Lifehacker posted some nice photos of the Moleskine office in Milan and a new one in New York. Very nice. Perhaps after they’ve settled into their New York office, they could consider a new approach to the choice of type for their datebooks… The use of Rotis has had a good run. To be honest, it kind of feels like I’m writing in Ozzy Osbourne’s spell book. A more neutral face would do wonders for the experience.

Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) is a composition by John Cage that is currently being performed on an organ at the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany. It began in 2001 and is scheduled to end in 2640.

If you’re in the Halberstadt area, here are the scheduled note changes for the next ten years.

• July 5, 2004
• July 5, 2005
• January 5, 2006
• May 5, 2006
• July 5, 2008
• November 5, 2008
• February 5, 2009
• July 5, 2010
• February 5, 2011
• August 5, 2011
• July 5, 2012
• October 5, 2013
• September 5, 2020

This face has roots in Didot, but with a hint of plastic surgery gone wrong. Anna Malsberger describes it best: “They tease us with allusions to peacocks, mustaches, umbrellas and feathers. They blossom, heave, and knock each other around. They are a glorious parade of grotesque enthusiasts.”

Cumulus & Foam comes from Stefán Kjartansson, designer of Black Slabbath, Armchair Modern, and Reykjavík. It’s a family of three typefaces: Cumulus & Foam & Vane, Cumulus & Foam & Crumpet, and Cumulus & Foam & Naugahyde. Watch for it to be released this month through You Work For Them.

The color-matching company Pantone has opened a hotel in Brussels, just off the Avenue Louise. Looks fun.

More at http://www.pantonehotel.com/
Via Fast Company

For those who haven’t seen them, here is a complete list of Werner Herzog reading children’s classics. Well, the videos say it isn’t actually Werner Herzog, but that in itself is part of Werner Herzog’s schtick, is it not? Regardless, these videos are funny.

“Here are the main ideas in this design: Money and the color green are inextricably intertwined in American culture. I think it’d be a mistake to remove green as the primary color. Instead, each bill has a brightly-colored holographic strip embedded into it which contains the denomination. The width of this strip also changes with the denomination. This introduces an element which makes each bill extremely easy to identify. There is also braille denoting the bills’ denomination on the holographic strip.” Michael Tyznik, Designer

From http://monomoda.com

More designs at Dollar ReDe$ign Project

“Designer Patrick Sung’s Universal Packaging System is meant to precisely fit anything that needs shipping. The individual cardboard sheets are scored with a triangle pattern that can either be fitted to an oddly shaped object, or formed into a custom fitted cardboard box.” Cliff Kuang at Fast Company

Universal Packaging System at Yanko Design

We built this fire pit for the back yard out of some spare bricks. We used 6 square cement pavers and 30 cinder bricks (+10 more for a bench). It was hard work but well worth dragging the 1,000+ pounds of bricks up the yard. Perhaps before long we’ll add a mattress and get to “Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog.”

George Lois Tells the Stories Behind His Twelve Favorite Esquire Covers.

Nothing’s worse than researching an arcane topic, only to scan down over forums and long posts to unanswered questions. That’s what it must have been like in 1896 to read The Inland Printer’s column on designers and engravers of type because, for technical limitations, none of the work of these designers could be shown.

This column was created by William E. Loy, a San Franciscan printing equipment salesman and scholar. For three years Loy compiled through correspondence the biographies, photographs of the artists, and lists of the type they designed or cut.

As we’d imagine Loy would have wanted it, Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type compiles all of both the bios and type (over 800 faces) into one book. It’s good for an historical log and a fascinating view of type design trends of the time.

Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type

By Loy E. William

Edited by Alastair M. Johnston & Stephen O. Saxe

Published in New Castle, Delaware by Oak Knoll Press

First Edition 2009

Hardcover with Dust Jacket

9 × 12 inches

164 Pages

Typeset in Electra, Designed by William Addison Dwiggins and issued by Linotype in 1935
ISBN 978–1–58456–261–0
$59.95