Over the course of the project, I looked at a lot of stuff. Much of it was found in person at The New School Archives and Special Collections. One of the most interesting finds ended up being ParsonsPaper, the school’s now-defunct student newspaper, which included incisive writing about being an art student—often openly questioning administrative decisions—as well as delightfully strange design and editorial illustrations. Even though I wasn't looking for anything specific, I still found things I didn't expect. One notable easter egg was the frequent appearance of apples (as in, “the Big Apple”) throughout older New School ephemera—it turns out that the fruit was used as an unofficial Parsons emblem for decades, with grapes similarly standing in for Parsons Paris and oranges for former sister-school Otis College of Art and Design in LA.

I was especially delighted to discover how much work by one of my favorite designers, Cipe Pineles, was in the archive (apples and all). Pineles was an illustrator, designer, editor, and art director who taught at Parsons in the 1960s and 70s, and someone who leaned heavily on collecting and historical sourcing in her work (she was also one of the first female art directors to work at a major magazine and a notoriously good cook). We love a kindred spirit!

A lot of what I found ended up in the final publication. To wit, the cover I designed for the book was built entirely from archival material; I collected 105 references—a nod to the book's title—and individually footnoted all of them, making the jacket an illustration and a miniature archive in its own right. Sadly, while a 50 page introduction is long, it’s still not enough room for everything cool I came across. As such, please enjoy some of my favorite discoveries below from Parsons-past that never found a home in print.

If you’d like to learn more about Framework 105, you can read my full case study of the book or buy it here! My introduction combines student interviews, archival research, and four new essays to explore how students past and present think about art school, creative work, AI, and life after graduation—the second half of the book includes work by graduating students. Congrats to them!

Sources: The New School Archives and Special Collections

Despite enjoying the look of stamps, I’ve avoided becoming a philatelist for the same reason I’ve avoided getting too into record collecting: I really do not need a reason to be buying more stuff, especially old stuff. However, I will reluctantly admit that seeing Ashley Shiyan Zhu’s stamp collection, featured here today, made me heavily reconsider that perspective.

Ashley, a designer and student of mine at RISD, first divulged her postal leanings to me in February after I shared a book of stamps I found at the Chelsea Flea on my Instagram. But it wasn’t until last week, in response to a prompt for my Experimental Branding class to bring in one old and one new source of inspiration, that I actually got a chance to see her collection—an archive of some 2,000 odd stamps across 5+ books, ongoing since high school when she purchased a cache of stamps from a former ambassador who had collected them during his travels.

The other students’ reaction to looking at Ashley’s collection in a class about branding was that stamps are basically mini-brands (when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail). I agree, of course. But what I like about stamps and other small-scale ephemera like matchbooks is that you can see them as a mini version of just about any other kind of design: posters, social media avatars, book covers, LP artwork, etc. There’s a reason that so many illustrators still draw thumbnails to get work approved; as Irma Boom knows best, if it works small, it’ll work large.

While I was enthralled by all of Ashley’s stamps, what caught my eye most were those affixed to “First Day of Issue” envelopes. These envelopes are designed and released alongside a new stamp featuring artwork tied to its subject. On the stamp’s launch day, collectors can buy the new stamp, stick it on the associated envelope, and have it immediately cancelled at the post office with a special First-Day postmark (often designed to match the stamp’s theme) which voids it for use. The result is a dated record of the stamp’s release—a sort of quasi-promotional proof-of-purchase for ephemera hounds.

I love seeing how different countries have interpreted the format over the last six decades, and, as evidenced by the most recent item in Ashley’s collection—a 2023 stamp from Switzerland—knowing that the format is still ongoing.

In keeping with the theme, this issue’s featured archive is La Patria, a site cataloging Uruguayan design that includes quite a nice selection of stamps from the country.

I have essays published in two new books: Identity is Variable, about the subversive origins of sans serifs, and Search Work, where I share a visual history of the job recruitment ad. I love books!

Sources: Author’s scans, from the collection of Ashley Shiyan Zhu. Thank you to fellow RISD student James Burgat for use of your excellent scanner!

The Justice Gazette was first published in 1909 in Istanbul to document various legal news and statistics (things like judicial inspector reports, scholarly articles, legal opinions, and translations of foreign laws). These particular graphs are from the magazine’s relaunch in Ankara during the 1920s and early 30s; following the dissolution of the long-standing Ottoman Empire in 1922, but while the administrative institutions of the new Turkish Republic were still quite young. They also function as something of an index fossil for the last gasp of Arabic script in official Turkish use; in 1928, Turkish alphabet reform led to it being replaced by the Latin alphabet (the last issue of the publication that used Arabic script was Issue 76).

