GPO in the 21st Century

We've written several times about the Government Printing Office, the behoemeth print operation just down the road from us. Though it isn't humming at quite the same rate it did in its heyday, an article in today's Washington Post talks about how the GPO is preparing for its future:

"Pressmen are being trained to operate digital presses designed for shorter runs. When they retire, their jobs will move to a new generation schooled in building e-book partnerships and designing iPhone apps."

Though the GPO is going digital to stay relevant, paper lovers needn't get themselves too dogeared:

"For whose who fear the end of the printed word, there is good news. GPO officials, working with librarians in the federal depository system, have come up with a canon of about 160 titles that will continue be printed by the GPO indefinitely, from the Economic Report of the President to the Internal Revenue Bulletin."

Personally, I can't think of better bedtime reading than the Internal Revenue Bulletin. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The piece also features an historic photo gallery.

Wildwood

Duckpin's apprentice-for-life, Christine, just returned from Wildwood, New Jersey. She was there as part of the Society for Commercial Archeology's "Wildwood Daze" conference. (Christine moonlights as a preservationist when she's not slinging ink.) According to their mission statement, SCA is "the nation’s oldest organization devoted to the buildings, artifacts, structures, signs, and symbols of the 20th-century commercial landscape. The SCA recognizes the historical significance the automobile has had in shaping our landscape and culture."  

Christine was there to present her paper “A Need for Speed: The Cultural Landscape of Stock Car Racetracks” which examines the impact of race car culture on the built environment. But more importantly, she was there to tour the Wildwoods. While there, she captured some great signage from this mecca of Doo-Wop design. We'll be using it as inspiration in upcoming projects. Hope you can, too.

Click on images for the wicked big size

When the Spirits Move You

 

Every designer hits the wall. You're working feverishly on a project and reach a dead end. Ideas stop flowing... you look with increasing disdain at the work you've done... you need fresh ideas, new inspiration. Soon you find yourself staring at a bottle of booze.

But instead of looking for the liquid to inspire fresh ideas, perhaps the bottle itself could. That's certainly the case with packaging from Stranger & Stranger. The bi-continental firm specializes in souping up the sauce. Their designs for beer, wine, and spirits are intricate, nuanced, and—like a smooth pour—timeless.

Duckpin Pale Ale

Just in time for the fall bowling season, Union Craft Brewing has rolled out Duckpin Pale Ale. And what fine city would produce such a beer? Why, Baltimore of course. Now you can celebrate Charm City's two favorite pastimes at once: duckpin bowling and getting drunk. Bottoms up!

h/t to Chris for the find

Sanborn Maps

Have you ever looked at a finished product and just know that its creator really put his or her soul into it? Think the KitchenAid mixer, the Scenicruiser bus, Sanborn maps. The last of these was a series of maps created from just after the Civil War to 2007 to assess fire insurance liabilities. Today, due to their exacting detail, they are used by historians and preservationists for insight into cities of the past. And to the typophile, their cover sheets continue to provide a dose of beauty and inspiration. Below are some examples of titling from Sanborn maps. Here are many more.

Click for larger view. H/T to map expert Michael Fry.

Past Future of Sports

One of the most talked about buildings at this summer's Olympics is the aquatics center. Er... centre. (We're talking about London, after all.)

There's something all Olympic cities share in common. While the organizing body of the games requires each venue to have a minimum seating capacity, that number is often far greater than what's needed once the athletes have left town. As a result, the buildings left standing are normally much outsized for the everyday use of the locals. It's reasonable to think that a college swim meet will not draw the same crowds as the world's best swimmers, right?

To solve this, Zaha Hadid Architects designed the aquatics building with two detachable seating wings. Capacity at the center can reach 17,500 for the Olympics (top rendering), while afterward it will drop to a more intimate 2,500 by removing the wings. Once removed, the construction material for the wings will be recycled for future projects, and the void in the facade will be sealed with a glass wall (bottom rendering). To facilitate removal, the steel components of the wings are bolted, not welded, to the main structure.

Below is a section showing the building in its Olympic configuration: the removable wings are shaded yellow; the pool is blue.

Funny thing is, while the planners of the venue are soaking in praise for their innovation, their basic ideas were presaged by a half century: behold the Mechanized Stadium of the Future, circa 1958.

Type Connection

If you created a Venn diagram of The Dating Game aficionados and type connoisseurs, you might find just a sliver of overlap. But that small overlap would go crazy for the the Type Connection website—and so should you. Type Connection encourages you to explore the compatibility of typefaces by creating combinations both harmonious and contrasting. The site combines choose-your-own-adventure pathways with insightful nuggets of type history. You'll come away laughing and learning something. Chuck Barris would be proud.

Movie Posters Reinvented

Reinterpreting classic movie posters is a popular pastime of designers. A collection of particularly great ones was done by Brandon Shaefer, a selection of which appear above. Buy your favorites here. (And while you're at it, buy us one, too.)

