Remember when I said I was going to stop cut back on buying new stationery and start making my own?  Well, this Emergency Correspondence Card Kit from Architette has made that difficult.  Mighty difficult, in fact.  As someone who cannot draw, I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who can.  Plus, I adore the whole technical drawings of non-technical things aesthetic– and Architette does that really, really well.  Seriously, check her out today.

Hyejung Bae, a graphic designer whose work is new to me, made this great poster displaying the evolution of the QWERTY keyboard and the typewriter’s contribution to that evolution.  Plus, the post includes some super cool shots of deconstructed typewriters.  Sadly, it doesn’t look like Bae has prints for sale… Too bad, because this would look awesome on my future (perfect) office wall.

Also found this via NotCot

Mark Twain left a comment about Huckleberry Finn, in his copy of The Pen and the Book by Walter Besant.
Image via the New York Times.

I discovered this poem after reading an interesting piece in the New York Times, “Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Marginalia.”  Although I do not agree with some of the author’s points (for example he forgets how “nested” comments can achieve the same back-and-forth, that “true” marginalia died out at the end of the 19th century, etc. etc.) it’s worth a read.  Plus, it pointed me toward this poem by a recent Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.

Marginalia
Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.
Another notes the presence of “Irony”
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

Available online via Poem Hunter

“The Current War,” an infographic from Good magazine.

I’m loving this infographic from Good about the development of electricity, Tesla and Edison (click for a larger image).  Ever since I saw “The Prestige,” I’ve been fascinated with rivalry between Tesla and Edison.  I feel like there has got to be a great book about this, kind of in the style of Devil in the White City but with a tad bit more history.  You know– Victoriana, rivalry, science, scientific glass and brass instruments… Suggestions?

By the way, this infographic makes an excellent (if slightly nerdy) desktop background.  I’m a huge fan.

I participated in a really great Swap-Bot swap for “A Nice Pair” of artistamps.  This swap was loads of fun, it gave me a lot to think about and an excuse to pull out some of my fake postage cancels, USPS stickers, etc.  What made me happiest, however, was this note I got from my swap-mate:

I got a note in my PO Box that I had an item waiting with 31-cents postage due. They were closed so I couldn’t go to the window. I left change in my box, hoping they’d figure it out.

When I went back a couple of days later, they were open. I told the clerk what I’d done and asked if he could check my box for me. He brought out your envelope (with the postcards inside) and a couple of other things not including my 31-cents.

It wasn’t until I was in the car, that I totaled up your postage: 98 cents. That sounds like plenty enough for what you sent. Then I noticed that the envelope said, ‘FAUX postage due 31′ cents.
Did you put that there? You must have!

On top of that there is another stamp that says “MN Roseville”, which is where the post office is, and a date: FEB 19 2011. That is probably an official USPS stamp. But, weird, what does it mean? The stamp doesn’t really say. Someone also hand-wrote “2-16″ on it.

One final mystery…your stamps are all hand “canceled” with a sharpie. There’s no normal postmark – just a weird squiggly line of black sharpie snaking across them.

I love stories like this (although I’m sorry my swap-mate is out 31 cents).  In fact, I intentionally added extra postage (a full 54 cents) to cover the potentially “confusing” envelope and the fact that it was a bit too think (I included some goodies along with the artistamp).

Heather K. Phillips designed these Stamps of Disapproval.  I’m a fan– there are times in my personal and professional life that these would come in handy.  Oh, and if you used StazOn ink, you could even disapprove of all sorts of public signs…  They are available for purchase from Schooled.  Now, which one really captures my feelings most of the time?  Probably, “I’m not convinced.”

Found via NotCot

(Image via culch.ie)

Unlike the last two postal service redesigns I’ve shared with you, today’s is real!  By the way, I’m as surprised as you are to learn that I actually a) care about Irish postal uniforms and b) used this Irish Times story about them as a stepping stone an excuse to learn a bit more about the Irish Postal System (also known as An Post).  It’s times like this that I start to wonder if my love for all things postal is just teetering on the edge of being a bit weird…  Anyway, there is a really fun, if slightly shallow, virtual tour of the An Post museum.  It includes images and transcripts of several letters but doesn’t include their stamp database!

One of the things I was happiest to learn about An Post is that, in 2007, it sponsored a mail art project: C Both Sides!  With the postal service’s help, every household in Ireland got a blank postcard to decorate and/or write on!  In all, about 3,000 were returned.  Sadly, it looks like no (free) comprehensive internet archive of the project or exhibit exists.  I did find a few random blogs that included photos of the exhibit, but nothing that included the whole thing.

Also, where can I get one of those green postal delivery bags the woman on the far left is carrying?!  What a perfect size and color for carrying all my things to and from work.  A contemporary USPS carrier’s bag continues to be my holy grail.

Just a few months after the (suggested) USPS rebranding, a team of Mash Creative’s designers has taken on the UK’s Royal Mail.  While I’m an admitted Anglophile, and have increasingly found myself wishing I could spend a year poking around London’s libraries, design shops, and BBC programming, this is a much more appealing postal identity than the USPS’, don’t you think?  It’s more subtle than the redesign Matt Chase proposed for the USPS and keeps the current Royal Mail logo.  Personally, I find there to be something so classy about the crown (especially when compared to the US’ kind of mean-looking eagle).

I suppose it’s a sign of good design that when I first saw this I thought, “oh of course… wait, isn’t that what it looks like now?”  Upon comparing it to the logo and imagery on Royal Mail’s website, though, I realize that the designers did remove all the “fussy” bits.

Which postal system will get the next makeover?  I sort of think Brazil’s postal service could use a bit of redesign… Nothing wrong with it, per se, but I feel like there’s a lot of potential there.  Especially since Brazil will be hosting the Olympics and World Cup! Everybody will want to send postcards saying, “I was here for this historic thing!”

Redesign discovered via NotCot

India Hicks’ Bahamas Hideaways (via Design Tripper).

It’s been cold, snowy, and dark in DC.  Most of my time is spent on the dreadmill, prepping for a few upcoming trips, and reading on the couch under one of my mom’s homemade quilts.  It’s been lovely, but not terribly crafty.  Just today, I stumbled over the incredible blog Design Tripper.  This is fueling my warm weather, pretty places fantasies.  Oh goodness, when is it going to be spring…

By the way, I found Design Tripper via NotVentures– another great travel and design blog.  Their tag line?  “Escapism at its best.”  Yes, these days that’s just what I need.

A woman I work with is from Jamaica and, when she was home over the holidays, collected some fascinating philatelic bits for me!  Researching them, I learned a little about the history of Jamaica and it’s postal service while looking into these stamps.  Jamaica established its postal system in 1671 and was the first British colony to do so.  Until 1860, the Jamaican post office acted as a branch of the UK’s post office.  As such, Jamaica didn’t issue their first stamps until 1860!

102 years later, when Jamaica gained its independence, the government overprinted “Independence” on the stamps issued under UK control.  I couldn’t find an image of those online, but I’d love to see one.  Just last weekend, when I was getting trained to volunteer at the Postal Museum, I looked at a really fascinating postcard printed in Liberia in the late 19th century.  When the president, pictured on the printed postage, left office, the country “scratched” his image off all the cards.  I’m always fascinated by how stamps are used to wage political battles.

Anyway, the stamps she picked up for me include the sheetlet above featuring Bob Marley, a stamp showcasing the 2008 Olympian Asafa Powell (above), and another featuring Devon House, an historical site in Kingston.  Sorry I’ve not got a photo of the last one– it’s small and in the winter light… well, my camera just doesn’t get that kind of resolution.