Field Notes Colors

Sprung!

Our Spring, 2010 FIELD NOTES COLORS limited-edition memo books are available now! PACKET of SUNSHINE features three vibrant yellow FIELD NOTES packaged in a custom seed envelope, complete with marigold seeds and growing instructions. Limited quantities of individual packets and COLORS subscriptions are available.

Layer Tennis Season 3 So Far

In Perspective

Two photographers in two cities shooting and posting a photographic dialogue live while a musician creates a sound track. That was Week #3's Exhibition Match #3 of live Layer Tennis. Man, that was some fun. Here's the back story from the shooters. Match #2 was amazing, two expert typographers created and modified a new typeface in real time. Check Mark Simonson's recap, Beneath the Volley of the Fonts. The Season Opener was Khoi Vinh and Nicholas Felton with comments by John Nack and the guys have posted a terrific recap of what they did during the game, and why. It should be required reading for future players.

The Museum of Online Museums

Collections Department

We're getting The Spring Exhibitions ready. In the meantime take a last look through Winter at The Museum of Online Museums. Enjoy the collected collections and then please consider joining the Museum Board of Directors and receive some nice swag, including a DVD of our soon-to-be-released MoOMumentary, The Curators, and also that warm, smug feeling that comes with knowing you're much more generous than your low-rent friends.

The Museum of Online Museums has been featured on All Things Considered, in the NY Times, Chicago Tribune and Time Magazine and was discussed at length on an episode of NPR's Hello Beautiful!

2010 Tournament of Books

Book in Brackets

The 6th Annual Morning News Tournament of Books kicks off this week with a great field and lots of interesting match-ups. Our Field Notes Brand is proud to be the presenting sponsor for this year's edition and we're making a special offer for ToB readers that will also help out underprivileged kids. Thanks to Marshall Sokoloff for the photo above.

A Very Short Attention Span

Passing Fancy

Are you better suited for starting things than you are for finishing them? Pay attention.

John Hughes Noted

A Place of Honor

A photo accompanying an article in this month's Vanity Fair about director John Hughes finds our Field Notes Memo Books in a real place of honor.

The Field Tested Books Book

I Read That Somewhere

We had this notion that somehow through experimentation we could identify how our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe it's possible to determine how a book colors the way we feel about the place where we experience it. The result is Field Tested Books. Check hundreds of reports online or better yet, for portability and typographic excellence (Linotype Electra!) you can't beat paperback Field Tested Books Book which is available now for just nine bucks.

A Little Rework For Hire

The Kids in the Hall

A couple of months back, our office mates at 37signals asked us to help them put together a series of promotional short films to announce their new book, REWORK. All the concepts had to somehow incorporate the crumpled ball of paper from the cover, some form of office drudgery, and using said crumpled ball as an allegory for sticking it to said drudgery. We decided on three ideas and figured, if we planned it well, we could shoot them all in a day: "Staying Late," "Hallway," and "Conference Call." We borrowed some offices, hired the great Sandy Marshall to act in one and provide his voice for another, brought on DP Ryan Taylor, and spent nearly every break crumpling balls of paper (all of which was recycled). We'd been dying to try one out, so we shot everything on a Canon 5D, which was both great (beautiful footage) and so-so (difficult and weird video codec), but we learned a lot in seeing how it worked out in the wild. We're plenty pleased with the results and happy to lend a hand in promoting the 37s' new must-have read.

Shift Option Rinse

Shift Option Rinse

Can you really clean your computer keyboard in the dishwasher? With the help of the RinseCam 9000, Michele created a short film to find out.

It All Started In the Washroom

Horton Hears a Hoobastank

A while ago we hosted a quick contest called Booking Bands in which we asked people to combine the name of a book with the name of a band. We received thousands of entries, posted a ton of them and then randomly selected three and sent those people the book and a CD from the band that they mashed together. The process of coming up with funny or unexpected associations in this contest became a central part of JC's presentation at SXSW, A General Theory of Creative Relativity.

March Guest CDR / Motherbrand

Northernly Neighbours

It would be one thing to try and put together a collection of a single favorite designer's work, but assembling a mass from all the great designers in an entire country? Such is the monumental task the brave souls at the Canadian Design Resource (cdr) have set for themselves. If it's design and it's Canadian, they've likely either already cataloged it or it's on their to-do list. The Resource itself is an offshoot of their wider umbrella, Motherbrand, which consists of Todd Falkowsky, Michael Erdmann and John Ryan who describe the firm as "a creative studio with broad expertise in content, experience and brand design," which between the lines means "they do a lot of different stuff," much of it intent on showing just how cool Canadian design is. So expect a lot of great links from north of the border as all three step in as our Guest Editors for March.

A list of all the brilliant people who have helped us by guest editing Fresh Signals can be found here.

Other recent features are listed on Page Two.

