Field Notes Limited Edition

Rows to Hoe

For Field Notes' 14th seasonal release we've gone back to our roots with a box set celebrating America's farmers and the crops they grow. "The National Crop Edition" includes six colored memo books, a souvenir poster and an embroidered patch, all in a custom box. They're available for sale individually and as part of a year-long Colors Subscription for a limited time.

Plus, Co-Founder Aaron Draplin talks about where Field Notes comes from in a short film, From Seed, and his large collection of agricultural themed memo books from the last 100 years are now online at the Field Notes site.

I Think I Read That Somewhere

A Certain Place

If, like us, your spring and summer vacations are about reading, then here's a place to start. We've collected hundreds of books and had them Field-Tested online, including entries from George Saunders, Jonathan Eig, Jessa Crispin, Steven Heller, Lori Andrews, Michael Bierut, and many more. Or, buy the Field Tested Books Book which is available now for just nine bucks.

Verse By Voice

Poetry After the Beep

On a whim, we asked people to read their favorite short poems into our answering machine for a project we called Verse By Voice. And they did, creating maybe the first-ever poetry meme. To get the idea, make sure to listen to novelist Zadie Smith reading Frank O'Hara's Animals.

Note: we didn't include what is surely not Christopher Walken reading EE Cummings, but that's worth a listen too. Jim talked about this project during his appearance on Public Radio's Hello Beautiful! and the photos are courtesy of Sam Javanrouh's unstoppable Daily Dose of Imagery.

Stuff About Stanley Kubrick

I Am Putting Myself
to the Fullest Possible Use, Which Is All I Think That Any Conscious Entity Can Ever Hope To Do

For over ten years we've been collecting links and tossing them into various categories. As you probably have noticed, we're a bit of obsessed with a certain film director. Check our big, messy "Stuff About Stanley Kubrick" archive.

An occasional series Face Time

Classic Display Faces That Deserve Props

Chauncey H. Griffith's Bodoni Poster Black was developed for Mergenthaler in 1929 and features strong verticals and shallow descenders. It's regularly employed for era-specific "Appearing Nightly at the Copacabana" lobby-card-ish announcements and by and large it's serviceable, if not particularly interesting. But, just in case you find yourself in need of a two skinny chicks whispering near the coke mirror, late 70's, Los Angeles sort of vibe, set it tight in all-caps with almost no line spacing. Suggested pairing: Univers Light Extra Condensed.

A Very Short Attention Span

Regrets, I Have a Few

Are you better suited for starting things than you are for finishing them? Are you easily distracted? Do you find it hard to concentrate on any one thing when there are so many other things to check out? Yeah, us too.

This Plus This Equals That

The Who Moved
My Cheese

This is the sort of thing that Twitter is especially good for, but a washroom full of chalkboard walls works too. A while ago we hosted a quick contest called Booking Bands in which we asked people to combine the name of a book with the name of a band. We received thousands of entries, posted a ton of them and then randomly selected three and sent those people the book and a CD from the band that they mashed together. The process of coming up with funny or unexpected associations in this contest became a central part of a presentation that JC gave at SXSW.

Search Different

For Sale:
1 Billion Dollars

While it's only a couple years old, it's social power and technical innovation makes it a bargain for any cash-rich tech company looking to expand their reach and ecosystem. For a quick billion dollars your company can own the jewel of the next generation of search and change the way people find things on The Internet. "Never Not Find What You’re Looking For Again" with E-Z-Fynd. Secret Himalayan headquarters included, plus Peppermints! From CP Labs, the folks that brought you The RinseCam 9000™, so you know it's good. Serious inquiries only please.

JC at Creative Mornings

What Are You
Afraid Of?

Here's Jim's recent presentation from the inaugural edition of Chicago Creative Mornings. Thanks to Tina, Mig, Gravity Tank and everyone who showed up.

Who Owns The Fish

Hey Buddy, Is This Your Sander Vitreus?

Every year since 2004, we have done our part to encourage acrimony and hard feelings at family gatherings. Face it, you'll probably fight about something at your next get-together, it might as well be something important, like whether or not you're in the two percent of the world's population that Albert Einstein purportedly claimed could solve this puzzle. So... Who Owns The Fish?

