What's All This Then?
This site is edited by Coudal Partners, a design, advertising and interactive studio in Chicago, as an ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce. [Next]
What's All This Then?
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Thursday Edition
This is our studio site. Among lots of other things, we run Field Notes Brand,
go there right now and spend lots of money. Thanks.
Coudal Partners
For No Reason
Concept Album
Album Concept
We started demolition on our new space recently. One of the first things that had to go was a huge infinity wall (a white background used for photography) that was left by a previous tenant. So right before we said "Tear Down This Wall," Bryan and Jim spent a few minutes shooting in front of it. And Bryan, being Bryan, couldn't leave it at that, and turned one of the shots into this album cover from our Prog Rock period.
A Street in Logan Square
All Hallows’
It's often lost in the candy-coated, super-styled proceedings of the holiday, but Halloween is really all about departed souls and dealing with loss.
From The CP Labs
Shift Option Rinse
Can you really clean your computer keyboard in the dishwasher? With the help of the RinseCam 9000, Michele created a short film to find out, Shift Option Rinse.
a short film that seems longer
Long Day’s Journey Out of Iowa
Our Steve Delahoyde is a man with an iron will. An iron will, a subcompact, a girlfriend and an idea on how to make a regular drive more, er, interesting. Note: All the driving worked. Claire and Steve are now Mr. and Mrs..
Making of Field Notes Ravens Wing
Press Check
A quick trip back to Freeport, Illinois and one of our most popular films. Think of it as "How It's Made" with much cooler music, awesome people and hot, nasty, metal-on-paper printing action. The making of Field Notes, Wings. We're working on the brand-spanking new Fall Edition right now. Sign up for a COLORS subscription so you don't miss a single seasonal release.
A CP Film In Five Parts
Laboratory Conditions
RIP Ed Grothus who we met while we were in Los Alamos, New Mexico. We were looking for locations for one film project and on the way we discovered a lot more about the town and its people than we bargained for. So we made a different film and called it Laboratory Conditions. We're showing it in five episodes.
From Field Notes Brand
Northerlies
This film documents our latest project from the workshop. More on our newest limited release, "The Northerly Edition" at Field Notes. 3packs of this bright white and silver release are now sold out but there are still a few available as part of a COLORS subscription.
Oh This Old Thing?
Button Button
So you know. We've seen a little pick-up in Pinsetter orders lately so we thought we'd let you know that Pinsetter is still, um, setting pins.
In Fast Company, Good Company
Modern Americana
A lovely photo by Chris Mueller with prop styling by Elise McMahon for the "Modern Americana" section of Fast Company's just-released United States of Design issue, which is also available as an innovative iPad app. We're more than a little excited to have our Field Notes Brand products included in this curated collection of Made in the USA products. Thanks for that.
Film & Video Archives
Reach For the Stars
We're not a network an it's not the 1980s but why should that stop us from making a schmaltzy omnibus promo? We've reorganized and re-rendered most of the films and videos we have made over the past dozen years and posted them in a new archive. Enjoy.
Movies About Posters
Screening Documentaries
The Beginning and End Are Up To You, is our mini-documentary about John Solimine who created the limited-edition poster and the cover for our Field Tested Books Book.
For our first summer reading feature we asked Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine to design and hand-screen a limited run of posters. We visited Jay and Mat Daly at the Bird Machine Shop and we can tell you that the whole thing is refreshingly analog and deliciously slow. Check 6 Colors, 1,800 Pulls and 2 Dogs. The next Field-Tested Poster was created by Dan and Mike of Aesthetic Apparatus. Steve buzzed up to The Twin Cities for a visit and that resulted in Found & Reused. BTW: We have a few signed and numbered posters available for sale.
Not Quite so
Fresh Signals
"The recent developments at Google have thrown that egalitarian story into doubt, showing that even in the most rarefied corners of Silicon Valley, the bosses are willing to close ranks and shut down debate when the stakes are high enough. The fate of these activists, meanwhile, forces America's white-collar professionals to grapple with an uncomfortable thought: If the nation's most sought-after workers can't stop their employer from behaving in ways that they deplore, where does that leave the rest of us?"
Trailer for Wes Anderson's newest, The French Dispatch.
RIP Barbara Remington. I studied her most famous work endlessly.
I did take English Saddle riding lessons growing up so think this place is perfect for me.
