Print has been acquired by an independent group of collaborators—Deb Aldrich, Laura Des Enfants, Jessica Deseo, Andrew Gibbs, Steven Heller and Debbie Millman—and soon enough, we’ll be back in full force with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future! In the meantime, we’re looking back at some of our favorite pieces from PRINT magazine, such as this one by Brandon Ambrosino. When author Umberto Eco visited Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in the fall of 2013, he asked to examine only one text: Manuscript 408, popularly known as the Voynich Manuscript. Perhaps the late Italian novelist wanted to see the manuscript because it, like his masterpiece The Name of the Rose, is something of a literary puzzle requiring its would-be interpreters to be equally proficient in medieval history, semiotics and good old-fashioned detective work. Perhaps as he examined the Voynich Manuscript, turning its 600-year-old pages over in his hands, he recalled his own words from his 1980 novel: “Books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.” This might well be true of the Voynich Manuscript Eco was so taken with—maybe its story is as old and banal as any other. But that kind of analysis would require someone to pull off a literary feat that has thus far proven impossible: reading it. * At first glance, the Voynich Manuscript is rather unassuming; it’s “unglamorous, even somewhat shabby,” writes Eamon Duffy in The New York Review of Books. Roughly 10 by 7 inches, its 234 pages—some have been lost since its original composition—are bound by a limp vellum, the Renaissance counterpart to today’s paperback. But if judging a book by its cover were ever misguided, it’s particularly wrong to do so with this manuscript, which, as far as we know, has never been decoded, though not for a lack of effort. The book is named after its discoverer, the eccentric Lithuanian-born Polish bookseller Wilfrid Voynich, whose biography is anything but typical. While studying law and chemistry at the University of Moscow, Voynich became sympathetic to the Polish Nationalist movement, and eventually became a member of the social-revolutionary party, which led to his arrest in 1885. After being held prisoner for 18 months in Warsaw, he was exiled to Siberia to live out his five-year sentence. In 1890 Voynich escaped and went on the run, making his way through Mongolia, China and Germany before finally arriving in London, where he used his past as a political revolutionary to his advantage. Voynich quickly bonded with other exiles, including Sergey Kravchinsky, famously known as Stepniak. It was this man, well-placed in British cultural and intellectual circles, who introduced the young Pole to the exciting world of bookselling. Following Stepniak’s unexpected death in 1895, Voynich opened his first bookshop three years later. According to Arnold Hunt, author of a biographical essay included in Yale’s volume The Voynich Manuscript, Voynich quickly established himself as one of the most knowledgeable and well-read booksellers in the business. Though he started out by collecting fifth- and sixth-century books, after several years in the trade he turned his eye toward higher-end items, like early Bibles. Voynich bought the manuscript that now bears his name in 1912, though the precise circumstances surrounding the purchase aren’t entirely known. During one of his regular trips to Europe, he writes, he “came across a most remarkable collection of precious illuminated manuscripts,” most of which, he surmised, “must formerly have belonged to the private libraries of various ruling houses of Italy.” In comparison to the other manuscripts, which were embellished with arms and various hues of gold, the Voynich appeared to be an “ugly duckling.” The collection Voynich purchased in 1912 was at the time the possession of Italian Jesuits who, since the unification of Italy in the latter half of the 19th century, and the subsequent government-ordered confiscation of their libraries, had been hiding their books. Some texts were discovered in a secret room at the Collegio Romano, and were summarily seized by the state. But most, including the Voynich Manuscript, were successfully kept under watch by the order, until it decided, for whatever reason, to sell about 380 manuscripts to the Vatican Library. The sale was initiated in 1903 and, as Ren. Zandbergen notes in his essay “Earlier Owners,” took nine years to complete. During that time, and “under the condition of absolute secrecy,” Voynich acquired a few of the books earmarked for the Vatican, including Cicero’s philosophical works and the soon-to-be-famous ugly duckling. “My interest was aroused at once,” he later wrote. * If the outside of the book is unremarkable, its contents are anything but. Those who open the manuscript are met with elegant scribblings in an unknown language, and whimsical drawings of plants, star diagrams and nude women. The text was written, as most of its medieval contemporaries were, with a quill pen. The parchment was made from the skin of a calf, certainly a more expensive writing surface than other available options, like stone or wood. The process of preparing parchment for writing was