While the content of the publication is admittedly a bit dry—most of the charts cover things like the number of cases filed or decided in a certain province in a given year and the general categories those cases fell in—the visualizations themselves are energetic and bold, with saturated colors and lots of topsy-turvy type. Their focus on balance and encircling forms calls to mind classic Islamic arabesques as well as newer modes of early 20th-century graphic abstraction, like sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois’ hand-drawn infographics of African-American life that were created for the Paris World Fair of 1900 .

Sometimes, the diagrams resemble sundials or celestial charts (one of the earliest forms of data visualization?) which lend their bureaucratic content an incongruously mystical authority. Other times, the data feels almost architectural: a curving plane reminds me of an abacus and blades of grass sprout from a vessel of numbers.

This issue’s featured archive is JulesVernacular, a photographic collection of handpainted French signs collected by Jack Usine. The archive has been going since the early 2000s and includes over 1700 examples of rural and urban signage categorized by typographic style, medium, region, and period aesthetic.

Sources: David Rumsey, Juweek Adolphe, İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Dahai Yiyargi

What I was most surprised to see were these ads. In honor of the landing, department stores like Lord & Taylor and Gimbels published illustrated poems about Genesis and stargazing, Brillo offered a free poster of the moon with purchase, and brands like Sam Goody and Hunting World wrote congratulatory letters. Of course, this was not limited to the July 21, 1969 issue of the NYT. This moon-vertising appeared for months before and after the landing; it was an event so widely understood that nearly any company could plug into it. Some advertisers had a legitimate connection to the mission—Omega supplied space-friendly watches and IBM provided research muscle—but most relied on far more tenuous associations. See: astronaut toothpaste, fruit, or tampons. All together, I read these as a case-study in virality, decades before social media existed. Far out.

This issue’s featured archive is The E. F. Caldwell & Co. Collection at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum Library, which contains 37,000 black & white photographs and 13,000 original design drawings of lighting fixtures and other fine metal objects produced by manufacturer E. F. Caldwell & Co. from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries.

References: Author’s scans, TimesMachine, Parade

I wrote a lot of essays in 2025 so I’ll briefly share a few links here in case you missed them the first time around: I wrote about graphic design ennui and ethics, Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Strip, the history of business card design, National Design Studio propaganda, the murkiness of the public domain, and, more. I also continue to do lots of design work, with this year including a board game, an A24 soundtrack vinyl, and art direction for three issues of a science fiction magazine. A fun year!

I first learned about Tyco Toys from a YouTube video on the history of Lego. Tyco Super Blocks were one of their competitors in the ’80s and the ads featured in the video boasted about their superiority. The ads didn't necessarily catch my eye, but the logotype did: An ultra bold geometric 4-letter word with 2 ligatures in it, one of them (the CO) a tiny gap shy of becoming an infinity symbol. My excitement was immeasurable.

As I was looking for the logo online, a whole new world started unraveling itself. The Internet Archive has a big collection of Tyco catalogs ranging from the '60s to the '80s. They often feature the logo very prominently on the cover as it adapts itself to the art style around it. On one cover it gets a hand drawn outline, on the next one it serves as a divider between two worlds of toys and on yet another one it becomes part of the backdrop as a physical prop for the photo shoot. (On the 1978 cover it serves as a bridge AND as a divider.)

A look inside the catalogs reveals more type love from Tyco. The Chattanooga Choo- Choo, Curve Huggers and Nite-Glow each have their own distinct logotype. There's also whole spreads were the headlines become intertwined with the toys shown on the pages. Not only does it look really cool, it also helps establish more depth to the images, as the letters align with the vanishing points of the different compositions. It's always exciting to see type treated with this much care, as it helps paint a more nuanced picture and adds to the immersion of the world being built in front of you.

Vedad’s featured archive is Fonts In Use. It's one of the best places to explore how fonts are used in the real world and has entries dating back to the 1500s. It's also one of the most promising starting points when trying to identify unknown fonts.

Sources: Author’s scans

Today’s essay is a preview of the kinds of stories the project will explore, as well as a call for collaborators and pitches. The Mythology team is interested in connecting with designers, historians, writers, and archivists—especially people outside the US—whose research touches on the intersection between design systems and culture. Think: nihilistic sodas, identity systems that turned into protest art, fraudulent makers marks, and anything that kind of reminds you of Dr. Bronner’s. If you have expertise off the beaten path of design history, or if you know of archives, thinkers, or case studies that might fit the brief, the team would love to connect. You can reach out via email to caitlin@mythology.com.

