Flora’s mallewagen, Allegory of the Tulip Mania, by Hendrik Gerritsz Pot:

The goddess of flowers is riding along with three drinking and money weighing men and two women on a car. Weavers from Haarlem have thrown away their equipment and are following the car. The destiny of the car is shown in the background: it will disappear in the sea.

(hat tip: Walter Russell Mead)

I am happily perusing an early Christmas present to myself: Masterpiece Comics, a collection of R. Sikoryak’s mash-ups of comic strips and world literature.  Some examples:  Rex Morgan, M.D. + Macbeth = “Macworth.”  Ziggy + Candide = “Candiggy.”  From more recent times, Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead + Waiting for Godot = “Waiting to Go.”   You get the idea.  At first glance, it looks like Sikoryak is simply layering literary plotlines atop uncanny copies of famous cartoons.  But the Masterpiece collection is more than that.  Each classic tale has been carefully matched with a comic that shares its core sensibility, and the clever pairing emphasizes what they have in common, while at the same time creating something new.  In “Good Ol’ Gregor Brown” (above), Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis wakes up as a bug in the Peanuts world of Charles M. Schulz.   Samsa and Charlie Brown are separated by time and place, but the futility and sad humor are the same.  It’s just one of many examples that make you think, “Of course!”  My only disappointment is that this volume is a little on the slim side– only 64 pages– but that’s only because I wish there was more to explore.  Guess I will just have to wait for the next one (“Coming soon! Virgil! Chaucer! Flaubert!”)

See also:

R. Sikoryak’s web site (http://www.rsikoryak.com/index.html)

Niemann’s iconic images reference specific events and larger ideas. One image shows an East German border guard hurdling barbed wire to escape into the West. Other images remind me of M.C. Escher’s tessellated patterns, reduced to elemental form. Niemann’s underlying theme is the transformation of a city, history as augury and echo.

At the National Geographic, the map is presented in a “Zoomify” Flash object.

Better is the full size image placed by Adam Crowe on Flickr.

What I really need is a wall-sized print.

Here is Virtualization in Plain English, a marketing video for Intel made by Common Craft.

Keep track of that necktie.

Today is polling day in Afghanistan. One document created to aid the process is Your Vote. Your Voice, a 25-page manual that uses graphic novel techniques to teach “adult learners about  issues, candidates, and appraisal of elected officials’ performance.”

It is printed in Dari and Pashto.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

Google Map-like pan, zoom, and search features make it easy to explore these candy landscapes, until one reaches the edge of the model and the world either fades or flattens — as in the screen capture of Guangzhou below.

Oddly, the Edushi artists generally point North 45 degrees off vertical (counterclockwise). This means that the 3D maps don’t align with common roadmap or satellite views.

(via PopSci.com)

In upstate NY there is a HUGE underground cavern that was discovered by a bunch of cows trying to stay cool on a hot summer day. The cave remains 52°F consistently, year round. This makes it an ideal place for aging cheese, beer, getting married and giving tours for money through its long and winding passageways.

My mom grew up not far from Howe Caverns so I have known about it and its wacky, hand painted billboard advertising ever since I can remember. The billboards I remember most depicted a Huckleberry Finn-type character with what appears to be his little brother on his back, lantern in hand, exploring the cavern. The colors were day-glo on black and the fonts were meant to look super spooky!! POW! I was hooked. I had to go there.

My point is it had a memorable style. Like it or not, it got the job done. You would see one of those billboards a mile away and know it was for Howe Caverns. When I saw that Howe Caverns had re-branded itself I was curious, then disappointed.

They did away with the timeless hand painted illustrative style in favor of the “roughen” filter in Adobe Illustrator. The new branding looks like the packaging for a first-person shooter game, or an earthquake danger warning sign. The style is something we’ve seen a million other places these days. Solid color, distressed font, nice photos — done. I feel like the soul and history of the brand just got flushed away. It may have needed a makeover, but the essence could have been preserved.

I am by all means biased due to my personal childhood memories of the brand but I say bring back Huck Finn and his day-glo little brother!