laborious, as Yale librarian Raymond Clemens explains in the collection of Voynich essays he edited. The first step was to soak the skin in lime juice for several days, the result being that hair follicles swell and are easier to remove. The skin was then placed over a round object, perhaps a tree trunk, and the parchment maker used his hands to scrape off the loose hair. He then draped the pelt over a rack designed to stretch it taut, and with a lunellum, or curved knife, scraped both sides of the skin. The more a particular skin was worked over, the lighter and thinner it became, which meant that the more valuable parchments were nearly white on both sides, as is the case with the Voynich Manuscript. After several days of drying, the skin was whitened with chalk or some other substance and cut into individual sheets. It was then ready for writing. The word ink is derived from the Latin encaustum, which translates to “having been burned”—appropriate, given what Medieval people believed about the writing process. When first applied to a parchment, explains Clemens, the iron-gall inks would appear light brown, until some time later when a chemical reaction caused the inks to darken. In addition to brown, other colors in MS 408 are white, green, yellow, red and blue, all of which were inexpensive and common, Clemens notes. Aficionados of the manuscript refer to the text as Voynichese, because it is sui generis. The writing aesthetic is sophisticated and pleasing to the eye, like the languid, loopy cursive of one’s third-grade teacher. The text moves left to right, top to bottom, and is broken up into what look like paragraphs, most of which begin with a character that is double in size to most of the letters of the page, something a modern reader might consider to function like a capital letter or drop cap. There are four such characters in the manuscript, which experts refer to as “gallows” characters. These are sometimes written in conjunction with another symbol, and the occurrence of both together is known as “pedestalled gallows.” Voynichese “has a deceptively flowing, rhythmic quality that suggests long practice and familiarity on the part of the scribe or scribes,” writes M.E. D’Imperio in a 1978 book published by the National Security Agency, which was only recently declassified.Whoever composed this text knew what he, she or they were doing. Some handwriting experts think the lettering resembles the Humanist minuscule script from 15th-century Italy. “The basic alphabet of frequently occurring symbols is small,” writes D’Imperio—some 15-25 characters. A selection of these individual characters is ligatured to create other symbols, which are then grouped together to form what is presumed to be words. The number of diff erent words in the manuscript, writes D’Imperio, “seems surprisingly limited,” with the same word being used several times in succession. Most words are short, merely four or five symbols in length. Two-letter words are rare, as are words made up of more than seven symbols. There are also instances where words differ from each other only by one letter (e.g., share and shape in English). According to an estimate cited by D’Imperio, there are approximately 250,000 characters in the manuscript. As Zandbergen notes on a website he runs about the Voynich Manuscript, the text contains a number of characters that appear strikingly similar to Latin ones: ‘a,’ ‘c,’ ‘i’ (undotted), ‘m,’ ‘n,’ ‘o.’ Several others seem to resemble the numerals 2, 4, 8 and 9. Each folio is numbered on the right-hand margin, though experts agree this was done after its original compilation. In addition to such unknown characters, every page contains drawings ranging from simple doodles to elaborate floral renderings. In fact, the text appears to be written around its drawings, which, as they are at least interpretable to experts, offer a useful structure for organizing MS 408. The first half of the manuscript, about 130 pages, is referred to as the Herbal section. On each folio can be found a large drawing of plants; the text is carefully organized around the images, resistant to any overlap. Experts do not agree as to whether these plants are fantastical or based on real-world species. Edith Sherwood, a retired professor of chemistry, has spent years trying to match plants in MS 408 to their possible 15th-century counterparts. Of the 126 plants in the text, she claims to have identified 124, which gives her a 98 percent success rate. Others, like Eamon Duffy, claim the drawings represent “biological impossibilities,” such as one that depicts a plant’s “roots and branches [bifurcating] and then [reconnecting] again to form a single stem.” The second section of Voynich is the Astronomical section, which contains large foldout pages, a feature that is rare—though not unheard of—for books produced in the same period. The foldouts feature a central drawing of either stars or an anthropomorphized sun or moon, around which curl Voynichese text as well as smaller illustrations. This section is followed by 10 folios featuring plump nude women bathing. Duffy calls the figures “decidedly unerotic,” which echoes D’Imperio’s assessment that they “certainly do not present an