A Toy Story Legend

Via Silly Putty History

Peter Hodgson, Sr., (1912-1976) who starred in this 1951 Silly Putty TV commercial, was just another ad man down on his luck, writing copy for a small toy store catalog in New Haven, Connecticut when he first launched the idea of marketing a blob of silicone goop as a toy. The plastic goop was actually a failed experiment from General Electric scientists in New Haven who were looking to develop a synthetic rubber. Soon the non-toxic goo became the topic of conversation at a cocktail party where Mr. Hodgson first learned of it. 
     "Everybody kept saying there was no earthly use for the stuff, but I watched them as they fooled with it. I couldn't help noticing how people with busy schedules wasted as much as 15 minutes at a shot just fondling and stretching it" Hodgson later recalled. 
     After placing his first ad in the 1949 toy catalog, Hodgson borrowed $147 to package and fill orders. Silly Putty soon became an overnight success. Sales of the seemingly useless goo packaged in a plastic egg quickly expanded into 22 other countries, reaching over $5 million in annual sales. Mr. Hodgson was living the dream. 

Via Click Americana

"The Real Solid Liquid" as Silly Putty came to be known, was an American toy story legend simply because Mr. Hodgson viewed the useless silicone blob through a new set of eyes. From trash to treasure—he didn't see it as a failed experiment—he saw it as "fun for the whole family." It's all just context. With a logo of putty-like lettering, and packaging of a faux wood-grained television set, Silly Putty was ready for prime time. 
     For many of us, it was also our first introduction to printmaking. Who couldn't resist pulling impressions of favorite comic characters and stretching them until they snapped? This toy was magic—it could do anything!

Via 4|CP

Though seemingly harmless...it was not. I'm sure I wasn't alone to find I was the victim of another bad haircut after falling asleep with Silly Putty—only to wake up with it embedded in my hair. Or to leave it to rest on a desk in the sun, and return later to find it in a melted puddle of putty on the floor. 

Via Flickr

If you find yourself off to an Easter egg hunt this weekend, I hope you find a brightly-colored plastic egg with a blob of goop inside. Just don't eat it.

Thirst For Words

Got a thirst for words? This typewriter has some type on tap. The designer, known simply as Morskoiboy, schemed up the idea of a cocktail typewriter one day, drew up a sketch, and within months, had a cocktail-dispensing typewriter contraption built of plexiglas, plastic piping, pumps and pushbutton letters. Type any letter and a colored liquid will display it and dispense it. Type more letters and you have yourself a word cocktail. Caution: drink words sparingly. Too many and you forget how to use them. Unless...Morskoiboy can maybe invent some sort of a liquid white-out solution that might erase the colored letters after drinking them...Hmmm

Morskoiboy's cocktail typewriter works simply by mixing a base liquid in the basin at top— such as water, milk, or alcohol—with the corresponding colored liquids from the vessels below. Pressing the letters on the keyboard injects the corresponding colored liquids into a splitter, sending it to the various segments of the letter display. Each letter activates a syringe with a valve that converts them into a pump. Push L for lime, K for kahlua, O for orange, V for vodka. After the splitter injects the liquid into as many segments needed to display the particular letter, it then mixes it with the base liquid before it reaches the tap. The biggest decision you will have to make as the typist/bartender is how many words per cocktail to type.   
     Morskoiboy reports that his typewriter is not quite ready-for-prime-time (I'd call that a prototypewriter), and still needs some fine-tuning. Perhaps he can build the next one with an optional set of lowercase letters for the youth crowd. Oh, and a snowflake glyph for ice.