The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was a short-lived British youth movement founded in 1920 by John Hargrave, a Utopian polymath described as an “author, cartoonist, inventor, lexicographer, artist and psychic healer.” A former Boy Scout leader himself, Hargrave had grown frustrated with the group—founded in 1907 by Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell to drill discipline and patriotism into young men—after experiencing the horrors of World War I firsthand. In response, he set out to create a new, non-militaristic alternative. Where the Scouts were gender-separated, and stressed imperial duty, Hargrave’s co-ed, all-ages group was deliberately progressive, promising self-expression, creativity, and spiritual renewal through craft, ritual, and outdoor life. Members were asked to sign a covenant of pacifist ideals and together performed folk plays, participated in spring hikes, and gathered for Althings, an annual general meeting. Despite the inconvenient overlap between the initials of the group and the US far-right hate group the Ku Klux Klan, the name “Kibbo Kift” actually comes from a Kentish Old English phrase meaning a feat of strength (specifically, hoisting a heavy sack of grain onto one’s shoulders) as well as Hargrave’s own fascination with the “magical nature” of the letter K.

The Kibbo Kift produced a wide range of artistic objects, both for organizational use (uniforms, insignia, etc.) and as a natural extension of their focus on handicraft. For members, craft was both leisure and discipline; a creative pursuit as well as a way to toughen body and mind and prepare for a post-collapse world. Across the short 15 years the group was active, members created a staggering number of masks, banners, tents, carved totems, painted staffs, embroidered garments, publications, and sculptures. The aesthetic of these materials was a deliberate collage of the archaic and the modern: Saxon runes and Celtic knots sat beside Egyptian sunbursts, Native American totems, and abstract Modernist patterning. This symbolic bricolage created what Hargrave framed as a kind of invented “indigeneity”—a pseudo-native Englishness that borrowed freely from global traditions in order to construct legitimacy and offer a symbolic identity separate from the empire.

The work of the Kibbo Kift was highly symbolic. Similar to the Dutch De Stijl movement, where codified design represented a larger system of thought, the visual forms of the Kibbo Kift attempted to enact ideology literally. Visual motifs weren’t treated as decorative afterthoughts, but as mini manifestos. Like a hieroglyph or a rune, their forms carried meaning both separate from and in tandem with language. Kibbo Kift costumes, regalia, and even campsite layouts were imagined as a “magical imprint,” a total environment meant to implant ideas in the psyche and give coherence to a sprawling Utopian agenda. This sensitivity to the power of aesthetics was embedded in the group’s leadership; Hargrave worked professionally as a commercial designer and illustrator in the 1920s, producing layouts for clients like soap manufacturer Lever Brothers (later acquired by Unilever) and the publisher Mills & Boon, and understood the psychology of mass persuasion and the power of visual coherence.

You can still find echoes of Hargrave’s peculiar sacred forms if you keep your eyes peeled: the 2024 launch video for Teenage Engineering’s Medieval synth references them, as has high fashion, installation art, environmental activism, and even the work of Judy Chicago and A24’s Midsommar, if you’re feeling charitable. While Kibbo Kift’s motifs may look eccentric now, their rituals, symbols, and costumes functioned much like a brand—a visual system that signaled belonging and values, and that sold people a vision of a better world. In short: the Kibbo Kift lives on!

Casual Archivist is free, but donations help me offset the time spent I spend writing it! Sources: Maker Assembly, Slowness, Donlon Books, Kibbo Kift Foundation, White Chapel Gallery, The Guardian, London Museum

Most of these date from the late 1940s through the ’50s, when the postwar boom and expanding highway system put long-distance vacations within reach for a growing middle class in both the US and Canada. Roadside diners, motor lodges, and destination restaurants sprang up to serve this new wave of car-bound tourists, often positioning themselves just off major routes or in the heart of resort towns.

The placemats themselves do double duty, serving as placemats as well as menus, regional maps, or fun-for-the-whole-family activity sheets—like the one that tells you your personality based on how you order your eggs (I’m poached!) Cheap offset printing made it easy and inexpensive to produce these at scale, just as it did for matchbooks, postcards, and other roadside souvenirs. The process also shaped their visual style: solid blocks of color rather than gradients, bold line art that could hold up on coarse paper, and designs built to print cleanly even if printing plates weren’t perfectly aligned. Nonetheless, economics were still the driving force behind many design decisions, resulting in limited color palettes and, often, a mix of stock and custom illustration (note the two different restaurants using the same floral border). Scalloped edges abound.

This kind of tourist ephemera is clearly the progenitor for a certain breed of present day nostalgia-forward design (I call it Heartland Hodgepodge on are.na) that relies on the many of the same tricks seen here; flat but expressive illustrations, sketches of storefronts, dichromatic palettes, mismatched type, and layouts that feel busy but deliberate have been polished and reimagined to sell everything from coffee to pickleball. The big difference, of course, is that these placemats weren’t trying to be “retro.” They just were.

This issue’s featured archive is ZuantuSet, a collection of 179,692 historical Chinese diagrammatic graphics that ranges from maps to medical illustrations. The illustration date back to 750 BCE!