appearance of voluptuous beauty to the modern American eye.” Each female figure sits, stands or lies on tubs, tubes, pipes or other water conduits. There’s another astronomical section, followed by some more herbal images that make up the book’s Pharmaceutical section. Some experts believe the short blocks of Voynichese in this section to be medical recipes. The book closes with about two dozen folios almost completely covered in the mystifying language, their only adornment a vertical line of stars on the left-hand margin. And with that, the world’s most mysterious manuscript comes to a whispered end. * Since the enigmatic MS 408 came to light a century ago, many possible solutions have been posed as to what it means. But Zandbergen is less concerned about meanings than the historical events that helped produce the text. “For me, the question isn’t, ‘What does it say?’ Or, ‘How can we convert it back to meaningful text?’ But, ‘How did they do it?’” says Zandbergen. “Somebody sat down and wrote it. Somebody invested a lot of time and money, or somebody’s money. There was a message there because of the consistency [of the text] from beginning to end. There must have been a purpose.” That being said, questions about the text’s purpose aren’t any easier to answer than questions surrounding the text’s meaning. That’s because experts have no idea how the text came to be in the first place. They have only been able to construct a piecemeal history based on what many assume to be reliable clues. The first is a letter from 1665, which was included with the manuscript when Voynich purchased it in 1912. According to the ensigned, Prague scientist Johannes Marcus Marci, the book was sold to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II for 600 ducats. Marci also included the information he heard from someone else, that the manuscript was produced by Roger Bacon, Doctor Mirabilis, the controversial 13th-century Franciscan and scientist. Voynich was convinced Bacon was the original author, as is clear from the title he gave MS 408: “The Roger Bacon Cipher Manuscript.” The rare book dealer Hans Peter Kraus similarly advertised the manuscript when he tried to sell it in the 1960s. When no one would bite on his exorbitant asking price—as high as $160,000—Kraus ultimately donated the text to Yale University in 1969, where it’s lived ever since. Carbon dating has since ruled out the possibility of Baconian authorship. Findings from the University of Arizona in 2009 place the manuscript between 1404 and 1438, with a 95 percent probability. It should be noted, however, that some experts believe the manuscript might be copied from an earlier one, given the lack of erasure or correction markings in the text. Therefore, while MS 408 is conclusively of 15th-century origins, it is possible its source material--if there is any—predates the text in Yale’s library. Nonetheless, though Voynich’s belief in Bacon’s authorship has been summarily debunked, there are good reasons to believe Voynich was correct to place the text in Rudolf II’s court. One of the chief reasons has to do with a discovery made by Voynich some time after his purchase. Applying an unidentified chemical to the front page of the text, Voynich was able to read the name Jacobus Hořčický de Tepenec, which was until that time invisible to the unaided eye. (Contemporary multispectral imaging has revealed the same name.) Hořčický, also known as Sinapius, was raised by Jesuits and perhaps spent time at Prague’s Jesuit College. His pharmaceutical reputation preceded him, and he was thus able to curry favor with Rudolf II, who, according to a possibly apocryphal legend, Hořčický cured from a deathly disease. In 1608, the emperor ennobled him with the title z Tepenec—an important detail for Voynich scholars because MS 408 includes the stately title, which means he added his name to the text after his official assignment. When Hořčický died in 1622, he left all of his possessions to the Prague Jesuit’s library, but for some reason, 408 ended up somewhere else. By 1637, Georgius Barschius came into possession of the manuscript, by means still unknown. A lawyer by trade, Barschius was convinced the text was medical, which was, as he wrote in a letter to the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, “the most beneficial branch of learning for the human race apart from the salvation of souls.” Barschius believed Kircher to have an unmatched intellect, and pleaded with him to try his hand at the unreadable text. The mathematician wrote back two years later, in March 1639, admitting failure. As Zandbergen notes, this letter was discovered in 2000, and is the earliest reference to MS 408 in the historical record. But Barschius persisted: “Now since there was in my library, uselessly taking up space, a certain riddle of the Sphinx, a piece of writing in unknown characters, I thought it would not be out of place to send the puzzle to the Oedipus of Egypt to be solved.” If Kircher did answer the appeal, his reply is lost to history. Upon Barschius’ death around 1662, his personal alchemical library, including MS 408, was bequeathed to Marci, the Prague scientist. Three years later, Marci, desperate to have the secret