The Secret Language of Cattle Branding

To the untrained eye, cattle brands, those unique markings seared into animals’ hides with a hot iron, might just seem like idiosyncratic logos or trademarks designed to clearly and simply indicate ownership. However, unlike the graphic logos and trademarked images of popular commercial brands, they must comply with a rigorous set of standards and are developed using a specific language ruled by its own unique syntax and morphology.Livestock branding dates back to 2700 BC, evidenced by Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Ancient Romans are said to have used hot iron brands as an element of magic. But brands are most famously associated with the cowboys and cattle drives of the Old West, when brands were used to identify a cow’s owner, protect cattle from rustlers (cattle thieves), and to separate them when it came time to drive to market (or rail yards or stock yards).

At its most basic, a cattle brand is composed of a few simple letters and numbers, possibly in combination with a basic shape or symbols like a line, circle, heart, arc, or diamond. But these characters can also be embellished with serif-like flourishes to create myriad “pyroglyphics.” For example, such serifs might include extraneous “wings” or “feet” added to a letter or number. Each character can also be rotated or reversed. Every addition and variation results in a unique character that is named accordingly. The letters with “wings” for example, are described as “flying” while those with “feet” are, you guessed it, “walking.” An upside-down characters is “crazy” while a 90-degree rotation makes a character “lazy.” These colorful designations aren’t just cute nicknames used to identify the characters, but are actually a part of the name, a spoken part of the brand language, which like most western languages is read from left to right, top to bottom and, perhaps unique to brands, outside to inside. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Vintage Menus That Are a Feast for the Eyes

The Chicago seafood restaurant J.H. Ireland Grill opened in 1906 and had a colorful client list. It attracted everyone from gangster John Dillinger (who preferred the grill’s frog legs) to lawyer Clarence Darrow, who went there to celebrate big wins. But the co-founders of Cool Culinaria, which finds and sells prints of vintage menus, remember it for a different reason: its menu design. As colorful as its past, the best-selling menu uses bright colors to convey the fresh and vibrant ingredients to be found inside.

Menus from across the country featured fantastical fare with an artistry that often goes unrecognized, according to Cool Culinaria co-founder Eugen Beer. Along with Charles Baum and Barbara McMahon, Beer works with both private collectors and public institutions including universities and libraries to license menus from the late 19th century through the 1970s. Beer is British, and McMahon Scottish, but he says, “America, for whatever reason, has this vast collection of fantastic art that sits in boxes.”

Their favorites are from a golden age of design and dining ranging from the 1930s to the 1960s. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

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By Leah Binkovitz

motherboardtv:

The Unlikely Pair of Brooklyn Designers Who Are Building a Better Space Suit

When they first met in 2007, Ted Southern and Nik Moiseev came from two very different worlds. Nik had spent over two decades working in the Soviet Union and Russia as an engineer of cutting edge garments that would be used to take cosmonauts by Soyuz rocket up to the International Space Station. Ted was an artist and sculptor who had studied at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and worked as an apprentice at a costuming studio in Manhattan. The closest he had come to having a garment of his fly to outer space was at Victoria’s Secret fashion shows, where models still wear his impressive angel wings. 

WATCH THE EPISODE

- by David Feinberg

Smithsonian Magazine: The spacesuits that kept U.S. astronauts alive now owe their survival to one woman.

How to Build the Perfect Basketball Shoe

Inventor Tinker Hatfield is responsible for the original design concepts of Air Jordan sneakers, one of the most widely recognized and highly coveted products from the 1990s. The jagged line of color on the edge of the sole that became a trademark; the revolutionary “Air” bubble design, a small plastic window in the sole of the shoe which allowed you to see the cushioning system inside, are all ideas that came from one man who seems to know a little more about building than just shoe design. - Continue reading at CooperHewitt.org.

Ed note: Want to read more about design? Check out our “Design Decoded” blog.

Check out NASA’s Buzz Lightyear-inspired Spacesuit

The Z-1 is NASA’s next generation spacesuit, a prototype of which is pictured at the Johnson Space Center. Planned for use by astronauts as they travel to infinity and beyond to new deep-space locations, the next generation suit will incorporate a number of technology advances to shorten preparation time, improve safety and boost astronaut capabilities during spacewalks and surface activities.

Photo: NASA

Ed note: Can a spacesuit be an astronaut’s home? They provide oxygen, shelter and even a bathroom!

Minimalist Superheroes

Designed by Michael Turner of Blackpool, England, these incredibly simple two color tone portraits of DC and Marvel characters are part of an ongoing project. Head over to his Behance page to suggest more characters for him to design.

Ed note: Costume designer Mark Newport talks about knitting outfits for superheroes, both famous (Batman) and unknown (Sweaterman).

Turning Memorable Sound Bites Into Works of Art

If public speaking is an art form, then presidential elections produce some masterpieces—from memorable speeches and powerful sound bites to well-timed digs in the debates.

But Bill Seaver and Nathan Moore, two innovators from Nashville, have taken this idea to the next level. Their new company, Epic Frequency, takes the aural high points in history and actually transforms them into visual showpieces for your home. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photos by: Epic Frequency

Ed note: Chances are these audio clips won’t be turned into works of art. Check out the most annoying sounds in the world.

Rem Koolhaas: The World’s Most Controversial Architect

Rem Koolhaas has been causing trouble in the world of architecture since his student days in London in the early 1970s. Architects want to build, and as they age most are willing to tone down their work if it will land them a juicy commission. But Koolhaas, 67, has remained a first-rate provocateur who, even in our conservative times, just can’t seem to behave. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo: Donald Milne, The Serpentine Gallery in London is covered with an inflatable canopy lighted from within.

Ed note: Check out the unbuilt high-rise designs of Rem Koolhaas and OMA.

The September issue of Smithsonian is all about design! Walter Isaacson shares his insight on Steve Jobs and the beauty of Apple. Mark Stevens profiles Ai Weiwei as he prepares for his first U.S. retrospective and Tom Vanderbilt sheds light on how humans are stealing designs from animals.

What do you think of our cover?

Ed note: If you get your hands on a print copy of the magazine let us know what you think of the redesign.

The History of the Olympic Pictograms: How Designers Hurdled the Language Barrier

Of all the instances in which graphic communication is necessary to transcend language barriers, the Olympic Games are, if not the most important, probably the most visible. We take the little icons of swimmers and sprinters as a given aspect of Olympic design, but the pictograms were a mid-20th Century invention—first employed, in fact, the last time London hosted the games, in 1948 (some pictographic gestures were made at the 1936 Berlin games, though their mark on international memory has been permitted to fade because of their association with Third Reich ideology). - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Image: Virtual Olympic Games Museum

Ed note: The little-known history of how the modern Olympics got their start.