my costume - here's a clue...

i'm a big fan of the 1985 movie clue, and what better place than a library to dress up as one of the classic characters. i'm dressed up for halloween as mrs. peacock, in the library with the lead pipe.

#9 - exploring feeds + a thrilling halloween

there was a lot of variety offered in the links of #9's exercise: some were news feeds that led me to some very current topics relating to local politics, while other links let me search blogs on a variety of topics. one of my favorite feeds was from the chronicle of higher education which lets you follow articles about campus architecture.

i use google's blog search alot when i want to find out about a recent event tha may not be covered in the mainstream media, like thrill the world, an annual worldwide attempt to get 200,000 people to simultaneously perform michael jackson's choreographed "thriller" dance. check out the video from this year's san francisco attempt, and then head over to thrilltheworld to start learning the dance and join next year's record:

#8 - RSS and Google Reader

i finally got around to creating my Google Reader account, and was surprised to learn that my friend's blog has 91 subscribers! wait till she hears! i also added boing boing, apartment therapy sf, and sfgirlbybay, some of my favorite daily addictions. i was pretty easy to get it started (a few wrong clicks, always follow directions!). i already have some rss feeds on my home computer, like nytimes and sfgate, but i'll have to think of something to add.

more of #7: fontifier & lifehacker

i havent' tried this yet, but i've been dying to for awhile. the site fontifier lets you create your own font based on your handwriting. just download a template and write in each character, scan it and upload and fontifier will generate a font for your. it costs $9 if you decide to keep it, but free to test. see these instruction from lifehacker (another great technology site i will give a shoutout right now).

if someone out there does please show me what the final product looks like!

[UPDATE: got a tip in the feedback about the free font generator at yourfonts.com - save yourself $9! thanks, my!]

#7 - blogging tech: instructables

i think that instructables counts as technology, so i'm going to blog on. this is a site that has used user created content to build a how-to database of a million DIY projects. whereas MAKE is a bit too technical for me, instructables breaks down projects in ways that anyone can understand. users upload images, detailed interactive instructions, and downloadable PDFs to help you do-it-yourself.

the range of projects is impressive, and although i think i can handle the homemade chai latte and the ipod to stereo hookup, other projects, like this DIY LCD projector, are totally beyond my techno-bilities.

more of #6 - map maker

there are way too many fun things to do on big huge labs, and i know i should move on already. i just needed to add a map from their Map Maker. apparently i need to do a little more traveling, though. here are all the states i have visited (Colorado shouldn't really count - it was a 30 minute layover). i've got to work on planning that cross county drive. my europe map is a little more impressive:


i browsed our own library shelves in the G-GA section (Library of Congress speak for geography and cartography section) and found a few titles worth checking out:

Geography and Maps: an Illustrated Guide
Cities of the World: a History in Maps

both of these books are filled with great examples of historical maps and the different ways maps are used.

#6 - flickr fun

i love maps, and flickr maps lets people geotag images and place them on a world map. try typing in your own zip code to see how other people see your world or explore someone else's.

flickr finds - tilt shift photography

a tilt shift lens turns a typical aerial shot into a model-like miniature world. the one above from flickr is faked, and there are now a lot of people who have become experts at creating fake tilt shift images using Photoshop. real or fake, a good tilt shift image is pretty cool.

from elsamuko



from melkir

from clearinnervision. click here to see the original image.

#5 - flickr

one of my favorite flickr members is the library of congress. they have a bunch of photos in their archives they need help identifying, so they've put them on flickr with the hopes that people from around the world will help them catalog the who, what, and when of hundreds of photos. they've been really active this week posting images from the turn of the century (like the lovely Mrs. Harry Thaw, whoever that may be) and some old time baseball league photos. but one of my favorite collections of theirs happens to be their color photos from the 1930s and 1940s.

#4 - registered my blog

i've officially registered my blog with the csm learning 2.0 team, so now you can find my name added to the growing list of participants. register your blog now, check out what other people are doing, and offer words of encouragement through commenting. we have quite a little community growing here!

Go Team Venture! Logo of the Week

if you take a graphic design class, odds are you'll get an assignment to design a logo. logos are all around us, but we often don't recognize the simple but powerful messages they have to convey. a designer often has explain what a company or organization is without using any words beyond the brand name. that's a tough job. this is one of my favorite logos as of late:


the Venture Brothers airs on the Cartoon Network's adultswim and is a throwback to Jonny Quest-style adventure cartoons, but with a darkly humorous and cynical adult slant. this logo uses both positive and negative space to convey a whole bunch of images and ideas: the skull nose is actually the Venture Brothers giving each other their signature high-V (the Venture high-five), the title makes use of negative space and the natural break where the skull's teeth would go, and then they get all post-modern on us, using the skull again as the center of the "o" in "Bros."

geesh. when you explain it, it's a mouthful, but when you see it, it's simply awesome.

if you need help designing your own logo or trademark, the csm library has several books on the topic:

• Color harmony logos : more than 1,000 colorways for logos that work
• Logo design that works : secrets for successful logo design
• TM : trademarks designed by Chermayeff & Geismar

don't forget, you can always search the entire Peninsula Library System catalog (for all of San Mateo County) and have anything sent to csm library to pick up free of charge! sweet deal!

banned book art

since this is banned books week, i thought it would be perfect to start this blog off by looking at some of the cover art of some more famous banned books.

although i owned a copy of the catcher in the rye growing up (purchased from my local library book sale for a quarter), my copy was the iconic brown paperback version, which had been designed by salinger himself later on. very unlike this hardback version originally published in 1951:


the explosive cover art of the hardback edition, designed by michael mitchell, is comparative to the how the book was received by the public over fifty years ago: it was hot. too hot, by some standards. opponents saw holden caufield as a deviant and his actions obscene or immoral, or both!

on the flipside, there's nothing on this cover to tip you off that this is a hot title. unlike subsequent editions, art brenner's cover of the first edition of animal farm gives no warning that this book is about a bunch politically minded pigs:

after being published in russian, this book was banned by stalin.

to learn more about our banned books, visit the library's banned books week display located upstairs, and check out this title, and many others, for yourself.

#1-3 (d'oh!)

okay, so i cheated. instead of using a Yahoo avatar, i went ahead and made myself into a Simpson's character. it takes a little bit more know how to do (like uploading a pic of yourself), but i think it's worth it. there's also an avatar machine at their official website that doesn't require you to upload a picture. check it out!

23 things...

This blog has been created in support of CSM Library's Learning 2.0: 23 Things campaign. The purpose of my blog is to highlight some of the more visually stimulating books from the CSM Library collection. I love graphic design, so I'm going to be searching the stacks for some arresting material relating to graphic design, art, typography, illustration, animation and more.

Libraries are not only amazing depositories for information, but they are also wonderful treasure troves of images and design spanning the centuries. I hope the things I show you in this blog will inspire you to browse our shelves and find some visual booty of your own, as well as inform you about our own collection and how to perform research in the visual arts field.

Please contact me if you want to share an amazing book, artist, or website. Your suggestion might get published!