The collection instantly renewed our excitement about working with Davis Ayer to design and publish a book focusing on the hundreds of color slides he’s collected that were taken between the 1940s and 1960s. A few of the slides can be previewed at his Kodrachome Restoration Project Flickr set.
A few more of our favorites after the jump, but do yourself a favor and check out the entire gallery on the Denver Post Blog.
Anyone can appreciate good design. Though the hard part is learning about it as there aren’t a lot of centralized depositories of design history for the casual browser. If you’re of the lamen crowd and looking to get a little taste of design history and the big players in its development, Design Is History might be a good starting point. It’s a nicely designed and well written source for a lot of basic design information. There’s even an article about our friends Bryony and Armin‘s role in the digitization of design information.
While I was digging around on the Library of Congress’ website, I did a search for 4th of July images. The product of that search is hundres of images of Americans celebrating the 4th of July way back in the day, 17 of which I plucked for your enjoyment. Of course, you’ll find plenty of images of parades and people hanging around outside. Click on the images to see them larger.
The WPA undoubtedly has played an important part in American history for many reasons, though their posters continue to be some of my favorite from that era. I recently found the Library of Congress’ collection of scanned WPA posters. There are over 900 that I have spent the better part of an hour flipping through. I’ve gathered my favorites here.
The Nazis sucked for many reasons, but one that is easy to gain consensus on was their reckless destruction. But after the Allies landed on Sicily in 1943 and toppled Italian Fascism, the Nazi’s began to do an odd thing. During the Luftwaffe’s aerial bombing campaign, they sent historians to document some of Italy’s most beautiful buildings, before and after the destruction. What was being disguised as an effort to document cultural artifacts in agreement with the Hague Conventions, was actually a means for them to make the Allies look like cultural barbarians back home.
Louis W. Hine spent a lot of time photographing children at work between 1908 and 1912. The photos are pretty moving when you consider that they kids range in age between 9-12 and are working in mines, sewing factories and selling things on the streets. His captions add a lot to the story as well. More after the jump.
Recognition that the ubiquity of technological advances in engineering had devalued it as an artform is just one of the many reasons Vebjørn Sand chose to build this bridge. Originally sketched out by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago, this became reality after Vebjørn saw Leonardo’s sketch at an exhibition of da Vinci’s work. He believed that the ease with which man could build structures had diluted civil engineering and other trades and was compelled to build this work of art. Read about his successful efforts to build this beautiful bridge.
It’s been roughly 35 years since the end of the Vietnam War and Tampabay.com has a great collection of 23 of the most memorable images captured by AP photographers from that war. See a few SFW images after the jump. Some on that TampaBay website may be NSFW so you’ll need to save that perusal for after 5 o’clock.
I grew up in Houston close to Johnson Space center, so being around NASA was pretty common in my childhood and with the end of the Space Shuttle’s lifespan nearing, its gotten we thinking about the perceived simplicity of space flight. Has the repetition and ease with which we’ve traveled to space weakened our overall interest in its existence? Has NASA made it look so easy to pull off that people just don’t care?
The short documentary above covers this concept and shows a group of intensely excited people experiencing the Space Shuttle’s last night launch ever. They’ve interviewed people involved with the Shuttle and curious onlookers who have traveled to witness one of the last liftoffs of Mankind’s most complicated machine.
It’s a great watch considering its brevity and includes some pretty funny interviews. My favorite happens around 19:25 when the guy says “all we’re sayin is….the shuttle launch is wassup man”. It’s a classic phrase for a classic piece of science.
Check out this sneak peek at the custom Gowalla Pin for tomorrow’s Pep Rally event.
Vegan Yacht is good if you’re a vegetarian. But if you’re like me and like some smoked briquet, Ruby’s on Guadalupe is the place to be. Try the mustard potato salad.
PUBLIC SCHOOL is a group of creative folk working on the east side of Austin. This site is our outlet for sharing the things we find while working in our respective creative fields.
