“Every day Comic Strip Tees will showcase a comic by a different cartoonist. It will also allow you to purchase a t-shirt with that comic’s artwork printed on it. Each shirt is limited edition and only sold for 7 days. The artists receive US$2 for every shirt sold and retain full rights to their work.”

Some of the artists featured so far include John Martz, Simon Fraser and Mike Allred. Find out more here.

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Simon Garfield’s populist introduction to the world of typography was released last year to good reviews and, for a book of this subject matter, surprisingly strong sales. I haven’t read it, but I really liked the idea of such a book; design has long needed a best-seller on the order of Lynne Truss’ “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” which popularized punctuation, to help demystify typography for the masses. Unfortunately, designer Patrick Barber doesn’t think much of Garfield’s work. Read the full review here.

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The Center for an Urgan Future argues that “New York City graduates twice as many students in design and architecture as any other U.S. city, but the city’s design schools are not only providing the talent pipeline for New York’s creative industries— they have become critical catalysts for innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth.” Download the full report as a PDF here.

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Using the recent Chardon High School shooting as a starting point, New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore looks at the history of gun rights in America. Before the late 20th Century, the widely accepted understanding of the Second Amendment was that it provided for the people’s right to form armed militias to provide for the common defense, not for the individual right to bear arms. In fact, The National Rifle Association did not, until the 1970s, consider that individual right to be part of its mission. The article quotes former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger as saying that the contemporary interpretation of the Second Amendment is:

“one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Lepore also reports on several other recent, harrowing and thoroughly heartbreaking tragedies in which relatively easy access to handguns has played a central role — including of course the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin.

I highly recommend you read this article for yourself, but the entirety of its arc is perhaps best summed up in this quote from David Keene, president of the N.R.A.:

“If you had asked, in 1968, will we have the right to do with guns in 2012 what we can do now, no one, on either side, would have believed you.”

Read the full article here.

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If you have a 3-D printer you can fabricate for yourself this iPhone case that recreates that classic look of a 1980s-era cellular phone. The source files produce four pieces that snap together; plug in your headphones and it’s fully functional. The design even reproduces the belt clip. It’s free and Creative Commons licensed, to boot.

Find out more and download the files at Free Art & Technology.

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There is a lot of great stuff on Vimeo and the video sharing service aims to celebrate it. For the second (?) time, the site is holding a festival and bestowing awards on the best short films in about a dozen categories of filmmaking. You can watch and vote for your favorites at the festival site, but I’m unlikely to make it through all of them, at least not in Web site form. What I want is a Vimeo app that highlights these nominees, and I want it to run on my television, so I can sit back in my living room and experience the festival — and the voting process — from the comfort of my own living room.

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