What's All This Then?
This site is edited by Coudal Partners, a design, advertising and interactive studio in Chicago, as an ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce. [Next]
What's All This Then?
Thanks for visiting. If browsing around here while at work has had a negative effect on your productivity we're sorry but imagine what it's done to ours. [Hide]
Friday Edition
It's time to fight back against obnoxious cell-phone users.
Download our SHHH cards.
Coudal Partners
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.
Field Notes Colors Subscriptions
Notes For All Seasons
A digital still camera, a shopping trip to a craft store, some moss and a shiny pop song from a band from Canberra, Australia who we found through Twitter. Those and about 30 hours are the ingredients that made up this video about our first year of Field Notes COLORS. Thanks a million to Margaret Helen King for Amen.
Vox Vocis
Poetry After the Beep
On a whim, we asked people to read their favorite short poems into our answering machine for a project we called Verse By Voice. And they did, creating maybe the first-ever poetry meme. Make sure to listen to novelist Zadie Smith reading Frank O'Hara's Animals and Laura Demanski reading Gerard Manley Hopkins' Spring and Fall. Note: we didn't include what is surely not Christopher Walken reading EE Cummings, but that's worth a listen too. Jim talked about this project during his appearance on Public Radio's Hello Beautiful! and the photos are courtesy of Sam Javanrouh's Daily Dose of Imagery.
Vehicle ID System Update
I Brake For Quasi-Religious Symbols
We have word that recently two readers in New York, who followed our guidelines for updating their vehicle identification systems, pulled up alongside each other at a traffic light and celebrated their common bond by honking and pointing. Excellent. Our plot is beginning to take hold. Write for yours free today, but hurry, we only have tens of thousands left.
A Retail Experiment
Today Is Not Wednesday
We're all about experimenting with stuff. Recently Michele came up with a totally simple idea for a promotion for our Field Notes Brand. We've done dozens of "buy two get one free" and "save $10" and "free shipping" offers over the past couple years but this time we decide to do something completely straightforward, without any preconditions, and make it as simple as possible. Here's what we offered. Results? We booked hundreds of orders and only a very few people bought a really cheap thing, like three pins from Pinsetter for $3, in order to get the $10 freebie. (We're looking at you Norway.) Anyhow, as with everything else it seems, simple always wins. Maybe we'll do it again someday. Maybe we won't. Subscribe to our mail list at the bottom of the right hand column to find out.
A CP Film Copy Goes Here
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. In case you missed it, here's what our home page looked like when we debuted the movie.
a short film that seems longer
Long Day’s Journey Out of Iowa
Our Steve Delahoyde is a man with an iron will. An iron will, a subcompact, a girlfriend and an idea on how to make a regular drive more, er, interesting. Note: All the driving worked. Claire and Steve are now Mr. and Mrs..
Two For The Dead
All Hallows’
It's often lost in the candy-coated, super-styled proceedings of the holiday, but Halloween is really all about departed souls and dealing with loss. Also for Halloween, Jason Santa Maria has collected some short writings on the subject of candy. Jim has contributed a warning in verse. Heed this well, young costumed beggars.
Einstein's Puzzler
Whose Fish?
An annual tradition. It's never too early to start planning what your family is going to argue about at this year's Christmas party. Enjoy the day and remember, our Albert Einstein's Fish Puzzle is available as a nice-looking, free, printable PDF file. It's perfect for proving to your Uncle George that he's not all that, brain-power wise, and it's certainly more enjoyable that talking about health care.
Vermouth and Beauty
Perfect
Many things are debated in this studio: Politics. Sports. Books. Film. Especially film. While there may be room for argument on this subject, there's very little room for vermouth. We're not sure why you'd want to, but if you'd rather order up something different from the bartender, you'll find a ton of ideas in our huge collection of Friday Drink Links.
Not Quite so
Fresh Signals
For the day, "a drinker with writing problems."
Christophe Szpajdel is Lord of the Logos, the black metal band ones anyway. Via @paukee.
