Unbox Quarterly
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Digital High Fives All Around for Team Quarterly!
Quarterly raises Series A. YAY!
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Quarterly: New Contributor: Alexis Ohanian
A new face at Quarterly to subscribe from. Making the world suck less? We’re in.
(We think Quarterly does a pretty good job at it, too)
We’re geeking out to announce that new contributor Alexis Ohanian just went live. If you don’t know Alexis’s name, you probably know the name of his companies. He was barely out of college when he co-founded reddit, the influential social news site. Since then he’s launched breadpig…
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UnknownUnknown8,972PlaysOne of the lovely things about following Quarterly on twitter is its focus on featuring the slower, physical form of mail–whether it is the art of the letter or the science of the postal service. While listening to the latest podcast on US stamps from 99percentinvisible, we couldn’t help but share.
Something tells us that Quarterly should aim at getting on the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee. A worthy goal indeed.
A few compelling quotes from the episode:
“Stamps tell the story of America in pictures”
“It’s for the American public, that’s who we’re doing this for.”
“It’s something that touches every person in the United States.”
“In my opinion 45¢–the current rate for a first class stamp- is an entirely reasonable amount to pay for a tiny work of art that escorts your letter all the way across the country.”
Episode 47- US Postal Service Stamps
(Press Play Above)
Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make it work.
-Ethel Kessler, Art Director for USPS Stamp Services
Stamps design takes, on average, a year to a year and a half, from conception to execution. Unfortunately, most of the stamps we encounter on a day-to-day basis are the rather predictable flag, bell, and love stamps, but there are some really fantastic commemorative stamps, which are supremely functional and affordable tiny works of art.
To determine what should go on a US stamp, the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee combs through nearly 50,000 suggestions per year offered by the general public. Once the subjects are chosen and approved by the Postmaster General, they are assigned to a handful of art directors to be designed.
There are loads guidelines to help stamp subject selection, but one of the big rules recently changed. In 2012, the first living person will be commemorated on an official USPS stamp.
If you were the Postmaster General, whom would you pick? This is a question that comment sections are made for!
Julie Shapiro, Artistic Director of the Third Coast International Audio Festival, produced this episode. Julie spoke with Terry McCaffrey, the retired manager of stamp development for the USPS Stamp Services Office, and Ethel Kessler, an Art Director who’s been working with Stamp Services for over 15 years.
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Quarterly: Unbox Quarterly: The Art of Opening Packages
Oh dear! What a lovely note to find in our Tumblr feed this morning.
We love sharing in the excitement of giving, receiving, and “unboxing” together. (Yes, perhaps some of us were “those kids” at birthday gatherings.) We also love that with a little twitter organizing, we can bring full cycle this crazy little experiment known as Quarterly. Quarterly makes tangible the content of our favorite online curators and creators; Unbox Quarterly makes digital the physical experience of receiving these gifts. It’s like the unboxing blogs and posts of a really great new product, but with presents.
And who doesn’t like presents?
Make sure you peek back in for more unboxings and musings on the loveliness that is bringing full circle the digital and physical worlds. Cheers!
One of our favorite ironies about snail mail is that it lends itself really well to the Internet. Wha?? But seriously: with Instagram, Twitter, and the scads of other social tools, it’s gotten really easy to document and share a Magical Mail Moment™. Poke around Tumblr, and you’ll notice that the…
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Quarterly: A Perfect Match: Give Quarterly for Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is rapidly approaching, and with it, the annual dilemma over what to get your loved one. If you ask us, Valentine’s is no occasion for digital antics (nothing says “1998” like another singing e-card…). It’s a time to have something you can touch, delivered to your doorstep. -
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Contributor: Tina Roth Eisenberg
Unboxer: Melanie Kahl
Package: #1
Theme: What to focus on: Happy
Contents: 2 notebooks, 2 tattlys, 1 print
Received: November 29th, 2011; my office in downtown Chicago
Notes:
Call me old fashioned, but tied with strings or not, there is nothing like receiving a brown paper package in the post. It was no different receiving my slim, graphic Quarterly package in the mail in late November.
Tina’s gift was a collection celebrating the “What to focus on” illustration by Marc Johns – tattlys, mini dot-grid notebooks, and a print. Her inaugural Quarterly, a call to ”focus on: happy,” was a welcome reminder to remember what matters, especially during the chaotic close of the year. In the midst of giving thanks and making some important decisions, her Quarterly and note struck a chord. I’ll leave you with the same sentiment she left with her first installment:
I firmly believe that life is all about the people you meet and what you create with them.
Amen to that.
