In honor of the Brooklyn Bridge’s 125th Birthday
“The Grand Display of Fireworks and Illuminations: at the opening of the Great Suspension Bridge between New York and Brooklyn on the evening of May 24th, 1883”
John Augustus Roebling was the orignal designer for the Brooklyn Bridge. He began work on the bridge in 1867. The costly endeavor took 13 years to build, and unfortunately claimed numerous lives. Sadly, Roebling lost a couple toes duing an accident on the construction site and did not live to see his spectacular design reach completion. He died on July 22, 1869. His son, Washington Roebling, lived to help carry out his father’s legacy.
top image credit: Currier & Ives : a catalogue raisonné / compiled by Gale Research. Detroit, MI : Gale Research, c1983, no. 2691 (Library of Congress)
bottom image credit: Photographic Print on Stereo Card © 1888 George Barker (Library of Congress)
A sixth grader from Castro Valley, California won this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition. Grace Moon’s logo was visible on Google’s homepage today. There were 16,000 submissions all in response to the 2008 theme, “What If...?”
I found the winner’s artist statement to be very cute:
“My doodle, “Up in the Clouds,” expresses a world in the sky. This new
world is clean and fresh, and people are social and enlightened. Every
person here is treated as family no matter who they are. The bright sun
heats this ideal place with warmth, love, and brightens everyone's day.“ —Grace Moon
Google has set up a map of the USA to see the rest of the Doodle 4 Google finalists.
Link: Doodle for Google
Notes from Russia by Alexei Plutser-Sarno
After 20 years of research and collecting, Alexei Plutser-Sarno gives a glimpse of Russian street culture as observed through the graphic fragments of hand-made public notices.
The interior design of the book is very elegant, with careful selection of paper stocks. Embossing on the paper over board cover is a nice touch to help give the tattered paper aesthetic a more authentic look.
This is first title I’ve purchased a book from the publisher Fuel. The publishing group Fuel is an outgrowth of a design studio of the same name founded by Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell in 1991. Murray & Sorrell (FUEL) were both the designers and the editors for the book.
Link: Notes from Russia book
The Graphic Design Festival Breda is a 5 week long festival, running from May 23, 2008 — June 29, 2008 in Breda, NL. Below is an animated short movie for the event designed by Studio Smack.
For the 35th Anniversary of Wacky Packs, The Topps Company and Harry N. Abrams published a fun book that is designed beautifully. I bought the book purely based on the cover and curiosity. The book was shrinkwrapped---and at the time I wasn’t familiar with the pop culture icon, Wacky Packs. I’m very happy I took the chance with this one.
The look and feel of the dust jacket resembles the original wax paper used for Wacky Packs. Art Spiegelman, an original artist for the stickers, wrote the foreword “Wacky Days.” The book is a nice size, almost 250 pages (233 Wacky Pack stickers are shown in 4-color) with approx a 5 x 7 trim.
The designer of the book is Neil Egan.
“Wacky Packages—a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging—were first produced by the Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than their flagship line of baseball cards. The series has been relaunched several times over the years, most recently to great success in 2007.
Known affectionately among collectors as “Wacky Packs,” with artist Art Spiegelman, as a key creative force, the stickers were illustrated by such notable comics artists as Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, and Norm Saunders.
This first-ever collection of Series One through Series Seven celebrates the 35th anniversary of Wacky Packages and is sure to amuse collectors and fans young and old. “Includes interview with Art Spiegelman and bonus pack of four rare and never-before-printed Wacky Packages stickers.” ” –from publisher Abrams
For a quick and easy history of Wacky Packs, there was a segment on a Food Networks Unwrapped episode:
Link: New Wacky Packages Book
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About Me:
- Working on:
everything but what I should be doing. - Listening to:
television - Reading:
a few too many things at once: The Host by Stephanie Meyer, The End of America by Naomi Wolf, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami - Watching:
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
