Denny's, maybe it's still in the front of our heads. So while you're enjoying that Lumberjack Slam breakfast this morning, feast on the above posters. (Click to enlarge.)

These screenprinted concert posters, all done by other designers, employ simple patterning to make a statement. My personal favs are the first two, though they aren't necessarily the best looking. What I like is the design decision to overprint a pattern without regard to what's beneath it.

It's our Neanderthal forebears we can thank for making that design decision a deft one instead of a dumb one. From the first homo erectus who roamed the earth (Strom Thurman?), through the ensuing half million years (YEC's: insert 6,000 years here), we've developed not only the capacity to recognize patterns, but -- equally as important -- the ability to turn them off in our mind. That's key here. We're able to spot a moose in the first poster precisely because cavemen needed to spot a moose. His survival depended on it. Just think, if he wasn't able to pick out the moose through all the trees, he couldn't kill it; he'd get no breakfast, and we wouldn't have Denny's.

Posters are by Aesthetic Apparatus, Heads of State, The Small Stakes, Yeehaw Industries, and Methane Studios. This post's title is a hat tip to Christopher Alexander.

Going Crackers

I've spent my share of time staring at the DC Metro map, trundling through the tunnels and avoiding eye contact with fellow passengers. The British apparently suffer the same fate, but do a more constructive job of channeling their boredom. Behold Animals of the Underground, a terrific site dedicated to spotting fauna within the Tube map. Any good animals you know of state-side?