Summer Olympic Emblems

With the games of the 30th Olympiad set to open in exactly three months, we're in full Olympic mode over here at Duckpin HQ. The hurdles are set up, the cauldron is lit, and we're giggling every time we hear the term "coxswain". Over the next three months, we're gearing up to provide both our readers with design-related Olympic coverage.

First things first. Below we've assembled the official emblems from the past 19 summer games, plus this year's London 2012 logo. Pretty much every design trend from the 20th century is represented here, from the heraldic '30s to the Op Art '70s to the abomination that was the '80s. Share your personal favorite(s) in the comments section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hammering it Home

Jeff Holmberg has found an inventive way to use the metal type he bought at an antique store. Above is one in a series of wooden posters he produced using stencils, rubber stamps, paint, ink, and reclaimed wood. For a unique finish, he pounded the type into the wood fibers to leave a blind impression.

There are more photos of the posters here, as well as a lively comment thread on whether roughing-up type in this manner is a desecration. Why not weigh in?

Spring Cleaning

Spring's renewal is evident in the Duckpin Press printshop. A weekend spent cleaning has eradicated a winter's worth of dust, clutter, and loneliness. That was good. However, after we cleaned off the ol' type cabinet (above), its top was looking awfully lonely.

In day's of yore, the cabinet top was a popular repository for strip material or forms in progress. Explore the background in this photo as an example of the former, and the righthand side of this photo as the latter.

Compared to these cabinets, ours has an regrettably underutilized top. That needs to change. Currently we have our hellbox, string to tie up forms, and our printers cap. Oh, and our official shop clock and non-duckpin-sized pin. But there's something missing that we can't put our finger on. Do you have a suitable tchotchke that would be at home in the shop? The requirements are minor:

• it's gotta inspire or make us laugh
• it's gotta be able to spend the winter alone under a coat of dust and not get lonely

Any suggestions that fit the bill?

Less Than 100g

We definitely have the collector's gene. We're not talking a Hoarders-like compulsion to gather stuff, just the propensity to collect and make sense of objects. Our collections include tiki mugs, squished pennies, obituary aptronyms, and advertising images of cannibalistic animals. Naturally we were excited to explore the site Less Than 100g, a curated assemblage of "tiny and beautiful stuff". Each issue of the blog (a dozen in all) is thematic: guitar picks, bookmarks, Polaroids, buttons, etc. The site proves that sometimes the biggest collectors are drawn to the smallest objects.

Thanks to Kim for the tip.

2012 Calendars

What better way to start the year than with a fresh letterpress calendar?

Pictured above is Studio on Fire's 2012 desktop calendar. The theme of the set, "positive apocalypse", is appropriate for both the mom and the emo kid in your life. And how about calendars for those others in your life?: the bicyclist, the Chiroptera enthusiast, the naturalist, and that preachy designer-type.

Enjoy, and a happy, inky new year!

Giving Thanks

A few photos from a Duckpin Thanksgiving spent out in Shenandoah National Park: a log, a sign, a cola dispenser, and Neoproterozoic columnar basalt jointing.

Click photos for wicked big versions.

Thank you card

For the Amalgamated Printer's Association's monthly bundle, we created this piece using just wood type. We received a couple inquiries on how we did it. Here's the scoop:

First we printed the backsides of wood type to create a field of brown. We added strip material between the blocks so one could see each individual one, rather than a monolithic rectangle. We selected the pieces to include a wide variety of wood grain patterns.

Next we mixed up 3 batches of ink side-by-side: blue, white, blue. Then we took a wide brayer and commingled them so the color on the brayer transitioned from blue on one edge to white in the middle to blue on the other edge. They're mixed well so the gradient is smooth all the way across.

We locked up the rightside-up type in the proof press and hand inked it with the brayer from corner to corner. This created the blueish hues near the "T" and exclamation point . Next came the paper and a pull of the press. Presto, a thank you card!

Each of the 155 copies had to be individually hand inked to get the gradient effect. We don't have fancy equipment like a cylinder press with a split fountain, so it's all manual, all the time. The side benefit is now our biceps are jacked. Printing is the new steroids.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pantone

Now that Columbus Day has passed, it's time to decorate for Christmas!
Get a colorful jump with these Pantone-licensed "Xmas Balls" from Seletti.

(Hat tip to Santa James)

Yer Old

Happy Most-Common-U.S.-Birthday Day!
According to all the smart people on the Internet, today is the most popular birth date in the United States. Fittingly, Duckpin Press' own mom -- always part of the popular cowd -- is celebrating her birthday today. That gives us an excuse to show off the above piece we made earlier in the summer on the Pilot press. Enjoy. And happy birthday, Jackie!

Paper is Crane Lettra; Gray text is 24pt Ombree; orange text is unnamed wood typeface (well, unnamed to me, anyway -- suggestions, anyone?); 4.25" x 5.5"