Saturday 17 January 2015

Comus


By John Milton 1634
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham 1921
From HERE

Sunday 11 January 2015

Tom Dixon Bookmark

A very cool, gold anodised digitally cut bookmark by Tom Dixon.



Thursday 8 January 2015

The Earliest Ever Slopegraph? (1883)

Prompted by my digging on Slopegraphs, I have pushed even further back than 1914 and found this - from Scribner's statistical atlas of the United States, showing by graphic methods their present condition and their political, social and industrial development by Fletcher W. Hewes and Henry Gannett. Published in 1883. 

The Statistical Atlas for the previous census, published in 1870, did not have a plot like this. 
 
Available on the Library of Congress website (HERE).

A low resolution version of the whole plot is shown below.

A high-resolution portion of the plot is shown below.


 This is a far more accomplished Slopegraph than Willard Brinton's simplified version from 1914. 








Wednesday 7 January 2015

Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (1914)

An early example of a slopegraph, designed to highlight changes in population over time, created by Willard Cope Brinton - in his book Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (HERE).

Edward Tufte has a discussion on this type of graphic HERE. According to Tufte a slopegraph; "compares changes over time for a list of nouns located on an ordinal or interval scale".



 


Tuesday 6 January 2015

Empire Bolt, Nut and Rivet Company

HERE is a hand illustrated history of the Empire Bolt, Nut and Rivet company. Below is a hand rendered and washed image of a Large Semi-Finished Nut.



The Uncommon Life of Common Objects

Akiko Busch is a writer on design, architecture and the everyday items that we live with. her 2005 book The Uncommon Life of Common Objects: Essays on Design and the Everyday has chapters on the design of everyday items; video camera, mobile phone, vegetable peeler, chair, a refrigerator. 

Here is a two-page spread from the book on the backpack.


Image Copyright Akiko Busch.

 

Monday 5 January 2015

A Hand Illustrated Walt Whitman by Allen Crawford

A great piece in the Guardian about a hand illustrated and lettered version of Walt Whitman's long poem Song of Myself by Allen Crawford.





 
Image Copyright A. Crawford.

Thursday 1 January 2015

Happy New Year


George Bickham (Snr) Sot's Paradise 1707.

HERE

A great write up HERE on this type of Medley Print.