I’m speaking at the AIGA Conference in LA in October! Readers of Casual Archivist can get 15% off their ticket with the code GOODSPEED15. I also have one ~*free ticket*~ to give away—just comment below what kind of ephemera you think I should cover in a future newsletter (one entry per person please!) and I’ll pick someone at random to attend on Friday Monday the 18th. Winner announced in the comments <3

Casual Archivist is free, but donations help me offset the time spent I spend writing it! Sources: Author’s Scans.

Rather than relying on a dedicated monitor or hard drive like modern computers, the rubber-keyed Spectrum used an external TV set for a screen, and work had to be saved remotely onto cassette tapes using a standard audio recorder. Though this likely sounds baroque to the contemporary netizen, the Spectrum was still much easier to use than other available computers at the time. As such, it made digital experimentation accessible, even domestic, in an era when personal computing was still considered the domain of nerdy tinkerers. The whole family could use the ZX Spectrum: kids could play simple racing games while parents could run programs that balanced their household budget.

The Sinclair Programs magazine, released monthly, was produced to offer computer owners a catalog of programs they could simply type in and run. Program instructions were printed line-by-line in BASIC, a beginner-friendly programming language designed for home use. Programs were submitted by readers and ranged from Pac-Man clones—so many Pac-Man clones—to waste management simulators. And of course, ads for RAM packs, cassette storage, and software libraries ran alongside everything (how else do you pay for 64 pages of code?)

Despite the dry mechanics of its content, the magazine’s design is quite fun. Programs have a truncated “visual identity” of sorts, each subtly aimed at a different kind of home computer user—from the buttoned-up professional to the weekend hobbyist. Some spreads are spooky or surreal, others cartoony or sweet, but all are built from the same simple combination of mostly black-and-white display type, graphic symbols, and sketchy illustrations. Many layouts do fun things with their blocks of code, rotating and intersecting them to create moments of movement and surprise. Later issues too introduce grayscale backgrounds and all over patterns for more visual intrigue. Like its DIY predecessor Whole Earth Catalog, the inconsistency of style from page to page isn’t a flaw so much as a feature, one shaped by the variability of its contributions.

This issue’s featured archive is Affischerna, an online exhibit of progressive Swedish posters from 1967-1979. Originally displayed in museums and galleries, the posters reflect countercultural themes—rallying against imperialism, promoting solidarity, and advertising protests and festivals.

Casual Archivist is free, but donations help me offset the time spent I spend writing it! Sources: World of Spectrum

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This fall, I spent several afternoons exploring the archives of the Museum of Living History in the suburbs of Paris, searching for typographic inspiration related to French political history. While there, I came across a stack of assignats—a form of currency issued in the aftermath of the French Revolution—and immediately wanted to know more. What is the history behind this type of money? Who were the engravers who so skillfully adorned these proto-banknotes with a blend of revolutionary symbols and classical ornaments? Who were the typographers who chose to mix proprietary fonts of the Royal Printing House with custom characters, whimsical ligatures, backslanted and inverted letters? And, most importantly, why?

A few days of research and an email to the Lubalin Center’s Sasha Tochilovsky later, I had some answers. Assignats were a revolutionary form of currency backed by the value of nationalized properties previously owned by the king and the Catholic Church. They were only in use for about a decade but underwent several notable transformations reflecting the timeline of the Revolution as well as improvements in the printing technology. For instance, earlier examples still referenced the king and used a traditional date format, while those issued after 1793 adopted the French Republican calendar. The visual design evolved as well: the first series of assignats featured the Romain du Roi typeface—the proprietary font of the Royal Printing House, recognizable by its signature spur on the lowercase “l.” But after 1790, the printing of assignats fell under the purview of the Didot dynasty, with Pierre supervising the process and his brother Firmin overseeing typography. Before himself designing a proprietary typeface for what became an Imperial Printing House under Napoleon I, the latter imbued the revolutionary money designs with high-contrast geometric forms evocative with the family name Didot. He also used his typographic expertise to differentiate the authentic assignats from the fake ones, which usually suffered from poor weight distribution, shorter than usual serifs and other typographic faux pas.

The Didot brothers were later joined by the printer Louis-Étienne Herhan, who has been perfecting the process of stereotyping, used for printing assignats. This was also a helpful way to combat counterfeiting, as it allowed specific modifications to be made to the foundry type during the engraving stage. The customizations include such visual quirks as inverted characters or misplaced accents—that were not errors but deliberate, secret markers of authenticity. These markers were so secret, in fact, that few vendors knew of their existence or checked for them. Even today, it’s not uncommon to find counterfeit assignats on platforms like eBay. See if you can you spot a fake assignat among the images below (hint: look for smooth rounded type and a diamond-shaped dot on the “i” for the authentic one)

Polina’s featured archive is The National Printing House in France website—like so many of our favorite archive sites here at Casual Archivist, she notes that while it has a horribly designed online presence, its collection of priceless type specimens and punches are worth suffering for.

