Writer and illustrator Rich Burlew has been writing The Order of the Stick, a comedic webcomic about D&D-style roleplaying games and medieval fantasy, for nearly 10 years. In addition to the online versions, Burlew has been self-publishing hard copy compilations for his fans. The third and largest anthology went out of print in 2010, so Burlew is turning to Kickstarter to raise funds for a second printing. As of this writing, he has raised $393,807, making his fundraiser one of the top 10 highest funded Kickstarter projects to date, and notably, the only book project in the top 10.

via The Beat

Linotype: The Film is a documentary about Linotype, the 19th century type casting machine that revolutionized printing and remained dominant until it was made obsolete in the 1970s by computers and new printing techniques (trailer). The film is directed by Doug Wilson. It premieres at the SVA Theatre in New York City on February 3rd, with subsequent screenings along the East Coast. The West Coast premiere is February 21st at Typekit in San Francisco.

Linotype: The Film is a feature-length documentary centered around the Linotype type casting machine. Called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by Thomas Edison, it revolutionized printing and society. The film tells the surprisingly emotional story of the people connected to the Linotype and how it impacted the world.

Origin is a print magazine that founder and publisher Maranda Pleasant created in early 2011 to be a “collective source for Arts+Culture+Conscious Lifestyle”. It bridges the West Coast and East Coast with lifestyle and cultural connections in Texas. The magazine launches nationally this month and featured contributors are Deepak Chopra, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Henry Rollins and more.

Connection. Cohesion. Collaboration. Creation. Celebration. Community. Change

One Platform for: Art. Culture.Conscious Lifestyle. Humanitarianism, Sustainablity and Yoga. We are creating a cohesive and connected Art+Conscious Community that cross pollinates with West Coast and New York. We support an Art Community that Collaborates + Creates, bridging the gap between the artist and the collector. We are a channel for transformation, connection, vison, intention and creation. We Integrate Art.Music.Yoga.Health: All the same…just different mediums of transformation.

The launch party for Origin, The Book of Ice and Building Hope happens Wednesday, December 14, 2011 starting at 9 PM at The Wooly in New York City. The Book of Ice is an art book about Antarctica by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky). Building Hope is both a book and a film from Turk and Christy Pipkin that “tells the inspiring story of a partnership with a rural Kenya community to build the area’s first high school”.

Yahoo! has just launched Livestand, their new personalized digial newsstand for tablets “that combines visually stunning design with personalized content from leading third-party publishers and Yahoo!’s vast media network”.

Livestand weaves together content from leading third-party publishers and Yahoo!’s global media network to create a visually stunning and deeply personalized digital experience tailored to people’s interests and passions. Livestand is built on Yahoo!’s new Cocktails platform, which powers rapid development and distribution of experiences globally.

Laughing Squid is one of the inaugural content partners on Livestand. You can find us in the Arts & Culture section.

Lea Redmond of Leaf Cutter Designs, (also, the postmaster of The World’s Smallest Post Service), had the idea to make a tiny newspaper to be included in her The World’s Smallest Post Service stationery kit. The newspaper, titled The Small Times, was a collaboration of a bunch of folks from the kit’s publisher, Chronicle Books, illustrator Sam Bower and Lea Redmond and friends.

…we decided to create an entire fictional newspaper to be crumpled up as packing paper in the tiny packages. And of course, the newspaper is not only itty bitty, but every article and image is tiny themed too!

via Junk Culture

German design firm Paperlux created a deformable paper magazine cover for the November issue of Novum, a German design magazine. Paperlux has posted a fascinating making-of video showing the incredibly elaborate production process for the magazine cover.

via Design.org

APE 2011, the Alternative Press Expo presented by Comic-Con International is an independent publishing and comics conference that takes place October 1-2, 2011 at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco.

This year’s featured guests “include Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant!), Daniel Clowes (Wilson, The Death Ray; courtesy Drawn & Quarterly), Craig Thompson (Blankets, Habibi), Matthew Thurber (1-800-MICE; co-sponsored by PictureBox), Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve, Scenes from an Impending Marriage), and Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man, Oil and Water)”.

poster by Shannon Wheeler

Illustrator Randy Glass began creating his The Wall St. Journal “hedcuts” portraitures, often of celebrities, while freelancing there in 1998. Many of the “original pen & ink drawings he created are privately owned by his celebrity subjects”.