text cracked, again sent the manuscript to Kircher, which is where the historical trail goes cold—until Voynich’s purchase in 1912. * When Yale procured MS 408 almost a half century ago, its catalogue entry read: “Scientific or magical texts in an unidentified language, in cipher, apparently based on Roman minuscule characters.” Voynich himself was convinced the Voynichese was a cipher. Some of the most brilliant cryptographic minds have spent countless hours trying to crack its code, as it were, only to end up right back where they started: ignorance. The first scholar to claim he’d interpreted the manuscript was historian William Romaine Newbold, who worked under the now-debunked assumption that Bacon wrote the text. Newbold believed Bacon’s cipher system to be what William Sherman describes as “anagrammed micrographic shorthand.” That is, the letters’ orderings were changed, the words were abbreviated, and the characters were composed of tinier symbols only visible when magnified. Newbold’s theories were at first praised by the medievalist John Matthews Manly who, in a Harper’s Monthly article, introduced his findings. But by 1931, Manly came to disbelieve Newbold’s theories. What Newbold was convinced were micrographic scribblings were nothing more than random cracks formed in dry ink. “It appears that Professor Newbold’s cipher systems and his decipherments were not discoveries of secrets hidden by Roger Bacon but the products of his own intense enthusiasm and his learned ingenious subconscious,” concluded Manly. The other most well-known deciphering attempts were made by the husband and wife team William and Elizabeth Friedman. Manly met William in 1916 at what is now known as the “Cradle of Cryptography,” housed in the Chicago-area Riverbank Laboratories. (William, by the way, corroborated Manly’s assessment of Newbold’s Voynich work.) At the time, the Department of Codes and Ciphers focused its energies on literary secrets—for example, the idea that Francis Bacon was the actual author of Shakespeare’s works. Elizabeth was one of Riverbank’s Shakespeare scholars, and according to Sherman, shared her future husband’s patriotic loyalty to the U.S. government, as well as his fascination with literary ciphers. As the need for cryptologists became more apparent, Riverbank’s focus shifted to breaking military secrets. By 1921, William and Elizabeth had moved to Washington, DC, where they both took up government posts. It was there that Manly put the couple in touch with Voynich, who in 1925 sent them a few photographs of his own cipher manuscript he’d developed. Those images piqued the newlyweds’ interest, and for the next 40 years, the duo remained committed to figuring out the puzzling text. The pursuit paused during WWII, as William’s team set to work cracking the Japanese code known as Purple. Near the end of the war, in 1944, William turned his attention once again to MS 408, and to that end assembled the Voynich Manuscript Study Group, which met regularly in Arlington Hall. For almost 15 more years, the Friedmans continued to try to decipher the book, but over that time, their enthusiasm for the enterprise seems to have waned. In a 1959 article for Philological Quarterly, “Acrostics, Anagrams and Chaucer,” the two expressed the ultimate futility of trying to solve anagrammatic ciphers. The article was accompanied by a note explaining that the text itself was an anagram. The solution was sealed in an envelope and given to the editor of the journal, who printed the secret message when he ran the original article again in 1970. The message: “The Voynich MS was an early attempt to construct an artificial or universal language of the a priori type.—Friedman.” * “Nothing about the book is plausible,” says Reed Johnson, a Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages at the University of Virginia and a longtime Voynich Manuscript enthusiast. “The book itself is implausible.” It could be a cipher, he says, but given that the manuscript looks to be some sort of compendium of knowledge, why disguise the information in the first place? Perhaps, he suggests, the composer wanted to make banal natural phenomena seem more magical than they are. Or perhaps the images have nothing to do with the text—although this seems unlikely given the consistent patterns that emerge between words and drawings. For example, some words are specifically thematic, occurring only in certain sections. “One of the most plausible theories is it could be an invented language,” says Johnson, echoing the Friedmans’ own cryptic Conclusion. What about a fraud? Could the entire thing be a hoax? British cryptoanalyst John Tiltman summarized in 1951 the problems with this theory: “I do not believe the manuscript is completely meaningless, the ravings or doodlings of a lunatic, nor do I believe it is just a hoax—it is too elaborate and consistent to be either.” As for the theory that it was a deliberate forgery created for financial gain, Tiltman admits this is possible though “rather improbable.” Zandbergen says he is open to the possibility that the text “has no meaning at all.” Johnson goes even further: In the battle between the text and human readers, he says he’s “rooting for