Sources: Author’s scans from Musée de l'Histoire vivante

These posters were created by missionary organizations and Chinese Christians alike, and covered religious doctrine and Bible stories as well as advice on subjects as myriad as admitting wrongdoing, killing flies, and proper air circulation during sleep. Their remit was difficult—they needed to introduce radical ideas, visually compete with more familiar political and religious ephemera, and also be affordable to print at a large scale and in large quantities. The result was a style defined by symbolic density—combining Western imagery like crosses and sacred hearts with Chinese iconography like abaci, lotus flowers, and zodiac animals—bold, minimal color palettes, and confident typography.

Many remapped familiar Chinese visual traditions onto Christian content: the Virgin Mary rendered as a Ming dynasty noblewoman, or a guide to communion designed with flattened perspective and decorative framing reminiscent of Buddhist cosmological diagrams, which use segmented layouts to structure complex moral or metaphysical ideas. Other posters were tailored to specific minority groups, such as the Hui Muslims, and combined Mandarin with Arabic or Tibetan script to proselytize across languages and faiths.

While the densely illustrated posters are more visually rich, I find myself most drawn to the simplest posters, like the ones I included here. They make clear how little it takes (visually, at least!) for a message to assert itself, even across unfamiliar ground.

Just too late for Pride: this issue’s featured archive is the the Gay Rodeo History archive. I feel that this one is relatively self explanatory, and if the name alone does not warrant a click, I really don’t know how to help you.

Someone once told me to never apologize for not sending out my newsletter. So I won’t!!! But… since it’s been a minute, I do have a handful of updates from the past few months: I’ve written about ennui in the design industry, using the past as a stock library, unintentionally-good and intentionally-bad branding, Playlab’s 20th anniversary, and radical haggadot. I also gave a talk at the Typographics Festival last Friday (which you can watch online for a few more days) and a talk at the Type Director’s Club about the typography of vintage porn (which you cannot watch online, but which hopefully someday I will find a way to write about on here without being cancelled). On the design front, I designed and art directed the vinyl for A24’s new movie Materialists (which you can pre-order here!) and did a special cover for Antiques Magazine—plus work for a jewelry brand, a no-ABV beverage, and a board game, all coming soon <3

Sources: CCPosters, Chinasource

As an avid music fan and devoted admirer of typography and graphic design, I began making Tickets Please in March 2023 after walking by a concert hall and noticing people simply displaying a QR code on their phones to enter the show. I was taken back to my youth, and how I used to cherish and save each concert ticket for the various shows I attended. Serendipitously, I had recently reconnected with a friend who is a collector of concert ticket stubs. This ongoing series presents a combination of those stubs and vintage tickets that I have since sourced and purchased myself.

Tickets represent a vanishing physical art form and a nostalgia for an iconic era of music, where each stub is a fragment of history. I look at these tickets as small works of art: the font selections, the layout, the color, the copy, all done with careful consideration to detail. The collection is carefully curated with a few stand outs, particularly in the Japanese concert series. It’s no secret that the Japanese were crazy for Western music, particularly Rock and Roll. The Eagles concert stub from 1976 at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo is a wonderful example of the concert ticket as art. The design, color scheme, font selection, and remarkable eagle logo make this ticket one of the standouts in the collection.

Today, very few bands print tickets and fewer still offer tickets of any artistic value, but one exception is the band Phish. For an extra charge, the band will mail their customers a paper ticket for their concert. I was contacted by a passionate Phish fan who allowed me to photograph his entire collection of tickets. A great example is the Phish ticket stub from 2016 at the Mann Theatre in Philadelphia. While it incorporates a bar code, it also uses foils, bold imaginative colors and a unique and eye-catching font.

With this art form all but having disappeared, collecting and photographing these ticket stubs is a way to preserve a small part of music history and present it to not only my generation and the generations before me, but to a younger audience who may not have experienced their existence. These works are for sale as signed and numbered prints and are printed on Canson rag photographique paper. A book project is also in the works.

This issue’s featured archive is the new Public Domain Image Archive, a collection of 10,000+ public domain images from one of my favorite non-profits, The Public Domain Review, an online journal exploring works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.

Sources: Author’s photos—these works are for sale!

Letterform Archive treats both valuable and everyday objects with equal reverence. Rare books and type specimens live in the stacks alongside punk flyers and—thanks to a recent donation—chopstick sleeves. Though individually modest in their design and messaging, when considered as a whole, the 500 sleeves that comprise this collection map a singular history of Japanese ideology and aesthetics.

While chopstick sleeves date back to the Heian period (8th–12th century), paper hashibukuro (“chopstick envelopes”) emerged at the turn of the 20th century when disposable chopsticks and packaged meals gained popularity with the advent of train travel. In addition to ensuring cleanliness, printed paper chopstick sleeves became vernacular advertisements for shops and restaurants.

