This week's links. Enjoy.
Keep Calm and Carry On: Design Variations Pool
A Flickr pool devoted to the many altered versions of the now classic Keep Calm and Carry On poster, which was originally created by the wartime British government in 1939 to steady the public's resolve and maintain morale in the event of a catastrophe. Never used or distributed, the poster was a forgotten footnote of design history until 2000, when a copy was discovered in a box of books bought at auction by Stuart Manley, a bookseller from Northumberland. Via Design Observer.
So Moved
The latest offering from illustrator, designer and author Maira Kalman's gorgeously illustrated series of posts on democracy, And the Pursuit of Happiness, currently running every Friday on the NYT. Via Kottke.
Font Squirrel
A great site that hand picks the best free fonts on the web. Via Haddock Blogs.
Dancing to the Precipice
This sounds like a fascinating read. Biancamaria Fontana reviews Caroline Moorehead's new biography, called Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution, for the Times Literary Supplement. What a life!
Mami Wata
I'd love to see this show. The National Museum of African Art in Washington has a new exhibition on called Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas. It explores the origins and depictions in art (usually in mermaid form) of Mami Wata, or Mother Water, Mother of Fishes — the goddess of oceans, rivers and pools, with sources in West and Central Africa and tributaries throughout the African Americas, from Bahia to Brooklyn.
World Digital Library
April 21 is the official launch date of the World Digital Library. Its mandate is to "make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research." This sounds very cool.
My Little Pony Movie Makeover
Artist Mari Kasurinen modifies My Little Pony toys to look like characters from various movies — check out the slideshow to see (among others) the My Little Pony Stormtrooper, Edward Scissorhands, Skeletor, and The Bride from Kill Bill. Silly fun. Via meish dot org.
Last One Out, Please Turn Out the Light
Photographer Richard Nicholson has a great series of photos on his site of London's (so far) remaining professional darkrooms. Just looking at these images is bringing back fond memories of hours spent in darkrooms as a student (in both high school and art college). Via Swiss Miss.
(photograph via Domino's Deco Files)