A Certain Book in a Certain Place

I Think
I Read That Somewhere

If, like us, your spring and summer vacations are about reading, then here's a place to start. We've collected hundreds of books and had them Field-Tested online, including entries from George Saunders, Jonathan Eig, Jessa Crispin, Steven Heller, Lori Andrews, Michael Bierut, and many more. Or, buy the Field Tested Books Book which is available now for just nine bucks.

Spring From Field Notes Brand

Hello Cinemascope

The spring limited-release for Field Notes is made up of three picturesque memo books. It's the America is Beautiful Edition, we also made a film to go along with it. As usual it's only slightly related to the product, except in spirit of course. As an added bonus we shot in the film aspect of 2.35:1.

In with every "Beautiful" 3-pack is a classic water transfer decal, perfect for the back window of your muddy old pick-up. Here's some tips on how to install it properly.

Want a Milk With That?

You Know, For Kids

2001: A Space Odyssey Howard Johnsons 1968 Children's Menu. A fabulous find by John Sisson. It doesn't explain the film much, but really, how could it?

Copy Goes Here A Film

How Do You Spell Courage?

"How do you spell courage?" For the proper effect, check the trailer first and then please take a few minutes (eleven actually) to watch our short feature film about words, pictures and bravery, Copy Goes Here.

A Very Short Attention Span

Regrets, I Have a Few

Are you better suited for starting things than you are for finishing them? Are you easily distracted? Do you find it hard to concentrate on any one thing when there are so many other things to check out? Yeah, us too.

Field Notes Brand Books

“My first memory is of my father carrying a hammer into our bedrooms and smashing open our piggy banks on the night Roberto died.”

"Play Ball!" Forty-one seasons ago, Roberto Clemente slashed a double into left-center field, recording his 3000th regular season career hit. That hit would turn out to be his last. The bat he used is the central object in Kevin Guilfoile's book, A Drive into the Gap, the first title from the publishing imprint of our Field Notes Brand. The book has garnered great reviews and is a story about baseball and memory, and fathers and sons. See a film, read an excerpt and buy a copy of A Drive into the Gap here.

Here's a longer excerpt, plus some nice video features from ESPN The Magazine, and to learn how the whole thing came about check this Gapers Block interview with Kevin.

Stuff About Stanley Kubrick

Denied Permission for an Emergency Landing at Clavius

Jim and John Gruber chatted recently about 2001: A Space Odyssey and other things on this episode of The Talk Show. For over ten years we've been collecting links and tossing them into various categories. As you probably have noticed, we're a bit of obsessed with a certain film director. In honor of a recent Chicago screening of a new 70mm print of 2001 A Space Odyssey, spend some time in our big messy archive of Kubrickian links.

Tamiya Box Art

Boss

"Look a little closer and there's a graphical language that totally set them apart, some truly wonderful design work that's quite like nothing else. It's little surprise then that they captured and enthralled a generation, at least for a little while." Kieran Kelly at Sci-Fi-O-Rama is as obsessed with these packaging illustrations as we are.

The Museum of Online Museums

Department of Collections

Check the exhibitions now showing at The MoOM and our "MoOMumentary," The Curators. The galleries will be rehung for the Spring soon.

This Plus This Equals That

The Lionel, the Richie and the Wardrobe

This is the sort of thing that Twitter is especially good for, but a washroom full of chalkboard walls works too. 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 a presentation that JC gave at SXSW.

Film Archives

Seeing Spots

Over the years we have made a lot of films for a variety of projects. We've finally assembled them all in one place, including this one for our Field Notes Winter 2011 limited-release, The Northerly Edition. (Those are long sold-out but you can be sure to get all our future seasonal limited-editions by signing up for a Colors subscription.)

May Guest Eric Smith

Hobo Lookout

Eric Smith (esm) is a Chicago-based designer and creative director currently working with Guaranteed Rate, located just five blocks from his home. He's spent time as Design Director for BenchPrep, a Lightbank funded start-up, and at Playboy doing both print and digital design. His two sons keep him busy providing assistance with all things Star Wars. In his free time, he draws Mythical Beasts, and keeps a constant eye out for the Hobo typeface on his blog, Hobo Shelter. For the month of May, Eric joins us as our Guest Editor.

