Pencil Perfection

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Bob Truby's Brand Name Pencils website is an amazing place. With over 100 catalogued pencil brands cross-referenced by ferrule type and era, it is a great resource for the pencil collector. At first you might think that a "pencil collector" is a rare breed, but with just a few short clicks and searches, you will discover many people sharing this obsession. Certainly, the skilled and sophisticated design of Truby's site is one of the best (designed by his graphic design friend, Jeff (hey Jeff, what's your website?).

Truby is a highschool art teacher in Oregon and his intention with his website is to create "a visual encounter with the incredibly diverse world of brand name pencils. I hope you will be amazed at the sheer number of pencil brands once produced in the USA and abroad. Sadly those days are over and the craftsmanship, skill and pride once put into the ordinary pencil is but a thing of the past."

I asked Truby what the appeal is of collecting pencils. He replies, "The appeal is truly a mystery. All I can say is that I know other pencil collectors and they feel the same way. I think the pencil in and of itself is a great collectible.  Cheap, almost endless names, model numbers, manufacturer names, countries.....and of course they can be very old indeed." He grew up in a family of collectors (beer cans, match packs, coins, stamps, baseball cards and Hot Wheels), but his focus is now on the pencil collection.

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Here are a few more places worth a visit: How a pencil is made and Doug Martin's Pencil Pages (the advertisement above is from his gallery). Leadholder.com (below) celebrates the drafting pencil and its history.

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Penciltalk

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Book Trade Labels

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I've always loved books — they're the reason that I became interested in graphic design as a profession. To design books, own a bookstore and, most recently, to publish my first UPPERCASE book... these are all dreams come true.

Here's a link to an excellent site detailing one tiny aspect of book culture: the book trade label.

"Anyone who handles old books will have come across these small and sometimes beautiful labels pasted more or less discreetly into the endpapers. Publishers, printers, binders, importers, distributors and sellers of books -- new, second-hand and antiquarian -- used to advertise in this way their contribution to bringing the book to market."

I'm compelled to design a small label for the books we sell at UPPERCASE. I'll post the results here.

Vintage Crate Labels

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There is a nicely designed website call Box of Apples that features a gallery of crate labels.

In the 70 years between the 1880s and the 1950s, millions of colorful paper labels were used by America's fruit and vegetable growers to advertise their wooden boxes of fresh produce that was shipped throughout the nation and the world.

Collectors value crate art for its colorful design and its ability to trace the social and political history of American agriculture.

Beginning primarily in the southern regions of California, labels became an industrywide necessity to communicate the appeal of fresh produce to Eastern buyers. In the fast-paced setting of Eastern auction halls and commission markets, buyers could not see the fruit, which was individually packed in tissue paper and sealed in a wooden box. The brightly colored, attractively designed label soon became the growers' chief advertising device, the symbolic window from which the fruit could be judged.

You may purchase variously-sized giclee reproductions of Plan 39's collection of labels. Check out their closeups of the labels to appreciate the complexity of the original printing process and the wonderful use of colour found on these masterpieces of type and illustration.

(I have a modest collection of vintage food and drug labels, some of which make their way into my Eclecto paper packs, available in store or by email.)