The collector, Susumu Kitagawa, was born in Fuji. He graduated from high school during World War II, and was immediately deployed to China. He survived the war — and imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp—and returned home to work for Fujikyu, a private railway company that operated the train line closest to Mount Fuji. Mr. Kitagawa traveled across Japan in his work for the Fujikyu tourism division. He fastidiously documented his trips with both written diaries and photographs that he carefully dated, captioned, and assembled into albums. (He would eventually compile over 175 photo albums, all prominently on display in his living room.) An archivist at heart, Mr. Kitagawa also collected sake cups and chopstick sleeves during his travels.

When asked what his collection — or the process of collecting — might have meant to her grandfather, Taiyo Kitagawa speculated that her grandfather’s habit of documenting and collecting may have been related to his experiences in the war. “He rarely talked about it, but I know it left an imprint on him,” she wrote. “He was trained to run into vehicles with explosives strapped onto his body but fortunately missed a battle by days. He was then captured and became a prisoner of war.”

A desire to extend the life of objects may also have compelled Mr. Kitagawa. Mottainai is a Japanese adage expressing regret that “something is being discarded needlessly”— a familiar impulse for the generation of Japanese who lived through the deprivations of war. Taiyo recalls, “We probably used the same Christmas wrapping paper and ribbons for at least a decade. My grandfather would lecture me if I left even one single grain of rice in my bowl — every grain takes a year to grow and one must not waste it.”

You can read more about the Kitagawa Collection, including the stories of restaurants and writing styles featured on specific sleeves here.

Letterform Archive’s recommended archive is India Street Lettering, where Pooja Saxena documents street signage in her home country. Besides the photography, the Archive appreciates how she tags each example with a location, script, material, technique, and type of business so you can navigate by typology.

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say how devastated I was by the fires in LA this past month—so I’ll be matching donations up to $150 to help those affected by the disaster, split between the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation and the California Community Foundation—just email me a receipt to any non-profit organizations supporting fire relief.

Sources: Letterform Archive

The very existence of the WPA—an American agency that provided work for thousands of unemployed artists during the Great Depression—is sort of an incredulous idea in this day and age. It reminds me of the ongoing joke that if libraries had never existed, and were proposed today, they would be rejected for being “too socialist.” The Museum Extension Project arm of the WPA, who are behind these specific plates, focused on producing historic models, puppets, illustrated plates, and maps for use in school districts, especially those with limited access to museums. In an age of AI and general debasement of the humanities, it is nice to imagine a time when our country was expanding access to the arts rather than cutting school budgets for music classes.

It goes without saying that these posters, while beautiful, often depict Western and non-Western cultures in markedly different ways, with the latter frequently “othered” or exotified through stylized poses, attire, and cultural framing. I often wrestle in this newsletter with whether to exclude material that may be offensive by today’s standards (sharing a set that skews very white and European as a result) or to include pieces that, while problematic, offer a broader view of the archive. I always try to make a selection that strikes a balance between these poles, but I always encourage you to explore the linked archives at the bottom to see more examples—in this case, keeping in mind the reliance on outdated stereotypes and the fact that only Western cultures are given full historical narratives (everyone else is relegated to “Asiatic plates.”) Despite these shortcomings, these costume plates offer an interesting snapshot of how global cultures were perceived and represented in the early 20th century.

This month’s featured archive is From Old Books, a charmingly web 1.0 era website of, well, scans from old books. Great for engravings, ornamental alphabets, and various hellscapes.

I try to mostly keep this newsletter focused on Casual Archivist™ content, but this year was a good one. So, if you’ll indulge me, I can’t resist including a little recap:

It was my first full year as a columnist at It’s Nice That. That comprised 14 columns (including the most read piece of the year on the site, my column on AI and taste), one feature, one interview, three commissions (on creative labor politics, board games, and the branding of cultural CPG) and a lot more behind the scenes. I also wrote articles about car window iconography, the ethics of cereal branding, and the aesthetics of online Catholicism, as well as the opening essay for the Type Director’s Club Annual. I was quoted in Fast Company about Chads and professional design clubs, in Dwell about brand campaigns shot in houses, and in the New York Times about bumper stickers and gift guides. I sent out seven Casual Archivist newsletters.

I spoke about design at the Birmingham Design Festival in the UK, Design Thinkers in Toronto, Parsons Communication Design Lecture Series in NY, Springfield Creatives at Missouri State University, and online with AIGA and Aprender. I hosted four It’s Nice That Nicer Tuesdays with Jessica Hische, Hassan Rahim, Quil Lemons and Talia Cotton. I taught one class at RISD, Design Studio 1 (a core curriculum class for sophomore graphic design majors).

