These beautiful infographic images are scanned from the 1939 book Graphic Presentation by Willard Cope Brinton. Visit Professor Michael Stoll’s Flickr stream to view more pages at high resolution.
No, this site hasn’t morphed into an Engrish rip-off. I’ve just been spending a lot of time in dollar stores lately.
Haunting the aisles of the cheap and easily broken, one begins to pick up on certain design tropes prevalent in goods sold at or near the amount of a dollar. With the caveat that I am still a young grasshopper when it comes to big-city bargain hunting in the modern five and dime, I will attempt to sketch out some observations on national trends in decoration for products cheaply manufactured.
Now nothing says cheap like retro styling. In the above label for a ‘Movable Stick’, note the overall 70s vibe. Warm colors. Soft focus clip art. Wavy rainbow lines. And dig the simplistic logo for Min Long Craft that nearly screams “Owner/Operator/Creative Director”
I find the sum effect pretty reassuring of a half-assed product at a price low enough that I won’t think twice about splurging on a rolling pin when I don’t even have curtains on my windows yet. (Dear neighbors: The human body is a beautiful, natural thing. Especially mine.)
Even better:
The subtle clash of elements here is fantastic. An American flag design with a discreet but readable ‘MADE IN CHINA” and the bold fiery letters of XIAN JIAN on the blue starry field delivers a one-two punch of easy irony. Drop-shadows, serifs and a lovely gradient matte behind the cryptic product title let you know that when this designer works a pirated copy of Illustrator 4.0, its hard to see the mouse from all the steam coming off the man’s hands.
A nice tight row of bolts keep things nearly topical (this label comes from a variety pack of nails) and finishing it off with the polite and reassuring ESL slogan gives the whole proceedings that Asian flavor that keeps one coming back to the dollar store.
A subject for further study is whether there is a national style to cheap product package design. I’d venture yes, having fed on bottom of the barrel Israeli sesame cookies, cheap Turkish milk crackers and allegedly Durian flavored sandwich cookies from Thailand through various jobs situated next to 99 cent, dollar and 100 yen stores. More musings on this subject to come.
Last week the New York Times published an article by Sara Corbett on Carl Gustav Jung’s unpublished The Red Book entitled “The Holy Grail of the Unconscious.” Corbett’s article covers all of the story from how Jung created the book to its secrecy and ultimate shelving in a safe so there is no need to repeat it here. 
The book is the outpouring of Carl Jung’s exploration into his own psyche. The few who have read it said they either read with bated breath or felt it the ramblings of a psychopath.
The illustration and typography of the book from scans looks amazing, as in these full color scans of The Red Book. Reminds me of the Voynich manuscript– a mysterious illustrated work from the Renaissance filled with peculiar imagery.
Though unlikely to live up to the hype of those who have read it, The Red Book promises to be a substantial work by one of the twentieth century’s great minds.
The Internet is full of places for finding those stock photos of overly happy women working customer support and businessmen striking a deal for serious business. However, maybe you need an image or texture for your blog, reference, design work, or art work.
Fortunately there are plenty of places online for free stock images and textures. Always make sure to check licensing as perhaps an image is free but might require permission or may not be available for commercial use.
stock.xchng
One of the oldest resources for free stock images. Relatively recently acquired by Getty Images many budding would be stock photographers cut their camera and illustration chops here.
Openphoto
A growing gallery of images some with restrictions and some without. Many of the images are out of focus or require some Photoshop tuning, but the range is stunning.
Morguefile
A great collection of images for reference, remixing, or backgrounds. The images tend to be less people based than stock.xchng and focused towards artists and designers.
Mayang’s Textures
I’ve used this site for years for creating 3D textures, backgrounds, and textures. The images are high resolution so are ideal for creating seamless tiles. The limit is 20 images per day, per IP address. You can buy a DVD for a mere $40 USD containing all the images if you hit the limit often.
CG Textures
Like Mayang’s, this site is designed and organized primarily for use as textures. The images are primarily of flat textures such as rust, steel, and organic fauna.
Flickr
It’s no secret that Flickr has many, many images– but many of them are vacation shots or drooling babies. Those vacations shots can be useful sometimes– like this quite elaborate use of a vacation shot in the film Iron Man. Just make sure its okay to use the image according to the creator’s wishes.
Scouring the web it was hard to find social networking icons that were not 3D Boxes, bottled shaped, or otherwise irregular. So as the cliché goes sometimes if you want a job done you have to do it yourself. These basic logo icons for Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, and Delicious are suitable to use as is or modify for a more custom look.
Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, and Delicious Icons
The file is a vector EPS version 3.0 file so it should open in most graphics programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Inkscape and many more. They will be used as part of a redesign of this very site (coming soon). If you find these icon logos useful let us know!