the manuscript.” If the Voynich Manuscript remains unreadable, what value is there in studying it? It’s no doubt a work of beauty—even a cursory glance at one page of the text would lead anyone to that conclusion. But aren’t scholarly energies better directed toward texts that can be figured out, toward typographies that can be assigned meaning? On the contrary, says Johnson, the Voynich Manuscript is worth studying precisely because it resists reading. “In an age when information is so readily available to us, there’s something important about a book that can’t be read. It’s sort of an island of inexplicability in the midst of a life in which everything is resolved.” Every time we look at the Voynich Manuscript, we’re forced to confront the limits of our understanding. In contrast to most books we read and interpret, “the Voynich Manuscript is about your failure and your inability to read it,” says Johnson. This is none other than a lesson from Eco’s The Name of the Rose: “Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.” That is certainly true of the elusive Voynich Manuscript Eco once held in his hands. The Voynich Manuscript by Pixelate on Scribd Brandon Ambrosino is a writer living in Delaware. His pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Politico and the BBC, among other outlets. The post The Voynich Manuscript: A Centuries-Old Print Riddle appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr The Voynich Manuscript: A Centuries-Old Print Riddle
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“Sussex Royal” out. “Archewell” in. The branding drama started last April on Instagram, when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex launched their massively popular @SussexRoyal account, followed by their charity foundation of the same name. Then came a UK trademark application for “Sussex Royal” over the summer, followed by an international application in December … and an announcement that the pair would be stepping down from the royal family. As they sought trademark protection for everything from shirts and bandanas to “health and wellness training,” some accused them of seeking to profit off the royal family while simultaneously leaving it, while others said they were simply doing it to protect themselves from hoards of imposter goods. (Regardless, the British tabloid press ate it up.) And then the Queen reportedly put the kibosh on Sussex Royal, and in February Harry and Meghan released a statement that they would no longer use the name. With their royal duties wrapped up as of March 31, the pair have now announced a new umbrella brand: Archewell. As they said in a statement to The Telegraph, “Before Sussex Royal came the idea of ‘Arche’—the Greek word meaning ‘source of action.’ We connected to this concept for the charitable organization we hoped to build one day, and it became the inspiration for our son’s name [Archie Mountbatten-Windsor]. To do something of meaning, to do something that matters. Archewell is a name that combines an ancient word for strength and action, and another that evokes the deep resources we each must draw upon. We look forward to launching Archewell when the time is right.” To go a bit further down the rabbit hole, as the reporters over at The World Trademark Review note, “Interestingly, a trademark application was filed for the term ARCHEWAY a few days prior, but that application is now abandoned—suggesting the couple originally sought to move forward with the brand name ‘Archeway’ but subsequently changed it to ‘Archewell.’ Nonetheless, today’s announcement will almost definitely lead to third-party trademark applications related to Archewell in the days and weeks ahead.” While we would have loved a logo to accompany the announcement, we’ll have to make do with the name and some trademark drama for now (and the Sussex Royal logo above). We’ll update with the new image when it’s released. The post Brand of the Day: Harry and Meghan’s “Archewell” appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Brand of the Day: Harry and Meghan’s “Archewell” In need of some visual inspiration while you’re hunkering down in quarantine? We have been too. Luckily, these 10 Instagram accounts serve it up in spades. Keep an eye out for more visual artists to watch every week for a fresh creative boost in your feed. @subliming.jpg: Type inspo and quotes with a flash of bold color.
@the_marbles: Jesse and Jimmy Marble provide unique, aesthetically pleasing art direction with a clean photography lens. @swtandco: A Brazilian graphic design studio whose work is focused on packaging, branding and all things beautiful. @yung_pueblo: A meditator, writer and speaker who offers deeply inspirational daily passages.
@adara_paper: Designer Badal Patel showcases modern and luxurious stationery that utilizes amazing printing techniques. @designlovefest: A place to view everything from beautiful place setting ideas to inspiring interiors, all with a light, airy feel. @nicolemclaughlin: Dive into the mind of artist Nicole Mclaughlin, who makes everything fashion, from cereal puffer vests to shoe scrap luggage. @pumlefebure: The world as viewed by the brilliant Design Army co-founder and chief creative officer.
