What's All This Then?

This site is edited by Coudal Partners, a design, advertising and interactive studio in Chicago, as an ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce. [Next]

What's All This Then?

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Tuesday Edition

Sometimes it's time to share our bathroom walls with the world.
The Chalk Album Cover Contest. Answers here.

Coudal Partners

About This Site

Legends of the Fall

We made a filmed postcard from 93 feet above Northern, Wisconsin to announce our newest limited-release for Field Notes Brand, The Fire Spotter Edition. 3-Packs sold out in less than 48 hours but you can still get Fire Spotters as the first shipment in a Colors Subscription. There are just a few of those left for sale.

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 turkey dinner, 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 In Five Parts

Laboratory Conditions

RIP Ed Grothus who we met while we were in Los Alamos, New Mexico. We were looking for locations for one film project and on the way we discovered a lot more about the town and its people than we bargained for. So we made a different film and called it Laboratory Conditions. We have just reformatted it and are showing it in five episodes.

A Cautionary Tale

To Sweet Hereafter

Heed this well, young costumed beggars.

Stuff About Terrence Malick

There Wasn’t No
Harm In Him,
You’d Give Him a Flower, He’d Keep
It Forever

We've been talking about it for months and now we've finally done it. With the release of The Tree of Life and because there aren't many dedicated resources, we've created a new archive category about one of our heroes. Stuff About Terrence Malick is full of links and resources and we'd appreciate you writing us about anything you think belongs in there. (Use the contact link below.) It's a nice complement to our big Stuff About Stanley Kubrick collection. Logically, Bergman is next, but for now we'll leave that up to the excellent Face To Face.

Copy Goes Here A Film

Inaction Figures

For the proper effect, check the trailer first and then please take a few minutes (eleven actually) to watch our short feature film about words, pictures and bravery, Copy Goes Here.

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.

Free Vehicle ID System

I Brake For Quasi-Religious Symbols

We have word that two readers in New York City, who followed our guidelines for updating their vehicle identification systems, pulled up alongside each other at a traffic light and celebrated their common bond by honking and pointing. Excellent. More recently, John Heslop's vintage Toyota HiAce is looking badass in Wales. Our plot is beginning to take hold. Write for yours free today, but hurry, we only have tens of thousands left. BTW, who has a green Mini Cooper with the Fleet sticker in Chicago?

A Very Short Attention Span

Regrets, I Have a Few

Are you better suited for starting things than you are for finishing them? Yeah, us too.

In Fast Company, Good Company

Modern Americana

A lovely photo by Chris Mueller with prop styling by Elise McMahon for the "Modern Americana" section of Fast Company's just-released United States of Design issue, which is also available as an innovative iPad app. We're more than a little excited to have our Field Notes Brand products included in this curated collection of Made in the USA products. Thanks for that.

A Street in Logan Square

All Hallows’

It's often lost in the candy-coated, super-styled proceedings of the holiday, but Halloween is really all about departed souls and dealing with loss.

Not Quite so
Fresh Signals

"'I think it's my most... skillful film,' Stanley Kubrick stated in his calm, equanimous voice, the day after screening the first assembly of A Clockwork Orange." Mike Kaplan tells the story of being there in 1971. jc-02.02

"Artists bring what schools need." Nick Radkin of the Teaching Artist Research Project on the future of education. There's a panel discussion on the 15th as well. mgs-02.02

Analog audio equipment made of paper. mgs-02.02

"Some of the ladies talked about going to the hairdresser," Mayor Pons said. "But the hairdresser won, too. And she said, 'I'm not working today.' So that ended that." Just about an entire town in Spain wins the lottery. ms-02.02

TED announces worldwide auditions in 14 countries on six continents, crowd-sourcing at least half of its 2013 program. mgs-02.02

24-packs of awesome temporary robot-heart tattoos in time for Valentines Day. For the 24 kids in your son's class, or the 24 ladies you'd like to... woo? mgs-02.02

Cool old trucks, especially this one. jc-02.02

Chalet Béranger in the French Alps, by architect Noé Duchaufour Lawrance. Sublime. jc-02.02