Two Mice Photographed in a Comically Dramatic Struggle in the London Underground.
Printing Money. Depressing.
DIY Chicago Transit Authority schedule kiosk instructions. We might need to make one for the studio!
Af if we all don't have enough to worry about: The Vinyl Pause of 2020, a FAQ in progress.
Solar Eclipse over the UAE.
Trailer for the documentary The Booksellers.
Oscar Winners 2020: See the Full List.
Horde, an animated action motorcycle short by Brvtvs Collective.
What Happens When You Upscale a 120-Year-Old Silent Film For 4K.
2019's greatest basketball-related musical performance set an impossibly high bar, but Har Mar Superstar is leading the race for the 2020 title.
American Type Founders archive. Woah, this is full of great stuff. Check the manual for the ATF High-Speed Photographic Typesetter Model B. Via Daniel Benneworth-Gray's Meanwhile.
What color is your name? Thanks Marshall.
Trailer for the film The Truth.
"Hi comma So-and-So period"
"The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder." The Chicago Political Quote Hall of Fame, by Edward McClelland.
Oscar nominations came out today. In the words of actress Issa Rae, congratulations to those men.
Well, that's one way to do it.
First Cow.
"When Wilson Bentley died in 1931, his hometown newspaper eulogized him thus: 'Longfellow said that genius is infinite painstaking. John Ruskin declared that genius is only a superior power of seeing. Wilson Bentley was a living example of this type of genius.'"Snow Crystals, Wilson Bentley.
Do not start this if you have anything to get done in the next little while. IsoCity.
The Troubadours of Drink. Thanks Kevin!
Belmont Hall Court.
Quadrantids over the Great Wall.
"Klein's paintings are in the world's best modern and contemporary art museums, and sell for six and seven digits on the open market. Below, we've included a few of his best, most expensive, and easiest to recreate works alongside some calculating to figure out how much it would cost to make them. how much it would cost to make them."
Trailer for the film Hala .
David Hudson on the most anticipated films of 2020. Quite a list.
Movie Images of the Decade from Mubi. Great feature.
I Love the 20s.
Jason has collected lists of The Year in Photos 2019.
"I have a special mat you can use for it that's woven from human hair sourced from the tribes of the South Pacific. Best snow-wiping hair ever designed, by God. Once you've cleaned up, I have a splendid repast of beggar's purses and dolloped lobster turnovers awaiting you in the dining room. You may begin eating these haute goodies at 7:45 pm and no sooner. Please do not touch ANY of the decorations in the hallway as you proceed toward the food. My decorations are for admiring only. If you mar them in any way, I will grate off your genitals using a microplane. I am the Joneses. You cannot ever keep up with me."
On 17 December at Bonhams in New York, photographs from the collection of film-maker and collector Peter Fetterman will go up for sale.
Trailer for the documentary The Times of Bill Cunningham.
"In most time lapse videos you see of the night sky, the stars wheel through the sky as the heavens revolve around the Earth... What's actually happening is that our tiny little speck of dirt is twirling amid a galactic tapestry that is nearly stationary." The Earth Rotating Beneath a Stationary Milky Way.
Akzidenz-Grotesk and how it got that way. By Dan Reynolds.
The Neighbors' Window
"In a tortilla made by the boy's abuela he watched her, with her armfat and canvas apron, cast frijoles negros upon flecks of cilantro like ash fallen silently on a bed of rice, tiny bones chalkwhite against an avocado ranchero sauce creamy in the light of the coals like the obsidian-flecked desert where God has forsaken all life. Outside a pale starving gallena quickens a lizard to its last writhing gasps. Evening creeps in, a single lobo cries out across the mesa as the sun dips bloodred below the thin black spine of the mountain where death will come again many times in the dusty clockless hours before twilight."
Back to the Cover Page.
Icon Key
What all those little square icons in Fresh Signals mean.
A post from our monthly guest editor. The complete
listing af all the people we owe favors can be found here.
We love these products so much we even paid for them.
A post with this icon may well end up in our Museum of Online Museums.
Not to be missed.
A Friday Drink Link. Hic.
Film feed. Short attention span video theater.
Having to do with our Field Notes Brand.
What we just talked about at lunch.
Some Things We Made:
Field Notes Brand memo Books and more. "I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." A CP/DDC joint.
The Deck Network. Interested in getting your product or service in front of millions of savvy, curious remarkably good-looking people? Give a shout.