These iconic drawings use a variation of the traditional stipple method of many small dots of varied sizes in conjunction with minimal line. They are designed to emulate the look of woodcuts from old-style newspapers and engravings on certificates and currency. The phonetic spelling of “hed” comes from newspapers use of that term for “headline”.

Glass attended the Ringling School of Art and Art Center College of Design and in an interesting sidenote, he supplemented “his tuition by drawing five-minute portraits of people at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World”.

via Quipsologies

images via Randy Glass

The 10th Annual San Francisco Zine Fest, a free two-day celebration of small-press publishing conference featuring “more than 150 writers, cartoonists, crafters, illustrators, printmakers, and other artists”, happens September 3 and 4, 2011 at the San Francisco County Fair Building in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The fest runs from 11 AM to 6 PM on both days.

The San Francisco Zine Fest is a free, annual celebration of small-press publishing, from zines and comics to art books and beyond. The Zine Fest serves as a vital showcase of the diversity, creativity, and ongoing exuberance of the small-press movement. Our exhibitors range from established small-press publishing houses including RE/Search Publications, Microcosm, AK Press, Sparkplug Comics, and Tugboat Press to first time self-publishers and creators. Writers, cartoonists, crafters, illustrators, printmakers, and all manner of artists use the SFZF as a unique venue to sell, trade, and otherwise share their work with an ever-growing audience.

This year’s spotlight panel guests include Lark Pien, author of Long Tail Kitty and Mr. Elephanter, and Ray Potes, author of Hamburger Eyes photo magazine.

San Francisco Zine Fest poster art by Lark Pien

SPX (Small Press Expo) 2011 is festival celebrating graphic novels, comic art and cartooning that takes place September 10-11 at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

SPX 2011 will be held the weekend of September 10 and 11, 2011 at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center in Bethesda, MD, just one mile outside the nation’s capital, Washington DC. In its fifteenth year SPX now serves as the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comic books and the discovery of new creative talent.

SPX will bring together over 400 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, distributors, and each other. SPX will be open to the public September 10th from 11am Saturday, and run through 7pm that evening. The celebration continues Sunday from noon to 6pm. In addition, expect great programming all weekend long for you to enjoy!

For those unfamiliar, a girl crush is when a girl has such a deep admiration for another girl that it becomes an infatuation of sorts, though platonic in nature. Editors Jenna Wortham, a reporter for The New York Times, and Thessaly La Force, former blogger at The Paris Review, have taken this concept to the next level by celebrating girl crushes in an online and paper zine aptly called Girl Crush. Spawn by a brainstorming session “on a hot Sunday afternoon over a big pot of summer tea”, Girl Crush hit the pulse of enthusiastic ladies everywhere as user submissions are temporarily closed due to overwhelming initial feedback.

Have you ever admired someone so much that you’ve wanted to be her?

Well, no, it’s not that exactly. Let’s avoid the single white female. Rather, it’s this idea that “like” is too soft of a word, that the admiration is almost an infatuation. It’s finding the intensity from the kind of friendships we once used to have, friendships that were closer in form to a relationship before we had actual relationships.

But it’s also that she’s inspiring. That she’s doing something cool and with style, that she has found a voice that’s totally hers and also totally relatable. That, in some weird way, she makes you realize that it wouldn’t be hard to do what you’ve always dreamed of doing.

It should be no surprise that my own girl crush as a ‘tween was actress Virginia Madsen, star of 1980s awesome computer flick, Electric Dreams. I imagined that at some point that her character would ditch the cello and embrace the magic of technology (alas).