I designed a new identity for the Century Association Archives Foundation (I work with a lot of archives but this was my first time actually working for one!), a cookbook zine for , branding for my favorite ice cream maker in Providence, and a campaign for luxury nightwear brand Dorso. I also worked on lots of stuff that I can’t share yet—that list includes a new fintech product I can’t wait to use, a very fun sourdough startup, a historically inspired jewelry brand, and a ton of boardgames. I also did stints with Mythology, Interbrand Cologne, Parker, Pentagram, Wide Eye, and Moniker. I also won Young Guns in November!

I don’t have any proper resolutions, but I got a springform pan for Christmas and look forward to trying to dupe Oberlin’s Basque cheesecake. I am also trying to (finally…) learn to drive. Advice accepted.

I am so grateful to all of you who read this newsletter and follow along with my work in any capacity. I feel very lucky to get to do what I love and have so many people to share it with! Until 2025 <3

Sources: Broward County Florida Library, Keystone Library Network, The Old Print Shop

Most of what I have to say about these is identical to what I’ve said about ephemera in this newsletter before: “everything used to be more beautiful,” etc. But, to be specific, I like the way these designs in particular split the difference between ornamental and utilitarian; they’re not as gilded or illustrated as liquor and perfume labels from the same period, but they’re still far more decorative than the minimalist Swiss pharmaceutical packaging that is more often celebrated by graphic designers today. After catching both Covid and “walking pneumonia” this month (horrible), I can say with certainty that I would have much preferred these labels littering my bedside table over Nyquil and Mucinex.

This issue’s recommended archive is ARCBVA, an archive of Bulgarian visual art. I’m truly so stoked whenever I come across a regional archive and get to learn about the design history of a new (to me) place, and this is no exception. I see similarities to Russian and Greek poster design, of course, but also a bit of a nod to Polish design like that of (prior issue theme) Ty I Ja, too.

ICYMI: for my newest It’s Nice That column, I wrote about why mockups have become so ubiquitous and what it says about the design industry today—plus, a bit about our infatuation with scanning stuff, people who steal case study imagery, and why you should still always print your work out (really!!!)

Sources: Author’s Collection

About a year and a half ago, I purchased my first instructional vinyl box set at Academy Records on 18th St in Manhattan. Titled Night Moves: The Professional Approach to Disco Dance Instruction, the box set came with a 95 page booklet on various dance moves, from the “Airplane Walk” to the “Cuddle Turn,” with posed photos to reference. It was a product only the 70s could’ve produced.

Once I learned about the world of educational records, I of course fell down its vast rabbit hole. According to the BBC, the “production of instructional discs mushroomed, particularly in the United States, during the 1950s and 1960s.” From Ski Warmup and Conditioning Activities to Hear How To Tell Your Children the Facts of Life to Picking Up Girls Made Easy, the instructional vinyl was the modern form of the self help book and the early version of the internet search engine for life’s unanswered questions.

What has fascinated me most during my research has been the niche medical record. During the 1960s many major pharmaceutical companies, labs, and journals like Pfizer, The Excerpta Medica Foundation, and The Ciba Clinical Record sponsored and produced vinyl on various conditions from diabetes to congestive heart failure. While all serious information, the album covers all have a certain “mod” je ne sais quoi to them. Who knew that diseases could be presented so aesthetically?

While the visual artist names are rarely credited on these releases, what I enjoy most about them is that the designers were clearly given free artistic license to do whatever they pleased. The album covers elevate the banal subject matter with colorful abstract shapes and high contrasted photographs that successfully draw the viewer in. They’re reminiscent of Rudolph de Harak’s modernist covers for the classical music label Westminster, released during the same era. So… who wants to start a petition to rebrand the medical field?

This issues’s recommended archive is The British Newspaper Archive, which contains around three million newspaper pages, including most of the runs of newspapers published in the UK since 1800. It’s hard to summarize an archive like this because it really has a bit of everything—but I particularly enjoy some of the schlockier 1980s tabloids (like the one below, from 1988), if I had to pick.

Sources: Author’s Collection, Peculiar Manicule, Discogs

In contrast to modern data inputting tools like Google Forms, which often prioritize function over form and can hardly be thought of as designed at all—just skinned—the cards are clearly the product of a reasonable amount of creativity and intention. As a collector and lover of old things, they make me think of all the surfaces that have been robbed of visual care in the transition from tactile to digital, and the 21st century quest for efficiency: maps, flyers, RSVP cards, and yes, even junk mail. In its most ephemeral form, print still demands a human touch.

This issue’s recommended archive, Lincoln Cushing’s Sidewalk Stamps archive, follows in the same spirit of showcasing oft-overlooked pieces of design. Sidewalk stamps have fallen out of favor since their heyday in the early 1900s, primarily due to concerns over litigation and shifting attitudes toward craftsmanship. Although made of resilient materials, these marks are rapidly fading from the urban landscape, affected by curb cuts, repairs to buried utility lines, and widespread gentrification. I see a lot of these in Providence and they always make my day!