For the day, !8 minutes of The Pogues, live from 1985.
Just what we need, America's leading 11 year-old film critic hates Alice and loves Extraordinary Measures.
"Essentially, it is a camera that - using a mobile communication device - takes other's photos. Photos that were created by someone who pressed a button somewhere at the same time as its own button was pressed." Via Jan Chipchase.
"A sequence of 500 'illuminations' at 250-metre intervals will roll westwards from Segedunum fort, Wallsend, at 5:45pm, reaching Carlisle three quarters of an hour later and ending on the final, largely fragmentary stretch of the wall above the Solway." The public participates in a large scale work of art, lighting up Hadrian's Wall. Check the video here.
From an occasional series, Great Moments in Fresh Signals History. Richard Nicholson's survey of London's remaining professional darkrooms. Cameron Booth's reinterpretation of the U.S. Eisenhower Interstate System Map. Peter Guthrie's 3D renderings of van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. Stéfan Le Dû's Star Wars Stormtroopers in various situations. J. D. Salinger's letter to a producer interested in filming Catcher in the Rye.
140.
Field Notes in Action.
A new timelapse HD film from Philip Bloom Sky, filmed over five days in Dubai. Here's some background and Bloom's copious production notes.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Maintaining Dignity in Online Advertising, a chat I had with Wendy Mitchell.
Chat Roulette piano improv.
An interactive infographic showing the difference between the quakes in Haiti and Chile.
For DW, the Periodic Table of Sci-Fi film and television.
Trailer for Please Give.
A History of Argentinian Transportation Tickets. Via The DDC by way of Wicked Cobra.
Aegir Hallmundur's illustration for Wired is money.
Wow, that Gina Trapani seems really cool, and she has a killer sense of style too.
Newsweek, Dan Pink and Gawker like our Rove-ing of Rove too.
If you'd subscribed to FIELD NOTES COLORS…
Ezra Klein from WaPo and Ben Smith of Politico have linked up the video we did for 37signals' REWORK. Thanks for that.
We can all be our own broadcaster now, both scary and amazing. The Staff Room is one of my current faves.
A letter from a hero to Alfred A. Knopf. Norman Maclean to Charles Elliott, 1981. That cinches it, I officially love every word he wrote. Via @UChicagoPress.
Transforming The Tate. Watch as this is built. Via Things Magazine.
Every time you make a Powerpoint, Edward Tufte kills a kitten.
The DDC posts a very sad before & after picture.
What Jessica Hische did today, drew type with 1000 thumbtacks. Via Faceout Books.
Simple and simply perfect, The Exchange a short by Baptiste Sola. Via Aqua-Velvet.
Dan chats with Merlin Mann on this week's The Pipeline.
Sunshine starts shipping today! A limited number of 3packs and COLORS subscriptions are still available.
Sketch group Elephant Larry's pilot episode of The WOW. "Like those 20-minute 'entertainment' shows that you have to sit through in the theater before the movie comes on. Only better, because it's fake."
Bigassmessage.com.
I am very sorry I didn't link this earlier. Please forgive me.
Sam O'Hare's "The Sandpit," a day in the life of New York City, in tilt-shift and time-lapse. Spectacular. Via John Nack.
So you know. Practical advice on how to disassemble and clean the aluminum Apple keyboard, machine translated from Applesfere. And some perhaps not so practical advice from MS.
Back to the Cover Page.
Find a JobIcon Key
What all those little square icons in Fresh Signals mean.
A post from our monthly guest editor. The complete
listing af all the people we owe favors can be found here.
We love these products so much we even paid for them.
A post with this icon may well end up in our Museum of Online Museums.
About Depth of Field.
Not to be missed.
A Friday Drink Link. Hic.
Film feed. Short attention span video theater.
Having to do with our Field Notes Brand.
What we just talked about at lunch.
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.
The Deck Network. Interested in getting your product or service in front of millions of savvy, curious remarkably good-looking people? Give a shout.
