Wall vinyl

My friend Kristian, a talented artist and soon to become a fantastic teacher, turned 30 a couple of weeks ago. After hunting for an age trying to find a good birthday present for such a milestone, I finally discovered Domestic’s website and knew that one of their vinyl pieces would be perfect. Not too expensive, either, though the postage adds a slight pang and doesn’t appear to be particularly swift (as my order still hasn’t arrived yet).

Another gift I’d highly recommend – at least, If your intended recipient is a chocolate addict like me – is just about anything from l’Artisan du Chocolat. In particular, their liquid salted caramels are incredible; they do remind me of a certain South Park song, though!

PostSecret

PostSecret: an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

40% off Creative Review today

40% Off CR Today: best be quick, though, the offer ends 10.30am GMT tomorrow morning.

Dave Shea’s Chalkwork Icons

The latest addition to the gorgeous Chalkwork icon family:
Chalkworks Information Management

The Art of Money

The Ministry of Type: the Art of Money

Eight ways to drive a graphic designer mad

Eight ways to drive a graphic designer mad is genuinely funny, in a slightly depressingly true sort of way.

(via swissmiss)

Helvetica: the DVD

Helvetica: the DVD

The DVD includes the full 80-minute feature film, plus over 90 minutes of additional interviews with Massimo Vignelli, Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann, Hermann Zapf, and more. (The director Gary Hustwit says, “we basically edited 41 short interview segments, each around two to five minutes long. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll have an idea of the format of these.”)

NTSC Region 0, 16×9 anamorphic widescreen presentation, full-color booklet, English and German language subtitles. Release date: November 6. Pre-order now, you’ll save $5 and receive early shipping (a week before street date) and two love/hate Helvetica film buttons.

There’s also a limited edition 1000-run version that includes three letterpressed mini-posters, a color C-print of a still from the film (one of ten different stills) signed by Gary, two love/hate Helvetica buttons, and a letter of actual Helvetica metal type.

I’ve ordered my copy already!

UPDATE:

DVD extra #1: Hermann Zapf on his work, Univers, Helvetica, and coffee (streaming Quicktime movie)

DVD extra #2: Helvetica DVD extra #2: Wim Crouwel on his “Proposal for a New Alphabet” (streaming Quicktime movie)

There are 38 more interviews like these on the DVD.

(via Typophile)

reCAPTCHA

I’m not really a fan of CAPTCHAs as all too often they’re inaccessible to disabled users, but I must admit to being impressed by the ingenuity of reCAPTCHA. They provide plugins for most popular web software for you to use as you would normally, but the twist is that each correctly supplied word helps to digitise books by using human input to convert the scanned type; a task that people are good at but computers find difficult. Clever!

Eyes wide shut

In 1947 Life Magazine asked some famous comic strip artists to to draw their famous characters while wearing a blindfold. The results are fascinating! (Via BoingBoing.)

Beautiful aeroplane bellies

Jeffrey Milstein: Plane Spotter Extraordinaire