Design by Bruce Robertson

Finding it a little hard to get to the bookstore lately, so I turn once again to the incredible Seven Hundred Penguins. Predictably, it didn’t take long to find an example of what has made Penguin such a great publisher over the years.


Published in 1964, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation is a fantastic example of how two colors and geometry can jump out and kick your photo-illustrated cover’s butt.

(And if anyone knows more about…
The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation

Tribes of Burma

The Plastic and Plush toy review site has started posting their “Best of 2007” lists and the Milk and Cheese vinyl set nabbed a slot on the list for “Best Packaging”.





Plastic and Plush gave the figures a nice write-up back when they were released and the virtual ink they’ve given the project has certainly been appreciated. Especially since most of the toy world virtually ignored us. Oh, cruel toy world! 
Milk and Cheese Vinyl Set Given Props @ Plastic And Plush

Someone dispensing advice by phone:

“It’s always better to make it look like it’s business-related.”

All “Overheard” posts (via del.icio.us)

Overheard

Tales of the Unexpected #93
Tales of the Unexpected #93

It’s the little calendar with the great big name!

It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which this calendar would offer a compelling alternative to a pocket calendar, but the 2008 Super Minimalist Micro Calendar Reduced appeals to my inner ten-year-old, who read and reread Alvin’s Secret Code and kept cipher keys on little rolled-up pieces of paper inserted in bits of paper straws. Why? To protect those ciphers from enemy agents.

An explanation of this calendar is available from…
Super Minimalist Micro Calendar Reduced

Forbidden Worlds #107
Forbidden Worlds #107

I wish the library had more of this junk. Sure, they’ve got Jane Austen. Who doesn’t? Libraries are stodgy. They need more crap like The Spider.

Designer name to come

When I first saw American Crescent, I immediately thought of an Economist cover I saw a year or so ago. Turns out the magazine has an archive of their covers, and I was able to find it.


In less talented hands, American Crescent would feature a shot of the Statue of Liberty facing us, with the crescent somehow affixed to the statue. And that would betray the nature of the book, which is about an acceptance of Islam that’s (perhaps) yet to come. The photo…
American Crescent

Eva Kor, a Mengele twin and Auschwitz survivor, was giving a talk on campus that semester, and I encouraged my students to go hear her. What could be more relevant? “Extra credit?” someone asked. The question made me crazy with exasperation. Here’s a woman who survived the Nazis, I said, and you want me to turn her life into points to add to your grade? I couldn’t do that. The best kind of extra credit, as I told those students and still tell my students, is the kind you give yourself: by working harder on an essay, by doing some extra reading, by taking in an exhibit or lecture for its own sake, because you might find it interesting, because you might learn something.

The famous Wound Man* together with the anatomy and phlebotomy diagrams and the urine ‘connoisseurs’ illustrations [see also: Tabula Urinarum] come from a collection of medical treatises from South Germany compiled into the one manuscript and dated from about 1460 - Codex Palatinus Germanicus 644 at the…
Half Life

Bricolage “L’élephant du Maharadjah”
[image: elephant 1]
[image: elephant 2]
Bricolage "L'élephant

We’ve heard it so often, it seems like a truism: in this era of instant electronic information access, libraries are like dinosaurs that don’t know they’re already extinct.

Well, maybe not.

A new survey has found that Generation Wired uses libraries far more often than you might think. In fact, Internet-savvy youth between 18-30 are the largest user group for library research services and resources. Furthermore, the survey found that library usage actually declines with…

this is not your father’s library

Designer name to come

Briefly noted in the Guardian’s preview of upcoming fiction for 2008 is this: “Hanif Kureishi also returns to the 70s, and the territory of his enduringly lovable The Buddha of Suburbia, with a much-tipped new novel, Something to Tell You (Faber, March). His narrator is an analyst looking back on the violence, confusion and first love of his youth, while deeply engaged in contemporary politics and culture: Kureishi’s London landscape is a vivid kaleidoscope of…

Something to Tell You

Tom Strong #9
Tom Strong #9

Deco Vignettes

There is something very satisfying the the purity of the humble circle which book covers over the years have made full use of. To see more book covers like those shown below then these two blogs are a great resource.

http://seenbooks.blogspot.com/
http://acejet170.typepad.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joekral/sets/72157594264351021/


The Power of The Circle

Headline of the day, Los Angeles Times edition

When we launched our Lifehacker Top 10 series back in March we had no idea what a big hit it would be. That Letterman guy’s really onto something! While we’re milking this whole “best of 2007 list” thing, we compiled the top 20 most-viewed Lifehacker Top 10 lists of 2007.

• Top 10 iPhone Applications
• Top 10 Free Windows Downloads
• Top 10 USB Thumb Drive Tricks
• Top 10 Free Computer System Recovery Tools
• Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps
• Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and…

Twenty Top 10’s of 2007 [Best Of 2007]

With roots stretching back to Aesop’s Fables and the oral folk tradition, the allegorical tales of Reynard the Fox (‘Reineke Fuchs’) emerged in the 12th century as a storytelling convention, becoming conspicuously popular in Germany, France and Holland.

One of the common structural themes around which the assorted…
Reineke Fuchs

I can’t think of a better way to end 2007 than with this lovely drawing by our old friend Rembrandt.

This little drawing makes me wonder why Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell thought it was necessary to invent abstract expressionism.  
ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 15

Marvel Comics #83
Marvel Comics #83

Your faithful blogger has recently become obsessed with the New Yorker magazine complete archive that you can purchase on a single hard disk. (Why it’s not just up on the web as a subscription service I’m not quite sure, but to have instant access to every New Yorker article ever published, I’ll take it.)

As someone who regularly fades in and out of various note-taking modes, I enjoyed this segment from a 1934 profile of Hollywood producer Darryl Zanuck and his one-time boss H. C. Witwer:

…

Applied note-taking taken to a whole new level

This week’s issue of The Stranger is about the size of a pamphlet, so my cartoon is on a one-week hiatus. Instead, dear blog-reader, here is the back cover art for the book collection, featuring full-color versions of a few non-nudity ads. (In my original design, one of the ads showed a woman in a strap-on, to which my publisher said “Mm, nah.”)

“Lustlab Ad of the Week” is a comic adaptation of one of the week’s kinky personal ads in Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, and I post them…

Lustlab Ad of the Week: 12/27

The holidays are nearing an end, but this year instead of balling your holiday lights up into a unwrappable knot, give yourself a break for next year and put those lights away tangle-free. Reader Chad Bailey says that our previously posted figure-eight method for wrapping headphones works like a charm for storing your holiday lights, but since wrapping lights is a bit different from wrapping headphones, the instructions are a bit modified. Basically, it works like this:

Wrap your…

Wrap Your Holiday Lights Tangle-Free [Holidays]