“Comics have finally joined the mainstream… And today The Times introduces three separate lists of the best-selling graphic books in the country: hardcover, softcover, and manga.” Geeky but extraordinary.

Cochran’s wonderfully raw, vaguely Ben Shahn-esque drawing style is a wonderful complement to John Huston’s 1972 movie. Of particular interest here are the concept drawings that he shows; they’re beautiful in and of themselves, but offer such a fascinating if brief insight into the creative process.

A fascinating exploration of the origins, challenges and evolution of these seminal information graphics from two major urban transit systems. Having employed modern mapping abstraction to great effect in London, the designer Harry Beck was hired to do the same for Paris. His final submitted version was ultimately rejected, in part because it was too evocative of the London map — or not distinctly Parisian enough. But after decades of additional design revision, the current Paris Metro map is essentially the same as what Beck designed.

The design and letterpress blog of Studio on Fire, a letterpress printer based in Minneapolis. Full of rapturous, close-up photography of luxuriously printed letterheads, business cards and other samples. For those who fetishize the tactile quality of letterforms and shapes pressed deeply into thick, fibrous papers, this could be NSFW.

For those looking to self-publish their literary opus, brief reviews of BookLocker, Lulu, iUniverse, BookSurge and DogEar Publishing.

Photographer Richard Nicholson’s portfolio of London’s remaining professional darkrooms. With the lights on, of course.

An assessment of the organization’s status during from executive director Ric Grefé: “AIGA… needs to meet members’ expectations in a leaner form, with reduced staff and financial resources, working smarter where we cannot work harder. This is not to say that AIGA is in danger — we have a solid financial foundation, with reserves of more than US$1 million and the number of designers who continue to maintain their memberships exceeds 21,000. Yet we expect sponsorship to be more difficult to attract, and that attendance at conferences and participation in the competitions may weaken.”

The prolific Antonio Carusone of AisleOne published an interview with me on his resource for all things grid-related, The Grid System. No comments enabled directly on the article but you can add remarks in the forum or back here on this post.

The artist Gordon Young collaborated with famed designers Why Not Associates on these wonderful typographic tree structures for this new library in Crawley, United Kingdom.

“The striking, cracked trees, fourteen in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text.”

A tip for how to get the just-released beta working on your machine without displacing the current version.