A CP Film Above the Sun

A Winter’s Tale

"One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen." —Rene Daumal. Why did we do it? Because it is there. Or was anyhow. Presenting Above the Sun, a true story. Local Note: the film was part of Tom Skilling's blizzard special "Snowed Under," on WGN which also ran again on the anniversary of the storm.

June Guest Scott Smith

Our Man, Your Man

Scott Smith (ss) runs the site Our Man in Chicago, and is the Director of Digital Strategy for Chicago magazine. Scott has also written and edited for a variety of publications including Time Out Chicago, Chicagoist and Playboy.com, as well as a popping up all over the city as a regular contributor and commentator for WGN, Chicago Tonight, the podcast Filmspotting, and at a whole host of various local readings, conferences, and classrooms. He once engaged in a public feud with '80s rocker Richard Marx (which was later immortalized in a YouTube video), and in his spare time enjoys comic books (especially Superman), whiskey, video games, the oeuvres of Queen and The Faces and the Atlantic Rhythm and Blues boxed set.

A list of all the brilliant people who have helped us by guest editing Fresh Signals can be found here.

Other recent features are listed on Page Two.

Fresh Signals

"I run a comedy website called The Oatmeal. Last year I wrote a blog post about another website called FunnyJunk which stole a bunch of my comics and hosted them on their website without giving me credit. They apparently didn't like my blog post and recently FunnyJunk sent me a letter stating that unless I pay them $20,000 in damages they're going to file a federal lawsuit against me. You can view the letter along with my response here. I'm going to try and raise $20,000 and instead send it to the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. I'm hoping that philanthropy trumps douchebaggery and greed." He's already raised $118,000 in just 24 hours, you can donate here. dw-today

Ast A Pobbnum, Kopavogi. Via Mr. Walters. bb-today

Not sure of the practical, everyday uses of this, but fun to watch none the less: Eulerian Video Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World. sd-today

Note to self: leave scale at home when visiting Jupiter. ms-today

The AV Club's fun post about how reality TV isn't so interested in sharing the truth, which should be a surprise to no one: "HGTV's Totally Fake House Hunters is Still Totally Fake." sd-today

Trailer for the documentary Big Easy Express. ms-today

Local note. The 8th annual Guerrilla Truck Show is this evening at Fulton Market. We'll be there for Field Notes, in the Morlen Sinoway Gallery, and our favorite caterer and lunch spot, Big Delicious Planet, will be selling food. See you there. jc-today

Italian Spiderman. Amazing. ms-today

The Wire: The Musical is a quick laugh, but also a very real warning of what can happen when something you love gets turned into something horrible. Looking at you, the musical version of Julian Po. sd-today

Head sculptures by Samuel Salcedo. Via WATC. dw-today

Noah really digs his first root beer. He could have had mine. ms-today

Welcome to the Museum of Endangered Sounds. ms-today

The attractively violent music vid for Be Brave Benjamin's Devil Fool. sd-today

Nicely shot promo video for Chicago's Bike to Work Week, which we're currently right in the middle of. sd-today

An easy DIY Lego key holder. dw-today

"Display is a curated collection of important modern, mid 20th century graphic design books, periodicals, advertisements and ephemera." Designed and annotated by Kind Company, this an excellent resource and will be a major drain on your productivity today. jc-today

"It appears now that Kurniawan may have sold millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit wines and scammed some of the world's biggest collectors. It is potentially the largest case of wine fraud in history and may have left the market for rare and old wines irredeemably corrupted." Today's long read, A Vintage Crime. ms-today

Just plain silly. Pointer Pointer. Via Waxy. jc-today

From Quacks to Quaaludes, three centuries of drug advertising. jc-today

Lego Inception. ms-today

The difficulty of being a film critic is that your early opinions might not wind up being shared by the rest of the world: Roger Ebert's Worst Reviews. How anyone could show their face after giving only two stars to Die Hard is a testament to his confidence. sd-yesterday

Local note. An evening with Debbie Millman at the Chicago Design Museum Wednesday night. jc-yesterday

Related to the last. Yes, that Lance Wyman. jc-yesterday

Lance Wyman's logo sketches for the Minnesota Zoo from 1981. Alas, we shouldn't be looking at sketches, we should all be familiar with the logo because it's been in use for 30 years. Via Chris Glass. jc-yesterday

