It's the International Year of Astronomy!

If you were in the dark on this, no worries. I overlooked it too, but we still have a little over a month to celebrate. Here is some recommended party decoration:

Official IYA09 poster series

New York Times Magazine featured posters being used for the IYA09 designed by Simon Page. I love them for their retro-textbook feel, simple geometric patterns.

"The result is a beautiful exercise in conceptual minimalism, with a clear geometric bent that betrays Page’s math-nerd origins." Alexandria Symonds, NYTimes Mag

The part that really pisses me off about this Simon Page fellow is that he wasn't even trained in design. His background is in applied mathematics. He just sort of picked up design as a hobby two or three years ago. If I were to guess, he's also a champion fencer, a published novelist, and prefers to spend his free time volunteering at a hospital for children.

But perfection can be bought and is now available for purchase in his store.

love the use of white space in this one

* * *

I took cosmology in college -- the lovechild of astronomy and philosophy. By the end of the semester, I took away a few things:
1) Theoretically, we could be sucked into a black hole and routed to a parallel universe at a different point in the space-time continuum;
2) I thought that would be really cool as long as I was transported to the time of Jane Austen and was part of the landed gentry (requirement), but I don't think it works like that without a DeLorian DMC-12 outfitted with a nuclear reactor;
3) My mental capacity was much smaller than previously thought; and
4) Stephan Hawking has fathered children.

This Is Cooler Than My Obama Action Figure

A former coworker at The Royal Order, Scott Thomas, went on to fame as the Design Director for the Obama campaign. He's coming out with Designing Obama, a book dedicated to artwork surrounding the campaign. There are forwards by Steven Heller and Michael Beirut (design celebrities!).

The book shows the role of art and design in the official campaign and also includes unofficial pieces done by grassroots supporters. Hopefully Obama Hot Sauce (it exists) is included. And Obama-Fingers certainly are because it brilliantly melds racial stereotypes with images of the Golden Gate Bridge and the American flag.

Danke, Germany

But something tells me that the 'unofficial grassroots art' is going to be classier stuff than the Hanes tshirts with the iron-on transfer of an Obama family photo that were being sold 2-for-1 around Grant Park. There really has been some good-looking work created surrounding the campaign. I have no doubt that the book will be beautifully crafted, so I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

It's being self-published through Kickstarter (keeping with the grassroots theme). If you're interested, it's available here with a minimum pledge of $50, but the price goes up November 5. It's estimated delivery is around the first of the year.

A Better Weekly Weird: American Society for Social Hygiene

I wasn't totally sold on the 'weirdness' of yesterday's Weekly Weird, so I thought I would redo it by posting this public service announcement I found via Studio on Fire. They used it to advertise their birth announcements :)

Beware the autorides.

Speaking of Studio on Fire, if you want to see some truly inspiring and beautiful letterpress design from a nice, respectable Midwestern design shop, check out their blog, Beast Pieces. Here's a sampling of their cool work:

Love how the solid color block brings out the texture on the Crane's Lettra

Pretty wedding invitations -- I like non-traditional wording and format