@lellopepper: Artist Elise Mesner has an eye for texture and art direction that truly pleases the eye. @alietum.studio: An independent design studio and shop in Los Angeles that posts inspiring client work as well as a medley of goodies that will elevate any designer’s desk. The post 10 Instagram Accounts to Inspire While Stuck Inside appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr 10 Instagram Accounts to Inspire While Stuck Inside What do you think of when you hear the name “Polaroid”? You probably think of … a Polaroid instant film camera. AKA: a Polaroid. But until last week, Polaroid cameras were actually “Polaroid Originals.” Owing to its historic brand power and the recognition of its classic name, the company, which also makes smart TVs, 3D printers, headphones, speakers, large-format printers and even digital cameras, is now reverting back to “Polaroid” for its signature product. The “Polaroid Originals” name debuted in 2017, though the complicated story of the brand’s evolution has been years in the making. Polaroid was founded in 1937 by Edwin Land to produce ski goggles and 3D glasses for the military. In 1943, Land’s daughter pondered why she wasn’t able to see a photo taken of herself instantly, seeding the idea for a revolutionary new camera. The ’40s saw the introduction of the first instant camera, and Polaroid’s groundbreaking SX-70 in 1972 cemented their legacy. (As did the Polaroid embrace by Andy Warhol and other pop art purveyors.) The problem? The rise of the digital camera, which offered its own means of instant gratification. The company struggled financially, and Polaroid aficionados were heartbroken when it ceased production of its film in 2008. But then, a group of film hounds banded together under the name “The Impossible Project” to seemingly do the impossible, and saved the company’s last film factory. Polish investor Oskar Smołokowski, who had served as CEO of Impossible, acquired Polaroid’s holding company in 2017, and married the two brands, bringing Polaroid instant cameras to new life once again under the “Originals” name. Alongside the new unified “Polaroid” name, the company is unveiling fresh branding and launching a new autofocus instant analog camera, Polaroid Now. It will be available for a limited time in Polaroid’s five signature colors, alongside the classic black and white housing. As Smołokowski says, “In the ’70s, Polaroid changed the rules of branding with the introduction of bold, full-panel rainbow spectrums across our product lines, inspiring a host of legendary brands to this day. As this new decade marks a new chapter in the Polaroid story, it’s a moment for us to celebrate that heritage, while keeping our sights set on the future.” Welcome back, Polaroid. And can we just say: Does anything seem greater right now than freely frolicking outside with a Polaroid?
The post Polaroid is Back With a Fresh New Look Based on a Classic appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Polaroid is Back With a Fresh New Look Based on a Classic It began with a meatball. In the late 1950s, NASA employees were invited to submit logos for their newly formed government outpost. James Modarelli, chief of the Management Services Division and a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, gave it a go—and probably didn’t realize he was in fact branding the agency for the next seven (and counting) decades. His concept? As NASA recaps, “The design incorporates references to different aspects of the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The round shape of the insignia represents a planet. The stars represent space. The red v-shaped wing represents aeronautics. The circular orbit around the agency’s name represents space travel.” Problem was, given its complexity, it proved tricky to reproduce in a variety of applications. So the agency decided to modernize. As a result of the 1972 launch of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Federal Graphics Improvement Program, which aimed to improve visual standards across government agencies, Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn of the New York design firm Danne & Blackburn were commissioned to create a new logo in 1974. Colloquially dubbed “the worm,” it first appeared on internal documentation, followed by the release of the NASA Graphics Standards Manual as an 8.5 x 11″ ring binder. It existed side-by-side with the meatball … until the worm was retired in 1992, reserved for souvenir items only, thus breaking the heart of many the space-minded design aficionado. Perhaps NASA could tell we needed a ray of sunshine in these pandemic times, because they have now announced that the worm is officially back—“just in time to mark the return of human spaceflight on American rockets from American soil.” The logo looks perfect painted on the side of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle that will be shepherding astronauts to the International Space Station this May. And it seems this isn’t a limited engagement: “There’s a good chance you’ll see the logo featured in other official ways on this mission and in the future,” NASA writes. The future is bright, indeed. Standards Manual kickstarted a reissue of the NASA standards in 2017. If you don’t have a copy handy but still want to give it a browse, NASA maintains a PDF on its website, which appears below. NASA Graphics Standard Manual by Philipp on Scribd Images: NASA The post NASA’s Worm Has Returned! appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr NASA’s Worm Has Returned! Feeling the need for a design escape more than ever? Us too. For that reason, as our dev team works on the new PRINT website behind the scenes, we’ve decided to start releasing some of our brand-new columns and recurring features early—such as this visual column by Marian Bantjes. Watch this space for more. From Bantjes: “This piece is called Exodus, and it depicts all the billionaires leaving the dying Earth in their rockets, where they perish in space or on dead moons and planets.”