Ewww, I'm not about to drink any flourescent pink R. That just can't be a real food product ;(

Master of Mystery, Macabre and Marketing

When I think of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), the word happy doesn't readily come to mind, but I find his eloquent definition of happiness most profound. He claims he was most happy when he was able to create something—when all other distractions and negative emotions were removed and a figuratively clear road ahead was revealed. It's like having a empty canvas with space to work and create. In that sense, I can imagine him as happy. Although he was a master of mystery and macabre, he was one of the most brilliant, witty and inventive artists of the last century. If everyone believed in his same definition of happiness, what a wonderful world this would be!
      It's no surprise that Alfred Hitchcock began his career in show business as an illustrator, set designer and title designer in 1920. He even illustrated his own logo for the opening title of his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents which premiered in 1955. Overtime, this logo became his brand and was permanently identified with his name and face. Not even Prince—with his trademark glyph—could master that kind of marketing!
      Watch an incredibly sinister episode below of a 1958 murder mystery written by the great Roald Dahl. It opens with his logo and his walk-on silhouette part. I find it especially laughable that Hitchcock opens with a scene of himself being issued a traffic ticket in a checkout line of a grocery store. He actually had a lifelong fear of policemen.

Below is a wonderful mashup of Alfred and the Apple logo (sorry I could not find the artist's credit). As part of their famous marketing campaign of creative artists and inventors, Apple even featured Hitchcock's iconic photo in one of their Think Different posters. He was his own brand.

:: Kudos to Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, for discovering the happiness clip on Open Culture. The Alfred Apple logo is via MacTumbler.

Imagine That

 A compelling case about ideas; how they happen and how they can be learned, as author Jonah Lehrer so creatively demonstrates in his new book Imagine, How Creativity Works. Lehrer also writes a great science blog, Frontal Cortex, which is included in the Wired Science network of all-star science blogs, and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and Radiolab, the radio show about curiosity and ideas. His own website is somewhat like a real mindmap. Oh, and the fun live drawing in this video? It is done by cartoonist Flash Rosenberg.
:: Via the Curious Brain

The Type Rider

Take one poet, add a typewriter, a bicycle and a birthday wish to travel cross country, and you have the makings of a great story. Maya Stein soon hopes to publish this story of her dream of the open road, and it will be written by people she meets along the way. She turns 40 years old in May and wants nothing more but to cycle at a clip of approximately 40 miles a day, for 40 straight days to Milwaukee, WI, the birthplace of the typewriter. Along her journey she wants to meet up with people and invite them to contribute their voices to a communal typewritten poem, or series of poems. She wants to bring people together through the written word and has developed a Kickstarter campaign to reach $15,000 in the next 40 days to do so. I admire her spirit of adventure, her sense of purpose, and the image of a Remington ten forty; the "moveable typewriter" in tow behind her bicycle. Just the numerology alone—of the 40 miles, 40 days, 40 years and a ten forty Remington is all too Pythagorical (if there is such a word ;) So donate $4 or $40 and send Maya on down the road from Amherst, MA to Milwaukee, WI. With all my talk of the open road lately, I'm thinking it's near time I take Letterology on a big road trip.
::Thanks to Rob for this Type Rider link. He bravely types for peace, democracy, and the glory of the typosphere at Typewriter Heaven.

ReCycled Printing Ideas

This is an idea whose time has come again. Recycle this cycle printing idea from the streets of 19th century Paris by strapping a container of some water-based ink to the back of your bike, fitted with a self-inking device, and the streets could be your canvas. I love this idea. It is the latest fashion in moveable type.  
      This tricycle printing sort of reminds me of Jonah Kessel's brilliant invention of his tricycle calligraphy. On the streets of Beijing, Kessel wrote such Chinese proverbs as: Create a good environment for minors to grow up healthy; Virtue shows through long term persistence, civilization reflects by actions; Civilization comes from every individual, to contribute from every little thing. I still marvel at his invention. 
::As seen at Ptak Science Books.

A bicycle-driven "resistance press" from WWII. I believe this press is from the Netherlands where many underground presses flourished during the later stages of the war. It is difficult to see from this lone photo just how this press was operated by the bicycle, but I presume there was a strap-pulley system somehow connected to the flywheel of the press and the press operator fed the paper in the front seen on the left side of image.
      I read somewhere that Orville and Wilbur Wright once designed and built a printing press and the two brothers ran their own job printing shop for a short while. Eventually they settled on managing a bicycle repair shop and building their own bicycles. Always the inventors, I have to wonder if they ever strapped a bicycle to one of their presses. If anyone knows more about this and bicycle-powered presses, please let me know.
::Photo by Krista van den Bos via Bibliopolis.

