Vintage Postage: Bulgarian Folk Tales

I haven't posted in over eight months. I am well aware of my extended hiatus, which has been a conscious decision amid a move, job changes, and many other life-altering shifts. (All good, don't worry.) I am in the process of discussing a potential new website that will integrate this blog with a portfolio of my calligraphy and hand lettering. So... until that happens, I just wanted to chime in and let you know that my lack of blog posts here in no way equates to a lack of vintage design infatuation. Au contraire. In fact, you can find pretty regular vintage-y images over on my Tumblr page and on Pinterest (a recent addition to my social media exploits).

For now, I couldn't help but share these vintage Bulgarian folk tale postage stamp designs from Stefan Kanchev. They're adorable and brilliantly graphic. I'm obsessed. I hope you are too.

Enjoy, and see you soon... whether here or elsewhere.

There are even more where these came from, so please don't forget to click on over to the Stefan Kanchev page HERE.

PS) If Kanchev's name sounds familiar, it may be because I blogged about his designs way back in 2010. Check it out HERE.

Holt, an Illustrative Typeface

Two posts in one day! It's miraculous!

Anyway, I can't help it... I just stumbled upon a new, ornamented alphabet that threw me for a jaw-dropping loop. Oh, but I didn't stumble upon it on StumbleUpon. I stumbled upon it on Tumblr, actually. So maybe I should have said that I tumbled on it? But that just reminds me of Boy George, which is pretty much the antithesis of the subtle grace of the alphabet below, so... Anyway, the point is, this illustrative type is fabulous. Have a look-see:

H is for Hreiður (nest)

Beautiful, right? Yep. I know. Nature + Type = Brilliant. It comes from Icelandic designer Stella Björg, who christened the typeface Holt. Björg describes her creation on Typography Served:

A work in progress typeface made based on life in Ugluhot, or in short Holt. In the letters are the plants and animals found there. I'm taking a little break from it but I will finish it in the end, just need some time to get back to it :)

Some more images, and then I'll leave you to go explore on Typography Served...

G is for Glókollur (pretty bird with a yellow head)

B is for býflugur go bláber (bees and blueberries)

L is for Lúpína (Lupine)

National Young Readers Week

Peeking out of my paper-grading hovel to post this adorable vintage poster advertising National Young Reader's Week from 1953:

Via BOOM UNDERGROUND, which rules.

National Young Readers Week is still going strong, though it's also just finishing up for this year. My apologies for not advertising it sooner. For more info (and to make a mental note for next year), click over to the BOOK IT program website HERE. Oh, and GO READ!

My Vintage Avenue

I'm so excited to have found out about My Vintage Avenue, a blog (and Etsy shop!) featuring mid-century illustrations and design from self-proclaimed vintage-lover and all-around awesome Frenchie, Sarah Andreacchio. Her blog and Flickr stream are chock-full of frame- and drool-worthy vintage French designs, whether advertisements, book covers, album covers, or game packaging. Enjoy, and please go visit My Vintage Avenue for even more greatness.

Bob and Bobette might give me some mild tremors tonight, but that's OK.

Bonne soirée!

Occupy Wall Street, Charlie Brown!

Self-explanatory. 

Via Something, Something, Something, Charlie Brown.

 PS: My nephew is totally Linus.

Because my neighborhood birds are literary geniuses

The perfect birdhouse:

 

Julia Child Cookbook Birdhouse, from New Inspiration Home Design.

“The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. Bon appétit! ” - Julia Child

I Can Read Movies

The "I Can Read Movies" series is the brainchild of Spacesick, who created these paperback "novelizations" of awesome cult films back in 2009. They are right up my timewarped, book-cover-design-loving alley, so I don't know how I missed them, but... hey, better late than never. Thanks to Design Related for clueing me in via Tumblr.

Here are some of my favorites, whether for the design or strictly because I'm a total nerd for the movie (uh, Sixteen Candles):

French Friday: Paperbacks

Joyeux French Friday!

Today I offer you another round of some wonderfully vibrant French paperbacks, courtesy of alexisorloff's fabulous Flickr stream:

Bon week-end! And bonne rentrée for those of you returning to school!

Little Forks

You may have seen at least one of these images circulating around the Internet about a year ago when they were actually posted/uploaded, but somehow I totally missed it. And they were kind of begging me to repost them. They even said "please." So... here you go. Oh, and my sincere apologies for my nonexistent posting in the past several weeks. Post-graduation life has been... interesting. To say the least. And as a new semester looms, so do the preparations... and the transition to life-no-longer-as-a-grad-student. Which is surprisingly NOT smooth. Not for me anyway. But then, I've never been particularly graceful with change.