* Click here and open the image in a new tab, where you can explore it in all of its intricate detail. Detail: *Editor’s Note: This piece was created before the current COVID-19 pandemic. The post Marian Bantjes’ ‘Exodus’ appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Marian Bantjes’ ‘Exodus’ Feeling the need for a design escape more than ever? Us too. For that reason, as our dev team works on the new PRINT website behind the scenes, we’ve decided to start releasing some of our brand-new columns and recurring features early—such as The Brandventory, by Jason Tselentis. If you had to count the number of brands you interact with on a daily basis in real time, could you keep up? We come into contact with them from the moment we wake to the moment we land back in bed—and sometimes even in our dreams, if we pay close enough attention—only to restart the cycle the next day. This column, the Brandventory, explores not only brands themselves, but how and why we connect with them, and what those relationships say about us. Those relationships start early, before we even know the word brand. As children, we accept and trust the brands presented to us. Perspectives sharpen during our formative years. We define ourselves by being for or against a brand. Parenthood changes everything with the onslaught of new products, services, foods, even cleaning products. (Are you a Huggies or Pampers parent? Scented or unscented wet wipes? You don’t have a Diaper Genie? WTF?) We present our brands back to our children, and the circle goes round. With infants, it’s easy to find yourself spending money like crazy, but one designer asks: “Do you have to?” After what he calls “the gnarliest year ever,” here, type designer, educator and brand-new parent James Edmondson shares his views on life, design, parenting and, of course, the brands that are ubiquitous in his life.
The OH no Type Company principal confesses that he can’t necessarily buy clothes off the rack—owing to his six-foot, seven-inches stature—so he’s less than enthusiastic about fashion. At home in his studio, in the classroom and at type conferences, you will likely find him wearing his own merch: like, say, the Ohno baseball cap above. “It’s fun to design that stuff,” he says. “In my marketing I use Life’s a thrill, fonts are chill and Death to weak fonts on occasion, and I’m constantly putting stuff out there. But I’m starting to think about Ohno more loosely—not as a brand—I don’t paint myself into a corner. Ohno is adaptable. I think the best thing I can do for the longevity of my own curiosity, and the sustainability of the business as a creative outlet, is to make Ohno interested in change. This can mean genres that are new to me (learning more about existing conventions) or new to everyone (experimental). The worst thing I could do is double down on similar-looking things over and over. That might make for a faithful audience that likes those sorts of things, but eventually I would end up bored.” Edmondson has his finger on the pulse of his own creative endeavors and how to move them forward, but he says he has a hard time identifying with many brands. “At the end of the day, I’m pretty anti-consumerist on many things. This makes me really critical of marketing and advertising across the board. Even among font foundries, there are only a select few that really move me.” So what brands do matter? For this San Francisco native, it comes as no surprise that typography at large matters a lot. Form and function have significance too, whether it’s an Apple computer or his cherished vacuum.
“I do love my Dyson. It is probably one of my favorite purchases, and the only Dyson product I’ve ever owned. It’s a Dyson V7 Animal+ and it makes all other vacuums I’ve ever used look completely stupid. I don’t love the visual look of it—a bit too steampunk for my taste, but it’s quite powerful, and the battery life has been pretty good. I will be buying Dysons for the rest of my life probably, but I am not a huge fan of other Dyson products I’ve come into contact with. Namely, the Airblade that you see in a lot of public bathrooms. I don’t think it’s that great. Also, the brand feels a little pretentious. Before the Dyson, I had a Kirby vacuum that I loved, but it was built like a WWII tank, and about as heavy. The Dyson won’t last as long as the Kirby, but is so much more mobile.”
As for tech, “I’m definitely a Mac person. I remember getting my first iMac G5 when I was a senior in high school—I was 17 or 18—installing all the design software that you dream about using! My Apple thing is tied up in some amount of nostalgia because I first experienced graphic design on an iMac. I remember looking through the manual thinking, They’ve printed it with grey text.” Edmondson currently uses a 2017 MacBook Pro 15-inch, with the newly designed but much-maligned butterfly keyboard, plus what some have dubbed the gimmicky Touch Bar. “The keyboard doesn’t bother me a bit. The Touch Bar is lame, but it doesn’t really bug me either,” he says.