A cool desktop and iOS app for Volkswagen that tells time from overhead in a parking lot, plus includes weather conditions. By gobasil, who have also posted a nice making of video. jc-yesterday

Oh, hell no. ms-yesterday

Nothing says "I'm a good listener" like wearing ear-shapped earrings. It also telegraphs, "I really like ears." sd-yesterday

Shots through the windows of closed down businesses in Los Angeles: Shuttered. sd-yesterday

Great, newly launched collection of archival newspaper photography: the Detroit News Archivist. Via Doobybrain. sd-yesterday

Stephen Kenn's The Inheritance Collection takes military fabrics from WWII and repurposes them into furniture. A short film profile, here. sd-yesterday

A photo of Earthly lightning seen from the ISS. dw-yesterday

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet frankfurter andouille shank drumstick ham chicken. Ham ground round tri-tip kielbasa beef jerky. dw-yesterday

Video for Pet Shop Boys' Invisible. dw-yesterday

The history of a Soviet relic in Budapest, from the birth of the legend that spawned it, to the post-Communism tear down: "Captain Ostapenko's Statue." sd-yesterday

Let's see what George the Trooper is up to today. Absolutely wonderful. mcj-yesterday

A pretty amazing way to spend a Sunday evening: Monty Python and the Holy Grail staged by a bunch of kids in my neighbor's backyard. bb-yesterday

"Design a new label for the 32-ounce bottle of Doctor Bronner's Magic Peppermint Soap. Use only the original text, dimensions, color, bar code, and third-party logos. Do not add any new text or imagery." The Dr. Bronner All-One Typography Challenge. Via Adverve. ms-yesterday

Shape as a brand attribute by David Airey. See also Brand Spirit from Andrew Miller, "every day for 100 days, I will paint one branded object white, removing all visual branding, reducing the object to its purest form." Fabulous. jc-yesterday

"Hosting the Olympics has become a way for a city to show itself off on an international stage and generate toursim dollars, and cities spend millions or billions for the privilege. But after the events are over, the medals have been handed out, and the torch is extinguished, what's next? What happens to a city after the Olympics are gone?" FotA and filmmaker Gary Hustwit has a new project. Give it a Kick. ms-yesterday

Today's the last day for the "Dad Deal" at Field Notes. jc-yesterday

Page Two contains the previous 40 Fresh Signals, recent features, a key to the icons and the categorical archives.

Grab our blended RSS feed here.

Translate

French | German | Italian
Japanese | Spanish | Portuguese

One Hundred Forty

Coudal on Twitter

The MoOM Board

One of the most popular parts of our site is The Museum of online Museums (MoOM) which is updated quarterly. Please consider joining the MoOM Board of Directors. A subscription comes with a handsome coffee mug but none of the snootiness so often associated with the patronage of old-school cultural institutions.

Tom Shakow
Dallas Shelby
Blueberry Ln.
Michael Russem
James Sampson
Rod McGuinness
Jason Lankow
Nöel Jackson
DJ Edgerton
Carolyn Wood
Mark Powell
Chris Ebmeyer
Christen Carter
Chris Allison
Keith Krieger
Kathleen Devlin
Roger McLeish
Fred Beshid
Katie Harrar
Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran
Daniel Annereau
Dan Rubin
Barbara Ann Kipfer
Sunniva Geuer
Gareth Walters
Claire Zulkey
Sean Palmer
Jane Quigley
Edward Lifson
Witold Riedel
Brian Cook
Anne Herron Hussung
Abby Urban
Erik Ratcliffe
Michael Jenkins
Katie Carney
Mark Greenberg
John Boardley
Jon Tan
Robin Sherwood
William Dampier
Don Stillman
Grettir Asmundarson
John Pojman
Werner Haker
Amy Hostler
Whet Moser
Debbie Millman
Matt Russell
Bill Keaggy
Adam Kruvand
Randy Hunt
David Demaree
Erik Vorhes
Dan Mabrey
Nalani McClendon
Mary Catlan
Anonymous (8)

Supporting the MoOM requires a simple annual non-tax-free contribution of $75. In exchange for your generosity, you'll receive one sweet, tall coffee mug and a permanent listing and link as a member of the Board of Directors. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

We actually do
stuff beside
updating this site.

Find out what.