Category: ultrascrapbook

Children & Invalids Food

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I found this gem of a package in a supermarket in Chennai (India) when I was there for Type Camp a few weeks ago. Our main mission was to find products that felt characteristically Indian, but to no one’s surprise I was drawn to this bit of ephemera that looks like an old bit of British illustration that was awkwardly reworked to give it some “ethnic” details, such as that hat that looks like it was added in a hurry by some intern in the art department at some point. And check out that hand holding the spoon! But don’t look to closely for too long. The eyes will haunt you.

Found

Walking home late at night, not a great mood and feeling a bit down, it was a treat to stumble across a stack of shockingly nice art books in the pile of ripped-open trash bags abandoned outside the local charity shop. I grabbed them before they were destroyed by the inevitable rain that would come before the long weekend was over, and then later found more treasure: odd scraps tucked in the pages from people who’d owned or read these in the past. I love these serendipitous little glimpses into other lives.

Inside Surreality: Localizer 1.2:

Found 1

Inside Toni Frissell: Photographs 1933–1967:

Found 2

Greek Relics

A week later, and I’ve finally had a chance to unpack from my trip to Θεσσαλονίκη. (I’m procrastinating on the typeface, naturally.) I brought back some lovely souvenirs to remind me of my Greek adventure:

Greek lollipop

Candy is essential for keeping drowsiness at bay during a long conference. These weren’t the tastiest, but they have embedded Greek letters, and that’s cool.

Men's sunscreen

A pasty Irishmen like me would burst into flames if I tried to face a Mediterranean heat wave without protection. When I went to the pharmacy to grab some sunscreen, I had to wade through labels in Greek, French, and Spanish but not English. I selected a nice, strong cream, but the lady at the counter was very adamant that I buy men’s sunscreen. I tried to explain that it wasn’t a big deal, but she finally convinced me that the men’s version was better for the top of the head. (To her credit, there were no signs of pink on my bald pate after a week in the sun.) Mostly,she just seemed a little embarrassed that I might get something packaged for women.

A certain culture of assumed machismo was all over the place in Greece. I was sharing a hotel room with my flatmate Rob, like I usually do, but this is the first time I’ve ever checked into a hotel room and had the clerk automatically assume that sharing a room with another guy was proof enough that we absolutely need a room with two beds. It was the truth in this case, but it caught me off guard that it seemed so urgent to him that no female roommate meant no double bed. Luckily, we got a roomy triple all to ourselves, even if it wasn’t especially chic:

Triple at the Queen OlgaTriple at the Queen Olga

There are newsstands all over the city, and while making one of my many stops for bottled water I picked up some comic books published for the Greek market:

Greek Thing

I had to come all the way to Greece to finally find a book that dared to use upper- and lowercase lettering. See how nicely that works? I wish they’d try it in English one of these days.

Greek Batman

I especially love that even sound effects were translated into Greek. I would have assumed translations were only done using the layer with the black inks, but obviously they reprint the whole thing with the translations. That would have been a lot more expensive before the days of digital prepress.

The Art of Kissing

The Art of Kissing, Part 2This charming little booklet was published by the Haldeman-Julius Company of Girard, Kansas. The put out all sorts of teeny newsprint screeds like this, sadly undated. This particular edition is mostly sweet, occasionally tongue-in-cheek (pun intended, I confess), and occasionally exactly what you’d expect from something of a certain era…

It has nothing to do with this doozy of the same title, even though they share an equally sophisticated point of view on the subject matter.

 

Continue reading “The Art of Kissing”

The Original Boy Butter

Happy Boy Margarine

I don’t even know where to begin. Should I talk about the photo (wretched but intriguing, like a Stepford kid), the typography (strangely modernistic for a product with that down-to-earth feel), or the very notion that a package like this is supposed to entice someone to buy a cheap and greasy butter substitute? You be the judge. My mind is already reeling.