And then there’s the tools of his trade. “Robofont is where I’m most comfortable. I know how to write scripts, and it was created by some dude, Frederik Berlaen, in Belgium. I also use Adobe software. I like their fonts—they care about type.” As for the Bay Area at large, “There’s this farmer’s market, so to speak. A type community. Years ago, San Francisco had this influx of type people, and Stephen Coles hosted these picnics, these community gatherings. I also want to do what I can. I want to support that world. The more I love type, the more it loves me back.”
Tunes? “Funk and soul music. Tower of Power, also Earth, Wind & Fire.” Edmondson also plays. “Guitar. Fender. … Seeing Fender’s logotype, they had the best script. All the other brands with a script—Coca-Cola, Lucky Grocery, Ford—those were just the best.” Finally—the baby gear. “We were stoked to get this one highchair, the Stokke Tripp Trapp. It changes sizes, fits a child for years, eventually becoming a chair for a 4-year-old. So needed! It’s not planned obsolescence, it’s planned adaptation. There’s also this crib, the Stokke Sleepi, that can become a bed—we are not $800 crib people; we got it used on Craigslist for a good deal. But we don’t use the crib—we thought we were being smart, but the crib’s become blanket storage. Everyone wants what’s best for their baby. People will spend like crazy. I’m more of a minimalist.” Edited from a series of telephone and email interviews. The post What Brands Make You Tick? appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr What Brands Make You Tick? Albert Camus’ The Plague is a dark novel … but it’s also a hopeful novel focused on an outbreak of bubonic plague in the Algerian city of Oran in the 1940s. While it’s one of my favorite books … I’m more in the mood these days for alternative forms of escapism, and the furthest I’ll go down a literary quarantine rabbit hole is Erik Larson’s nonfiction portrait of London during the Blitz, The Splendid and the Vile. Still, the four editions of The Plague spanning the 1950s to the present on my bookshelf have been calling my name lately, so with rubber gloves and a homemade face mask by our side, let’s find some joy in the many designs of the book over the many decades. 1947, first edition 1948 1948 1957 1960 1962 1962 1965 1966 1968 1969 1971 1972 1972 1989 1993 2000 2002 2012 Current, by Helen Yentus The post ‘The Plague,’ in 20 Book Covers appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr ‘The Plague,’ in 20 Book Covers PRINT is back. And soon, we’ll be relaunching with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future. Stay tuned. By Guest Contributor Emily Cohen To state the obvious, the next few months will be difficult and will involve some tough decisions, smart thinking, thoughtful planning and a good degree of reasonable risk. But what we shouldn’t do is panic. I’ve developed and curated a list of six strategies that will help you avoid making poor decisions that sacrifice your business as well as our industry’s long-term sustainability and health in exchange for short-term gains.
If you do choose to take on clients simply to pay the bills, try to be smart about how much you are willing to sacrifice. You may lower your fees, but perhaps you also deliver fewer concepts/revisions or you don’t sacrifice your terms (e.g., usage rights and the right to use the work for self-promotion). If you do take some projects that are outside your positioning, make sure they represent no more than 25% of your workload. And, when you do take on these clients, you should be ready and willing to fire them when the economy recovers, which it will. Ultimately, you should continue to be kind and generous to your clients, staff and vendors, but not to the level that will have a long-term impact on your business and in situations where you are making all the sacrifices without any gains. The following are two great resources developed by my colleagues that are also extremely helpful. We all have different voices and may share similar strategies (with a few differences, of course) so, take a look--
A brutally honest consultant, Emily Cohen has been honored to consult and work with many leading design firms across the country. Through these experiences, she has developed, tested and curated key business insights and strategies that have helped firms become more effective, profitable and fun to work at. Emily conducts strategic business planning retreats and provides confidential, best-practice insights and advice on staff-, client- and process-management strategies. She loves sharing her expertise through speaking engagements, guest posts, her courses on LinkedIn Learning/Lynda.com and Skillshare, her industry activism and, most recently, in her new business book for creatives, Brutally Honest: No-bullshit business strategies to evolve your creative business. The post Don’t Panic: 6 Business Strategies for the Era of COVID appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Don’t Panic: 6 Business Strategies for the Era of COVID Seven exceptionally good boys and girls. That’s roughly what it took to give me a much-needed lift last week. Should you find yourself in a similar place at some point in your COVID-19 quarantine, I urge you to consider these 30 Dogs of Design. (And if you’re in need of additional creative canines after perusing this list, we’ve got you—oodles more can be found in the original Twitter thread.) Stay healthy, friends, and don’t forget to pet your pet.
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Charles Gorton
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