Sources: Author’s Collection, Bart Solenthaler

The popularity of billiards has fluctuated numerous times over the last century. Traditionally considered a veteran’s pastime, the game fell out of favor after WWII as soldiers returned home and viewed it as a relic of the past—leading to the quiet closure of many pool rooms. However, Hollywood’s depiction of the game in movies like The Hustler, The Color of Money, and Mystic Pizza (with Julia Roberts running the table!) spurred its revival, highlighting the timeless and alluring style of the poolroom. While interest in playing grows and fades, the game’s mystique and glamor remain constant.

This month’s featured archive is Viet GD, a new-ish collection of Vietnamese graphic design from the 1950s to present day. I love the variety of formats featured—from posters to sheet music—as well as the wide range of illustration styles.

I wrote an op-ed for It’s Nice That about food in fashion, and why the creative industry is obsessed with produce (or, giant bricks of butter).

Happy Pride! This month’s featured archive is Lavender Zines, an amazing online collection of queer magazines and ephemera from the 1960s. (Thanks to Kyle Letendre for the tip!)

Yesterday I published an article about what happens when an artist’s individual style becomes a trend. This is an idea that’s been percolating in my mind for a while, and I was really excited to get to talk to heavy hitting style makers David Rudnick, Robert Beatty, Tomi Um, Jen Mussari, and Bráulio Amado for the piece. I’ve also written a few new columns for It’s Nice That this spring, including one about being a hater, and another about why I love signage!

This issue from Ben focuses on his collection of Reinsulator ephemera, which is being exhibited at the Providence Public Library this Saturday, April 20, from 11am–2pm. If you’re in New England, come by!

Reinsulator is an amateur archive of vintage publications related to the hobby of insulator collection. The collection contains titles like Crown Jewels of the Wire, Drip Points, and Cross Arms, plus a number of one-off DIY zines, guides, and books. In total, Reinsulator has close to 800 unique items including an almost complete-run of Crown Jewels, which has run continuously since 1969. These texts are a rich repository of histories, jokes, photos, price lists, ads, event announcements, and more which, in total, document the rise of a really awesome, friendly, and research-driven folk collector community.

So what’s an insulator hobby zine? Wait. What’s an insulator? Glad you asked! For the unfamiliar, an insulator is a non-conductive object, typically made of glass or porcelain, that is affixed to telephone, telegraph, or power lines to prevent electrical wires from contacting wooden poles (this prevents energy diversion and disruption of signal pathways). While the insulators fell out of use in the 1970s, they are the early unsung heroes of telecom—and for many fans, live on as beautiful sculptures.

Reinsulator: Pop Up Reading Room
with Yankee Pole Cat Insulator Club

Saturday April 20, 2024; 11am–2pm
Providence Public Library, Special Collections’ Reading Room
150 Empire Street, Fl. 3, Providence, RI (Map)

https://www.bensisto.com/projects/reinsulator
https://provlib.libcal.com/event/12300258

This project has been supported in part by a grant from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, and is being exhibited in partnership with the Providence Public Library.

For this issues’s recommended archive, I’d like to suggest a sort of decentralized archive—things that exist in the marketplace (eBay and the like) and which are thus documented, but that I haven’t seen pulled together in a formal collection yet. I’d love to collect these but don’t have the resources right now. Laid Back bucket hats are novelty headwear that call to mind the golden era of Spencers Gifts. They cover topics like fishing, golfing, gardening, and old age, and are quite literally stuffed to the brim with novelty items and gags in a variety of typefaces and color-ways. They feel especially appropriate as we approach 4/20.

Editors note: I’ve long advised folks that some of the best “archives” on the internet are the photos you find on resale marketplaces (search results for syrup labels, Milton Glaser posters, or vintage paper napkins may serve as helpful evidence). Salesmen will always fill the gaps that public resources can’t; we may as well use it to our advantage!

Besides the amazing typography and colors, I really love the strange, almost isometric approach to space that these maps use, which reminds me of the flattened perspective seen in Japanese Ukiyo-e landscapes. I just wish they made one for Providence!

I just got back from two weeks in Northern Italy, so this issue’s featured archive is the Sigarette Italiane, a collection of cigarette packs produced in Italy and former Italian colonies.

I wrote a piece for Road & Track Magazine in March about car window iconography trickling down into design, fashion and beauty. I also chatted with Emilia Petrarca for her great article in Dwell about brand campaigns set in domestic spaces!

I’ve also taken on a new role as the US Editor-at-Large for It’s Nice That, where I write about the design industry, visual trends, and whatever else is on my mind IRT the creative world (if you’d like to hear more from me on those topics, my monthly column is here).

Sources: Geographicus, Barry Lawrence Ruderman, University of Waterloo, Reddit, Old Map Gallery, Chisholm Larsson, 1st Dibs, Golden Age Posters