I have missed my beloved vintage design fetish! Thanks for sticking with me...

OK, enough chatter. Back to the little forkies, which come courtesy of Linzie Hunter's Flickr stream:

If I only had an iPhone...

I've been wanting an iPhone for months now. Not years because some aspects of the technology freak(ed) me out. Please don't judge me. But then awesome things come out like the Cartolina App, or Instagram, or freakin' Boggle for crying out loud, and I'm left alone, rocking myself to sleep in the fetal position with a pool of drool around my butt.

OK, gross.

But, as if the situation weren't dire enough, in the past week I've come across two ridiculously perfect new products made exclusively for the elusive iPhone:

1. Twelve South's BookBook iPhone case:

2. Out of Print's Literary Art iPhone Cases:

GAHHHHHHH. How the hell am I supposed to survive THAT?!

Cardon Webb for Vintage Books

Currently excited about Cardon Webb's new cover designs for a series of Oliver Sacks books, available this month from Vintage Books:

Via Spine Out.

Also from Cardon Webb:

Check out more of Webb's work on his website HERE.

My car has a tape deck

Last year, I inherited my mom's 2005 Hyundai Elantra after the untimely death of my step-father, who bequeathed my mom his much newer and fancier car. I was reluctant to take ownership of the Hyundai, not because I think myself better than a Hyundai (I don't) or because it meant I had to learn stick (I did), but because it had a tape deck where the CD player was supposed to be. OK, I also suck with change and had a slight panic attack at the thought of waving bye-bye to my 1997 Honda Civic that had seen me through so much. But mostly, it was the tape player, which, as a few broken CDs prove, refuses to accept my beloved discs of Brandi Carlile, the Swell Season, and other awesome singer/songwriters with guitars and voices that I like to pretend I can match when alone in the confines of my own vehicle. I thought the tape player might at least bend a little when presented with someone a little closer to its own age, like Bob Dylan. But, not unlike a child with a penchant for Sourpatch Kids, it refused to budge.

So, I dusted off my old Tupperware-ish container of mix tapes and reconnected to my past through music. Talk about nostalgia and "the soundtrack of my life"... holy sh*t. It was kind of painful. But then really hilarious, too, so... when I spotted Tapedeck.org's collection of old audio cassette tapes, the nostalgia factor wasn't really there because tapes are, once again (whether sadly or not), my present day. Still, all of my tapes are either clear or black or gray, and none of them look this cool:

{ All images from Tapedeck.org, where you can even submit your own! }

First, some white cassettes:

Now, some black ones:

 

And, finally, some cassettes saturated in color:

By the way, I've been out of the internet loop for the past week and a half or so, up on Lake Champlain with my boyfriend and his wonderful family. So, if Tapedeck.org has been making the rounds and this is a redundant, unoriginal post that you've seen a bajillion times in the last two weeks, "I really wanna tell you I'm sorry" and "After all that you've been through, I will make it up to you...I promise youuuuu" (<-cue Peter Cetera's "Hard To Say I'm Sorry").

L'oeil atomic

What kid wouldn't want to learn with the help of something called The Atomic Eye?! I mean, it's like Big Brother staring right over your shoulder, breathing down your neck, watching your every move as you educate yourself... It's like the CBS eye, only red and possessed looking, executing tasks with razor-sharp precision, "error free." What's not to like?

This Belgian interactive learning tool comes from none other than the fabulous Agence Eureka, qui d'autre?! See more images HERE.

Let's get a close up of that awesome type:

No Visine in Belgium?

Lovely. OK, now some other shots of this stellar educational toy:

Joyeux French Friday à tous!

Boekenweek

Feeling literary? Enjoy these vintage Dutch posters celebrating the wonderful world of books.

{ Click each image below for source }

{ Artist: Gerard Douwe, 1950 }

{ Artist: Otto Treumann, 1951 }

{ Artist: Gerard Douwe, 1960 }

{ Artist: Fedde Weidema, 1949 }

Collages by Hugo Werner

I'm a new admirer of Brazilian artist Hugo Werner, who creates fantastic collages that incorporate four of my favorite things: vintage images, bold typography, hand lettering, and foreign languages. For more on Werner and his engaging work, visit his website HERE.

I also happily encourage you to visit his "Collages" Flickr set, which is where I found each of the images below: 

NICE!!!