outstanding in his field

Reading a gentle and sincere appreciation of sparing a lone oak tree in a field and speculating on the farmer’s motivations for doing so inspired me to share one of our favourite examples that we pass quite often. I’ll admit that I have a weakness for pausing to admire a windbreak or a tree thriving in isolation.

mcmlxxxviii

A hat-tip to and in full agreement with the source that directed our attention to another visual chronicle from Alan Taylor exclaiming that 1988 doesn’t seem like three decades ago but here we are.
We enjoyed perusing some of the iconic images of the cultural and historic touchstones of the year that punctuated with (the mostly not pictured) establishment of the internet with the first trans-Atlantic connections and also the advent of the first computer viruses (you don’t get the automobile without the traffic jam and car wreck), the Soviet Union began to transition away from a strictly command economy and travel-restrictions were relaxed, the discovery of the first exoplanet—though unconfirmed until 2002, and the beginning of the campaign to eradicate polio.

6x6

parkour: flip book style animation from Serene Teh

hollywoodland: a look at the Goldstein residence of Beverly Hills, featured in Charlie’s Angels and The Big Lebowski

kgb vs kfc: the football that Putin presented Trump does in fact have a chip in it but is probably harmless

vice squad: the sting that led to the arrest of Stormy Daniels was a premeditated set-up

regnal periods: a visually sharp presentation of Roman emperors by year

land transport authority: an elegant map of Singapore’s metro-system

canali

Using a sounding technique that revealed the existence of a sub-glacial sea under the Antarctic ice sheet, European Space Agency researchers believe that they may have detected a shallow lake of liquid water beneath the ice-capped Martian south pole. The telemetry gathered by the Mars Express, a satellite laboratory that’s orbited the planet for the past fifteen years is still being interpreted but it’s definitely something and bear the signature of a briny sea, some twenty kilometres across but buried under a kilometre and half of frozen ice.

dingbat

Building on the success of his social medial following, archivist and graphic designer Richard Baird, as Dezeen reports, will be issuing a quarterly magazine to highlight the simple brilliance of Mid-Century Modern (1945-1975) minimalist logos, carefully selected and curated as the best in branding, like this 1974 symbol designed by Patrick Dugast for le Club de la Publicité of Québec, whose mascot is cleverly drawn out of the negative space framed by a “CP.” Visit the links above for more classically timeless and inspired emblems.