Originally designed by Massimo Vignelli in 1966, the Stendig now resides in the Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

The calendar is set up in the ‘Eurpoean Style’ with Monday being the first day of the week and it rotates back and forth between black and white pages for each month. Not for the faint of heart, the Stendig measures an astounding three feet by four feet!

I had one of these beauties back in 2007 and the best part is, once you’re done with a month, you can use the sheets for wrapping paper, collage, craft projects and so much more!

Retailers that sell the calendar include Stendig, Unica Home, The Art Store and See Jane Work.

Everyone has used sticky notes, but they are rarely as stylish (or as practical) as the Graph Cube Post-It. The stack features 1,000 sheets that are printed with a 13 x 13 grid square. Perfect for doodling, writing in a straight line or just making your desk surface more stylish! I bought mine this weekend and have been admiring its beauty ever since…

For the last five years, I have used the Coolpix 8700 and it held up amazingly well through 7 New York visits, a cross country tour, an accidental drop in the aisle of a grocery store and getting thrown into my purse nearly every day without a camera case. Recently, it began to literally fall apart and have focus issues, so I knew that it was finally time to upgrade.

Since I was twelve, I’ve carried a camera everywhere with me. I’ve never taken any photography-related classes and I’m very much a point-and-shoot girl. Camera-wise, I needed something that was nearly as powerful as an SLR but compact and light enough to throw into my purse for everyday use.

I finally decided on this model because of its 10.1 megapixels, huge LCD screen (2.7 inches) and the fact that it’s the world’s most compact telephoto camera among models with an 18x zoom!

Needless to say, the zoom is amazing and the clarity for close-up shots is unparalleled. The biggest improvement I’ve noticed in comparison to my older Nikon is the image stabilization. Before, if I didn’t use a tripod when I had my flash turned off, the pictures would turn out slightly blurry. With my new camera, I just point and shoot, no tripod necessary and everything turns out crisp and in focus!

Another small tweak in the newer design is also notable: The lens cover keeps the lens from fully opening until you remove it, even when you turn the camera on. My old camera didn’t have this feature and if the on switch accidentally got bumped in my bag, the lens would expand completely and risk getting damaged.

Finally, I love having the ability to record TV-quality movies with sound with no time limit! The duration is only limited by the space available on your memory card. This will definitely come in handy during my Summer jaunts to NYC and Arizona!

Enough gushing. All I can say is that I’m really happy with the quality and efficiency of this model.

 

Is it a lego? Is it a hard drive?!

I just became the proud owner of a LaCie Brick external hard drive and I couldn’t be happier with it! I first noticed it on my friend Star’s blog and loved the looks of it. It also has 500 GB of space and is super affordable! 

It’s such a relief to finally have my computer backed up and the Brick is extremely user friendly. I had it out of the box and up and running in less than five minutes. Finally, this is one hard drive you won’t be embarrassed to keep out on your desk.

2. Also, I just received two new typography books:

a. Type & Lettering by William Longyear; 

b. Type by David Gates; 

Both are of the vintage variety and the pages are composed of super cool alphabets though I mainly purchased them for the amazing covers!

3. I’ve just finished four new pieces of art and will begin posting them next week. That raises the count for Black & White Graphic Insight to 16 and I’m aiming for 25 by the July show. Kinda sorta almost there!

Yesterday, my copy of Lettering for Reproduction by David Gates showed up! Published in 1969, it covers everything you need to know about designing hand-lettered type (after all, this was the age before personal computers) and the content is based on Pratt Institute’s Dept. of Advertising Design and Visual Communication Lettering Course from that time.I love the abundance of diagrams and illustrations (almost every page has pictures) and that most of the examples are student work.   

If you’re type obsessed, it’s nice to have a manual on how to put all those rusty tools to use (your t-sqaure and drafting tape are feeling lonely!) and at the very least, the low cost coupled with spiral bound pages make it convenient to rip apart and plaster your walls in.  

The author I credit with teaching me the most about design is Jan V. White. A former art director at Time-Life, he’s written more than a dozen books on visual techniques focused in publishing. The best part about his books are the sketchy images (no fancy, computer-generated pictures here)! Instead of huge, wordy paragraphs, he fills pages with hand-drawn diagrams and quirky notes. He doesn’t just tell you about design, he shows you.

Book Titles by Jan V. White:

1. Editing by Design (1974)
2. Designing Covers, Contents, Flash Forms, Departments, Editorials, Openers…(1976)
3. Graphic Idea Notebook (1980)
4. On Graphics: Tips for Editors (1981)
5. Designing for Magazines (1982)
6. Mastering Graphics: Design and Production Made Easy (1983)
7. Using Charts and Graphs (1984)
8. The Grid Book: A Guide to Page Planning (1987)
9. Graphic Design for the Electronic Age (1988)
10. Thoughts on Publication Design (1989)
11. Great Pages: A Common-Sense Approach to Effective Desktop Design (1990)
12. Color for the Electronic Age (1990)
13. Great Color (1991)
14. Color for Impact (1996)

*Most of his titles have been re-issued multiple times, so there are newer editions of many of these. I’ve found very little difference, so I usually stick with the earlier editions which can be found on Amazon or Half for a few dollars each.

The most popular and beloved of all of Jan’s books is the Graphic Idea Notebook, a collection of more than 2,000 illustrations and line art that visualize the abstract problems that page editors encounter. The images are arranged in five groups that reflect the key concepts of design: mime (body language, pointing, showing, displaying), time, place, type, and idioms. I found mine online for under a dollar and it’s a still groundbreaking book, almost 30 years after its release :

Jan’s books are never intimidating; they’re fun and inviting. They have a way of getting your creative juices flowing that is unparalleled. The information contained in each volume is so fundamental that it crosses the barriers of both publication and graphic design. Any visual artist can benefit from the techniques he teaches.

STABILO is a German maker of pens for writing and coloring as well as highlighters for office use. The company was founded in Nuremberg in 1855!

I just picked up a mini set of my favorite felt tip pens ever, STABILO! They last and last; I’ve had a lone red one for three months and used it every single day to write in my planner; it’s still going strong. They’re perfect for jotting down notes or coloring and never seem to dry out as long as you snap the caps back on. If you’re looking for a basic marker that doesn’t bleed through paper, colors evenly every time and has a stylishly striped outside, STABILO is for you!

Before digital cameras, instant photo gratification was left to the trusty Polaroid. Polaroid’s Land Camera, the first instant camera available to consumers was released in 1947. Polaroid still sells a selection of instant film directly from their website, though it can be pricey and many of the older formats have been permanently discontinued, including the artist’s favorite SX-70.

More Polaroid fun:

* The Polaroid Group on Flickr is over 5,000 members strong and open to the public!

* Stripper Polaroids is a fascinating set of 60s and 70s images from a collection of over 400 Polaroid photos of strippers trying out for dancing jobs. They are worth a look just for the hair, clothing, and decor flashbacks alone!

* Grant Hamilton is the modern master of color and composition; a visual reminder that Polaroids can be heightened to an artform.

*Polanoid is an all-polaroid photo website, “stuffed with millions of Polaroids, collected and uploaded by Polaroid addicts all over the planet.”