OK Go helps the kiddos learn about Primary Colors. ms-02.02

From photographer Alan Sailer, Explosions. ms-02.02

"I suspect that a consultant has convinced too many companies that it's best to have as few moving parts as possible and therefore the future will be all about unsatisfying pokes and swipes at lifeless stretches of glass." Touching the Void, by Tyler Brûlé. jc-02.02

Draft of the public service announcement for the Fair Housing Alliance. ms-02.02

Kabuki disco metal outfit Kiss is like Star Wars, in that even if they're just a sad licensing empire today, conventional wisdom insists they were awesome in the '70s. Well, here's proof Kiss was just as terrible 33 years ago. bb-02.01

Clock for an Astronomer and Clock for an Architect, by Daniel Weil. Via Things. jc-02.01

Related to an earlier post, the 10 best Soul Train line dances. dw-02.01

The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World. mgs-02.01

Great series at Guernica called Writer's Bloc, where fiction writers are sent into developing countries to write "stories that are not especially concerned with a man's eternal soul or his statistical representation, but with his life." mgs-02.01

"In my life, that's what I want to be able to do with art, is to point out to everybody: 'There's just a fog over what you're seeing! But I swear to god, there's diamonds and sulfur, and you could make these awesome guns and defeat the evil slow-moving lizard guy! The diamonds are everywhere! You've just gotta look. They're right there!'" Neko Case in conversation with Sherman Alexie. mgs-02.01

For DW, Space Cats. ms-02.01

The Chicago Neighborhoods Project designs new logos for every Chicago 'hood. "Two or three every week until I tackle all 77 community areas." mgs-02.01

"A contemporaneous copy of the world's most famous painting has been discovered by conservators at the Prado in Madrid, allowing us to see the Mona Lisa as she would probably have looked at the time." jc-02.01

While wandering in New Orleans, FotA and former CP Guest Editor, Jami Attenberg, captured perhaps the world's greatest Bar Mitzvah banner. sd-02.01

"My whole body is apparently rotting from want of proper nourishment--frost-bitten fingertips, festerings, mucous membrane of nose gone, saliva glands of mouth refusing duty, skin coming off the whole body." The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever. ms-02.01

The Thing Quarterly is a periodical in the form of an object. Issue #16 is a monologue by Dave Eggers on a shower curtain of a monologue told to Dave Eggers by his shower curtain. mgs-02.01

For your 90's underground culture needs, back issues of Punk Planet are now available online from Quimby's. mgs-02.01

Where's the pixel? Via The Fox Is Black. dw-02.01

Local Note: our film, Above the Sun, is featured in Tom Skilling's blizzard special "Snowed Under," on WGN-TV which is running again at 9:30pm tonight, the anniversary of the storm. jc-02.01

Trailer for The Kid With a Bike. ms-02.01

27 designers in Pennsylvania sure like Jessica Hische. bb-02.01

Personified Teeth Dental Signs. Care to contribute? mgs-02.01

Joel Penkman's food paintings. dw-02.01

CMoS. Capitalization, Titles. So you know. jc-02.01

@MayorEmanuel fan fiction: "Personal Essay of Carl the Intern Written in Partial Fulfillment of the Common Application for Undergraduate College Admission." mgs-02.01

A big thanks to Julie and Andy from Letterform for stepping in as our Guest Editors in January. Up next for February is Megan Stielstra, author of Everyone Remain Calm and Literary Director at 2nd Story. A list of all the great people who have helped us out over the years can be found here. sd-02.01

Today in history, Puccini's La Boheme premiered at the Teatro Regio, conducted by 28 year-old Arturo Toscanini. Time out for Che Gelida Manina. That is how you start your day, my friends. ms-02.01

"Thank you (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" from Soul Train. Try not to smile. Via the always observant Ben Greenman. jc-02.01

Red Aurora Over Australia. ms-02.01

"Hoping to strip his life back to the essentials, (Picasso) confined himself in near isolation in Paris. But as his friend Jaime Sabartes recalled, his trusty pocket notebook remained his companion..." The Pocket Notebooks of 20 Famous Men from The Art of Manliness. jc-02.01

A Global Portrait of Red Tape. Maria Popova on Jan Banning's portraits of bureaucrats. jc-01.31

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