LD Loves {Linden’s Pensieve}

Ack! What a week! With late nights at work every day this week, I’ve gotten a bit behind on blogging. I’ll save this week’s links for a double-whammy of a Weekly Reader next week. In the meantime, head over to Linden’s Pensieve to check out her review of Google’s Chrome.

For those not familiar with Linden’s blog, she mainly posts about her training for the upcoming Berlin Marathon (woo!). But having known Linden now for about 5 years, she’s also a fellow German-phile and one of my tech gurus. In fact, she motivated me to start blogging again, and over the past year has introduced me to RSS (to which I’m now highly addicted) and twitter, given me the heads up on Diigo, and walked me through Google Analytics.

Tags | blogging, Chrome, Diigo, German, Google, RSS

Wednesday’s Weekly Reader: Wish List

Well, this was an unusual week: usually I find several items to share that all relate to each other. This week, I had a hard time categorizing them. So I guess I’ll just have to group things the best I can:

Adding these to my wish list:

• Neubau Berlin has put both of their popular books in one sweet collection: Neubau Exposition. I might just have to preorder this since I’ve been waiting to get my own copies of Modal and Welt. (via QBN) Update: here’s what they look like…
  
• Also found on QBN was this cool Fabric Clock:
  
  I just really like the customization of it.

Some sites to check out:

• Snow and Graham Letterpress just updated their site, and boy! is it eye-candy!
• Check out The Journal of Urban Type for some cool vernacular type.
• Creativebits posted some links to great blank images for use in digital mockups.
• Lastly, Steven Heller weighs in on the Orphan Works debate.

Tags | German, Neubau, Orphan Works Bill, vernacular type

Wednesday’s Weekly Reader

Another week’s worth of great stuff on the web, but first an Fantasy Olympics update: it seems that despite a good start, Austria has slipped to the bottom. Alas!

Re-visiting the Orphan Works Bill debate:
I first posted about this issue here and here, and now Etsy’s Storque puts the debate up to their readers. 

Great Resources:

•  If you’re like me and always hoping to brush up on more webdesign skills, WebChicklet posted a great resource list for learning CSS. (via swissmiss)
• SpeakUp! just posted an awesome review of the book Dear Lulu. Designed by design students in Germany, the book is essentially a test to see how well the digital on-demand service could print everything from half-tones to colors and how well the piece was trimmed and bound. Sweet idea and well designed:
  
• For those art history nerds like me, check out Nancy Stock-Allen’s well-designed History of Graphic Design site for class notes. (also via swissmiss)  
• And finally, if you love Sprint’s Speed of Light campaign and want to do your own light drawings, check out Light Doodles for a gallery and how-to. (Thanks, Linden!)

Pure eye-candy:

• Shadows Never Sleep reinvents the picture book for your iPhone (or iPod Touch!)…via Coudal
  
• And in honor of my upcoming post series on animation, this gorgeous snippet of a short from Carlos Lascano: A Short Love Story is one of the most beautiful pieces of stop motion in a long time. (also via Coudal)
   

Tags | art history, German, iPhone, iPhone apps, Orphan Works Bill, Webdesign

Weekly Reader: Wednesday Links

I’m a little behind on posting inspiration, so I thought that I would try and make a regular habit of posting links in a weekly post rather than posting them willy-nilly as they come up in my feed-reader. It’s hard to narrow down all of the items I’ve noted lately, but figure this is a start…even if some of them have already made the blog rounds.

I’ll start with an aside: my friends and I have started a Fantasy Olympics to root for the underdogs this year. The goal was to pick a country to root for that isn’t already in the top 10 medal-winning countries. Since the Czech Republic was already taken, I went with Austria. As you can see on Gavin’s blog for the event, I’m already in the top third or so! “The hills are aliiiiive with the sound of medaaaaals!” (cheesy, I know…) Who are you rooting for?

Letterpress Love:
Oh, to own a press!

• iLT has had a couple great posts about letterpress lately —Getting Started and also some good inspiration in his past couple of http://ilovetypography.com/2008/07/21/sunday-type-napkin-type/
• Joie Studio posted a great series on Learning How to Letterpress (via Poppytalk)

German Love:
You know I have a soft spot for the Germans, so here are a few German/linguistics related items

• Etsy posted an insider’s look to Berlin’s vintage stores/flea markets that made me homesick for my favorite city.
• If you can’t go to Berlin, Poppytalk posted a great way to bring Berlin to you with some sweet wallpaper.
• Grain Edit has a great post pointing you to German and Swiss Modern Book Design
• And this Guess the Accent game is just fun (via Coudal)

And finally, Marion Bantjes + bringing out of print books back to market = amazing design. (via Coudal)
(seriously, I’m in love with her work and am just jealous I didn’t make it big first)

Tags | German, letterpress, linguistics, Olympics, Things and People I Like:

Chicago Part 3: Heavenly Pattern Inspiration

Of course, many of the stained glass works on display at the Smith Museum were from churches. I was surprised to find that many of the works were imported to Chicago churches from Germany by German immigrants. Above are a few of the patterns (and textures: check out the detail in the hair!) that I thought were quite divine.

Tags | Chicago, German, Navy Pier, pattern, Smith Museum of Stained Glass, stained glass