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On The Digital Mantle
I've collected Xmas cards for years (see here and here). And here is a selection of e-mail holiday cards that I received this year. Thanks to all and to all a Merry Moment in Time. Arnold and Isolde...
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Roma Ieri ed Oggi (Yesterday and Today)
I've walked by this museum building in Rome, between Campo Fiore and Piazza Navona, a hundred times but only the other day did I realize it was the site of the mammoth "Si Si Si" billboard, showing...
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Test Your Visual Acuity on Christmas Eve
Here's a little multiple choice quiz for you to take while waiting for Christmas day to arrive. Here are four photographs. Can you discern and describe the content or message of each one? Write in as a...
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Okay, It's Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho!
Have a very merry, happy, and safe one. From all of us at the Daily Heller (me) to all of you (you).
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Greetings From the Underground
The Composing Room, Inc., in New York City, was the most ambitious and progressive of all the type houses operating during the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Much of the credit goes to Dr. Robert Leslie and his...
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Illustration Makes The Man
Clothes, they say, make the man. But in the world of early-20th-century advertisements, illustrators made the man that wore the clothes that made the man. Just look how self-satisfied this gent appears...
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One-Two-Three, One-Two-Three
Exercise has been good for us as long as anyone can remember. Prehistoric man did it (if we're to believe Fred Flintstone). Sedentary activity produces lethargy, obesity, and disease. One-two-three,...
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The Best Dang Sorbetti and Gelati in Italy
The Best Dang Sorbetti and Gelati in Italy is at Giolitti in Rome, near the Pantheon. One taste of the melone, mora, chocolato, zuppa Inglese, cacio, frutti di bosco, caffè, or pesca, in cone or cup,...
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Surgical Design for Surgical Equipment
Intuitive Surgical designs and manufactures a robotic surgical system called da Vinci. Mike Hanuschik, who leads a design and product management team, said something that recently piqued my interest:...
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Calling All Pardners
Most of you won't recall the Hopalong Cassidy film series, which in 1949 became the first TV Western series. William Boyd starred as Hoppy, the Western hero known for all time as "The epitome of...
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Faces of the Italian Stage
The caricaturists Mario Pompei and Umberto Onorato both designed caricatures for Il Dramma (published by Editrice Le Grandi Firme). This venerable Italian chronicle of the stage was the leading...
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What a Great Typewriter
The Olivetti Studio 42 was designed in 1935 in Italy. It was one of the foremost modern machines in a line of iconic typewriters, which gave Remington a run for its money. Established as the "first...
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All Eyes on View
You may have seen View magazine before. It is not one of the forgotten ones. It is a legendary one that is always interesting to revisit. It was edited by John Henri Ford, a surrealist poet from...
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Four Score and Seven Actors Ago
He's not as impersonated as Elvis, but then the King never had his face on money. President Abraham Lincoln has been played by many actors over the last century. I've assembled a few of them here. Can...
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The Romance of Movies
The Rank Organization, one of England's largest film producers and distributors, sold rights to British and American films throughout Europe, and especially in Italy. These are some of the...
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No Country for Old Typographers
Bodoni not only has a museum devoted to his lifetime of work in Parma, Italy, but virtually every major city in Italy has a Giovanni Battista Bodoni street. What city, village, town, or hamlet in the...
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A Day's Pickin's at the Outdoor Market
Fruits and vegetables aren't the only bounty at the Roman outdoor produce markets. There are fresh fish, meats, spices, liquors, housewares, sweatshirts, and socks, but my favorites are the fruit...
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What Makes a Typeface Futurist?
Italian typefaces are like most other countries' typefaces—there are some classics, like Bodoni, various workhorses, like Egiziano, and lots of custom faces used for packages and posters. But among the...
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The Peaceful Uses of Montage
In the hands of John Heartfield, Germany's most acerbic graphic political commentator, photomontage was a weapon against Nazi tyranny. It was, however, likewise used to promote tyrannies and idealize...
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ManWoman of the Gentle Swastika
The artist who called himself ManWoman, with whom I once had a friendly disagreement about the future of the swastika, has died at 74 from cancer, The Globe and Mail's Tom Hawthorn reported today....
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