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

Teddy's photostream is chock full of industrial design greatness as embodied by plastic, lamps, TVs, radios, clocks and ball speakers from 60's & 70's. And, especially the magnificent Sony TR-1825 from 1970 jc-today

"Hope you sell a lot of artisanal denim today!" Park Slope Family Circus. sd-yesterday

Try not to smile. Chelsea goalie's son scores. ms-yesterday

For our Field-Tested Books, author Peter Anderson submitted his story of reading High Fidelity on his honeymoon in Alaska. Have your own memory of when reading a specific book influenced a specific place, or vise versa? Send it in! sd-yesterday

Zulkey interviews Stephen Rodrick, author of The Magical Stranger and recently, the fascinating, much-discussed NY Times story, "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie." sd-yesterday

io9 has a nice roundup of automatons, the predecessors of the early 20th century electronic robots. dw-yesterday

For the past 10 years Tatsuo Horiuchi has been creating traditional Japanese art using Excel spreadsheets. Via Swissmiss. dw-yesterday

Fast Company releases their list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2013. ms-yesterday

FotA author Dan Pink gets the Lifehacker How I Work treatment and mentions our Field Notes notebooks as something he can't live without. Thanks for that! ms-yesterday

GIFs by Patakk. dw-yesterday

Photographer Michael Wolf's series of toy factory worker's portraits. ms-yesterday

Human Slingshot . jc-yesterday

Swedishness. ms-05.22

Watergate: The Video Game. There goes your 1972. I mean afternoon. bb-05.22

Building A Human, an instructional film made by The Visitors for Human Collaborators on Edité-Frignim (Earth). dw-05.22

MS: "Can I get one of these?" JC: "No." MS: "But NASA says it will boost my productivity!" ms-05.22

Photos from Giro d'Italia 13, Stage16. Yowza. Via Veerle. jc-05.22

Civilized London, Portugal Walking Tours and Verdant England. Fantastic "Travel Posters" promoting Delilah Dirk and The Turkish Lieutenant, a graphic novel by Tony Cliff. jc-05.22

Fans dropping four figures for their own Daft Punk robot hemets. Via Stereogum. esm-05.22

Amazing gifs from Istanbul-based artist Erdal Inci. More can be seen here. esm-05.22

Wood Geos by Haley Ann Robinson. dw-05.22

It's hard to beat a simple, dramatic demo. BBDO Moscow for Mercedes-Benz Smart. jc-05.22

The Daily Mail has a look at some of the entries in this year's Weston Sand Sculpture Festival. ms-05.22

"Clichés work because they are clichés." Bill Gardner on current trends in logo design. Via Quips. jc-05.22

A new Man of Steel trailer. Plus this, "What? Guys, it's O.K. It's Superman. He's the king daddy. You should all be bowing down to him." Dave Itzkoff on "respecting the S." jc-05.22

A rare piece that's both nerdy and fascinating, methinks. Tony Kroch uses a single famous sentence to examine the evolution of English, Protesting Too Much, for Language Log. jc-05.22

jc-05.22

Related to the last, "Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beings if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. But I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a countin' on ya, and by golly we ain't about to let 'em down." jc-05.22

Relink for a hump day smile, a collection of nice Kubrick cinemagraphs. Via Matt Zoller Seitz. jc-05.22

Chicago - Five Great Buildings. Via Chicagoist. dw-05.21

Categorizing People Running for Trains in Slow Motion. sd-05.21

Droga5's clever promo for Qantas airlines: Stories for Every Journey, a collection of books, with their lengths timed to those of varying flights' distances. Short film about it, here. sd-05.21

Trailer for the documentary about racing in the Midwest: R/C Racers. sd-05.21

A Grizzly ate his GoPro. ms-05.21

A lovely collection of time-lapse videos of our beloved city. ms-05.21

If you're anything like BB and me, you are anxiously awaiting Sunday's premiere of the new season of Arrested Development. Luckily for all of us, NPR has this wonderful guide to all the running gags from the first 3 seasons. mcj-05.21

"I put all the dishes away, is that OK?" and other questions that get all women horny. By Claire Zulkey. jc-05.21

The ornate tombstones within a cemetery in the small town of Ieud, in northern Romania. sd-05.21

For 600 days Yu Yamauchi lived in a hut near the summit of Mt. Fuji, getting up while it was still dark to photograph the sunrise every day, from the same location. dw-05.21

Clash box set with all five albums remastered. #TOBTM. jc-05.21

Page Two contains the previous 40 Fresh Signals, recent features, a key to the icons and the categorical archives.

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