Oh my, ephemera heaven!

I'm a terrible lurker. I'm a member of sundry lists and webgroups, facebook and other such stuff. I don't actually use them very much, and I'm hopeless at updating my activities or joining discussions. I get a lot of daily digests, so I can peep in on everyone else's activities when I get the time to cruise through, and I love reading the arguments but not joining them. There was a great thread on the letterpress list, titled KISS vs SOCK, about the pros and cons of lightly printing the surface (kissing) versus deep impression (socking it to the paper). I think there will never be consensus, there's too many sides, but there are absolute truths that emerge in these debates: that good design will always look better than bad design, and that constant deep impression under high pressure will eventually kill your press. Other than that, say the wise people, it's a free world. Sigh. Outcomes like that are so satisfying.


(image©Dick Sheaff)

Anyway, I actually started this to say that there's lots of interesting things that fly by in the digests, usually in the form of weblinks that are highlighted or slip under the radar on people's email signatures. Today I was led to this, an almighty EPHEMERA LOLAPALOOZA! Really well organised, including (and this is for Colonel Duck) a whole section on photos of people holding fish as well as a section on something called typotecture that makes my fingertips hurt. All with nice introductions and extra information. My goodness, it's such fun.