Electric Dreams

I'm currently writing on retro-futurism and am startled to find a  series of chromolithograph postcards published by the printer Villemard.  Their visions for the future in the year 2000 include flying firemen and teachers who feed books to machines hooked up to  students' brains. Books go into the meat grinder and behold, ideas come out like electricity.

The Woman Behind Mac's Icons

As I get deeper and deeper into my current research project (California's Matriarchy of Design) the more I admire the early designers and adopters of the Macintosh. So I was especially pleased to see that Susan Kare has come out with Susan Kare Icons, a self published book on her innovative work for Apple in the 1980s and numerous other clients ever since.  Especially interesting are the sketches that she made (on a $2.50 graph paper sketch pad purchased at University Art Supplies in Palo Alto no less!) that introduce the now familiar interactive icons for the Mac.  Steve Silberman has published parts of the new book's introductory essay on NeuroTribes.

A Map of a Holiday in Hell

Since I was a little kid, I've been interested in maps and ideas of wayfindings. But I've never seen anything like these maps, courtesy of the blog Strange Maps.

Just in time for the holiday season (I no longer have to explain to my family why I don't want to go camping--I can just show them this):

A Map of a Holiday in Hell