Fresh Signals

"In memory of the black art of type setting, we are producing letters out of high quality, handmade chocolate." Yum, Typolade. Via Materialicious ms-today

On the Spot with Kim Jong-il. ms-today

Trying to describe a scene in a movie to a friend and not really doing such a great job? Give up and head on over to Movieclips. Over 12,000 clips to see and the actual movie scene is so much better than your description. Really. ms-today

Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU. ms-today

Gorgeous, antique typewriters. ms-today

Some pretty good advice to follow on St. Patrick's Day. ms-today

Ikea decorates selected Paris metro stations. ms-yesterday

Lovely, Second Wind. ms-03.13

For SD, Hipster Puppies. dw-03.12

Trailer for the documentary No One Knows About Persian Cats. ms-03.12

Guinness chocolate pudding. ms-03.12

Crappy Taxidermy. ms-03.12

Ok...I take it back. Thanks to the post yesterday I was sent this serious AR from USPS. What an amazing use of augmented reality. cdr-03.12

I keep bumping across wonderful examples of social media emerging as a valuable survival tool. I have seen Facebook help immobile patients meet new people and Twitter used to save the sanity of people in medical isolation. It is easy to write the mediums off as teen gossip machines or new ways to stream ad content, but the human empowering side of social networks are truly amazing and life saving. cdr-03.12

So great, Hitchcock Re-Envisioned. Via Design You Trust. Thanks Michael. ms-03.12

2346 single photos stitched together to make the impressive interactive panorama Paris 26 Gigapixels. Autoplay music warning. ms-03.12

"Can I use a human pregnancy test on my dog?" and hundreds more: Yahoo! Answer Fail bb-03.12

Wisconsin, apparently America's Beer Belly. ms-03.12

For the Documerica Project (1971-1977), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired freelance photographers to capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970's. ms-03.12

"The pictures were shot mainly in twilight. The magic hour, where the houses are shining as bright as the residual daylight in the sky and the colorful neon signs melt with the green-blue of the beginning night." On Tokyo- the future of urban living. ms-03.12

Trailer for the documentary Dancing Across Borders. ms-03.12

A quick note. Sunday at 3:30 in Austin, John Gruber of Daring Fireball and I will be making a joint presentation at SXSW called Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom. Hope to see you there. jc-03.11

From a leaked memo, a strange list of "forbidden 'newsspeak' words and phrases" not to be used by anchors and reporters on WGN-AM, a local news/talk radio station. sd-03.11

More on today's theme, Lester Beall, American graphic design pioneer and notes from Alexandra Lange. jc-03.11

Honored to add a small bit to the growing collection of advice at Mig's Humble Pied. But seriously, what's with my hands? jc-03.11

I really, really believe that AR will save print. It extends and stretchs the medium out to the online world in facinating ways. There are some super examples of the new tech at work but there are so many dogs...AR is coming off more as a gimmick than a leap forward. Colors Magazine, I expected more from you! cdr-03.11

All of Yoshi Akai's music-based experiments are great, but his Lego Sequencer MR II and Credit Card Scratcher are particularly awesome. sd-03.11

OK, early 70s but worth another look today. Pan Am's Helvetica Dreamtime, "how I unearthed a forgotten chapter in corporate design history." jc-03.11

What happens when you decide Pluto is no longer a planet? You start getting hate mail from third graders. sd-03.11

In keeping with this morning's theme, here's a piece by OK Schenk from 1960: Art Directors Are Crazy. cdr-03.11

David Pearson's hand-stamped covers for new editions of Cormac McCarthy's books. sd-03.11

Related. Andy Warhol and Sonny Liston. jc-03.11

The Alexander Girard era at Braniff Airlines and an article about it by Jason Mojica. Thanks Ken. jc-03.11

Putting the "Mmm" in McCain, the politician rebrands with bacon. sd-03.11

For BB: She and Him's new music vid, In The Sun, directed by TV/movie vet Peyton Reed. sd-03.11

Page Two contains the previous 35 Fresh Signals, recent features, a key to the icons and the categorical archives.

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One Hundred Forty

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The Producers

Christopher Ebmeyer
Claire Zulkey
Howard Mann
Carlos Parrilla
Damien Newman
Drew Myler
Grant Hutchinson
Skipintro
R.BIRD
Karen Labenz
Andrew Figgins
Mark Powell
Mike Keen
Chet Yeary II
Greg Storey
Matt Lee
Jeremy Quinn
Grant Unrau
Debbie Millman
David Demaree
Charles Adler
Paul Joyce
S.J. Barlament
Stephen Vance
Sam Potts
John Tolva
Cameron Moll
J. Thomas Lowell
Hillman Curtis
Gridiron Software
Loyd Boldman
Heidi J Nyburg
William Dampier
Mario Van der Meulen
Simon Angling
Colin Scroggins
Inline Studio
Witold Riedel
Alan Hawkins
Marko Dugonjic
Chris Bernard
Matt Mullenweg
Alexander Muse
Dan Rubin
Thomas Mackechney
Dan Cederholm
Eric Mersmann
Ben Edwards
Brian Seethaler
Lightburn
Matt Haughey
Bill Keaggy
Pierre Mai
Kevin Hamm
Andre Torrez
Greg Hoy
Issa Breibish
Drew Stauffer
Abby Urban
Jeffrey Rutzky
Robert D. Whitson
Hunter Weeks
Christopher Cennon
Josh Williams

Your Name Here

the pitch

You can be an Executive Producer of our new short feature film, 72°. If you've always wanted to be a hotshot Hollywood player, or you just want to lend a hand to the project here's your chance.

A Thing We Made:
Field Notes

Field Notes Brand memo Books and more. "I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." A CP/DDC joint.

Some Other Things We Made:

We hated the options available for custom packaging DVDs and CDs so we created a brand that gives creative professionals and hobbyists the tools to make great stuff. Here's a bit from the latest Jewelboxing weblog entry:

"If you want something that isn't available or doesn't exist, there's no reason not to just make it yourself." Read the entire post.

Pinsetter: Spell with buttons.

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