Where Ideas Come From

Frank Chimero's The Being There Diary, asks the question: "What was the very best moment of your day?"

When asked where he gets his ideas, writer Nicholson Baker comments:
If you ask yourself, 'What's the best thing that happened today?' it actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about. If you ask yourself 'What happened today?' it's very likely that you're going to remember the worst thing, because you've had to deal with it—you've had to rush somewhere or somebody said something mean to you—that's what you're going to remember. But if you ask what the best thing is, it's going to be some particular slant of light, or some wonderful expression somebody had, or some particularly delicious salad. I mean, you never know...
::Via Austin Kleon's Tumblr, Lustik

A New Year's Toast

Toast in the New Year with some text on toast. You could write yourself a to-do list for the day in jam or prepare a toasted love note for someone sitting next to you at the breakfast table. Or write a toast novel? This is such a great idea from Niimi, a Japanese design office specializing in product design, however it appears the letter may only be a prototype. With the envelope exterior and the grill mark lines, I am certain the toasted letter would be very well-received if it were for real. In 2007, the letter received the Gold Prize for New Product Design at the Toyama Product Design Competition. 
::Found on Present & Correct via Good Mail. 

Penguin Potters'

Sweet! Designer / illustrator M.S. Corley imagines Harry Potter covers as early Penguin Classics. I don't know how I missed these much earlier, but think you'll agree they're worth the revisit. 

Scrabble Game Gets an A

It is hard to take on the original iconic Scrabble game with the beautiful wooden letter tiles, but Andrew Clifford Capener has turned over the gameboard entirely. He intends to create alphabet anarchy with his new designer edition he calls the A-1 Scrabble game. His protoType is designed to excite people about typography (doesn't everyone love it already?) as it provides the customer a choice of preferred font packs. Additional packs of assorted font designs can be ordered. His game is packaged in a beautiful birch wood box set with slots that contain the 6 magnetized board pieces. These fit nicely together to form the handsome black gameboard. The chances of Capener to make a move to produce the A-1 Scrabble set will be greatly increased if you sign his website. No promises yet or prices set, but let him know if it is a get.

:: Via: Good > Design

Angst Inspires

Happy birthday Kurt Vonnegut. We should all be so imaginative.
Via this isn't happiness.

Little Black Books

Moleskine planners continue to evolve in all directions. Here you can customize it as a travel journal on your next world adventure. And submit your own journal artwork for Moleskine's permanent collection. This is not a paid advertisement for Moleskine planners. It's just that they're a brilliantly designed product.

Moleskine papercut art by Toord Boontje via Little Black Books article in Print Magazine.

eBooks eVolve

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

In the future, reading a book may not be such a linear experience and there is no doubt, there is an evolution going on. Or maybe it is a revolution as the debate between books and eBooks continues. The verb to read is taking on a new context as well. The dictionary now defines reading as comprehending the meaning of printed material and interpreting the characters and symbols of which it is composed. It is what you are doing now. Doh! However it can also be a conversation or debate–as IDEO explores their notions of books with us here–and it can be a series of hyperlinks that whisk us away on an entirely new adventure. It should be called readertainment as it makes reading fun, much like a video game or movie. And it certainly invites non-readers to the party too. But these frequent hyperlinks can also be really annoying and inhibit our imagination as it disrupts the reading process. As a reader, what are your thoughts? The last word has not been said on this topic, nor will it ever be. I personally believe there is room for both linear and non-linear reading–analog books and the digital–and the common goal is to make it a pleasant and rewarding experience. Just practice good typographic hygiene and mind your Ps & Qs.

You can also enter into the conversation over on IDEOs Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/ideobigconversations

Where Ideas Come From

Thinking Is Fun from Davis Silis on Vimeo.