The Girl Crush zine release launch party happens on August 12, 2011 at the swank Thom Bar in New York City. Be sure to RSVP now if you are in the area.

image via Girl Crush

Known as the world’s authority on color, Pantone has put together a Pantone Postcard Box, featuring a set of 100 enlarged color chip postcards. Sounds like a fun way to launch a snail mail project incorporating the standardized color matching system from Pantone.

via Photojojo and Plenty of Colour

images via Pantone and Plenty of Colour

An archive of Spy Magazine is now hosted on Google Books.

via Coudal Partners

Congratulations to our friend Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries for being featured as a “Maker Hero” on the cover of the April 2011 issue of Wired Magazine. According to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories this is the first time a female engineer has been featured on the cover.

via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

STAPLE!, an independent media expo featuring comics, zines, art, crafts, games and animation, takes place March 5-6 at the Marchesa Hall and Theater in Austin.

The Billboard Liberation Front is having a book release event for the Tashen published book Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Art at City Lights in San Francisco on Thursday, February 17th at 7PM.

The event is hosted by Peter Maravelis of City Lights Books and the BLF’s Jack Napier. Featuring Taschen editor Ethel Seno, a presentation by BLF CIO ______ Blank Decoverly and a short video featuring author Carlo McCormick and Wooster Collective. Various artists featured in the book will be in attendance – get em all to sign your copy of the book.

“The first book to present the full historical sweep, global reach and technical developments of the street art movement, Trespass features key works by 150 artists, and connects four generations of visionary outlaws including Jean Tinguely, Spencer Tunick, Keith Haring, Os Gemeos, Jenny Holzer, Barry McGee, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shepard Fairey, Blu, Billboard Liberation Front, Guerrilla Girls and Banksy, among others. It also includes dozens of previously unpublished photographs of long-lost works and legendary, ephemeral urban artworks.”

The Daily, the new iPad only, subscription based digital news publication by News Corp, was just launched today by Rupert Murdoch and is now available in the iTunes store.

Introducing The Daily – the first digital news publication with original content created every day exclusively for the iPad. Built from scratch by a team of top journalists and designers, The Daily covers the world: breaking news, sports, pop culture, entertainment, apps, games, technology, opinion, celebrity gossip and more.

While stopping by the wonderful Cupcake Cafe in Hell’s Kitchen today for a cappuccino, the man behind the corner proudly mentioned that his daughter was launching a new online magazine today and handed me an actual matchbook promoting Matchbook, a “field guide to a charmed life”. Congrats on the launch, looks like you are off to a great start!

Launched in January 2011, Matchbook is an online lifestyle publication celebrating classics – shaken and stirred. Our monthly issues cover past and present fashion, decor, the arts, travel and culture. Brimming with intriguing interviews, stately homes, captivating memoirs and swoon-worthy fashion spreads, matchbook seeks to inspire women around the globe to design a life they adore. From lipstick to letterpress, gelato to grosgrain, and Paris to Peru, consider us your field guide to a charmed life.

photo by Scott Beale

Jason Schwartzman shows off The New Yorker iPad App in a video directed by Roman Coppola.

Get the magazine on your iPad each Monday — every story, every cartoon, everything in the print edition and more. The app comes with the current week’s table of contents and lets you buy new issues as they’re released. You can store as many issues as you like on the app and read them whenever and wherever you want, in portrait or landscape view.

San Francisco Zine Fest 2010, a two day conference focusing on independent and underground publishing, takes place September 4-5 at the County Fair Building in San Francisco.

The Zine Fest serves as a vital annual showcase of the diversity, creativity, and ongoing exuberance of the small-press movement. This year the Zine Fest has sold out of exhibitor spaces over two months before the show, a clear sign of the growing interest for zines and small-press publishing. The exhibitors range from established small-press publishing houses including RE/Search Publications, Microcosm, AK Press, Sparkplug Comics, and Tugboat Press to first time self-publishers and creators. Writers, cartoonists, crafters, illustrators, printmakers, and all manner of artists will be in attendance. While the majority of the exhibitors hail from the Bay Area and West Coast, creators from across the U.S. and beyond will be in attendance.

Issue one of Longshot Magazine is now out. It was created over a 48 hour period by hundreds of contributors from all around the world who collaborated via the internet and from offices in Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco.

We’ll unveil a theme and you’ll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We’ll take the next 24 to select, edit, design and lay everything out. The end results will be a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox. Don’t like paper? Word. We’re also going to roll out a Website and iPad version over the same weekend. Oh! And we’ll keep the cameras rolling the entire time. There may even be a radio program. We promise it will be insane.

Longshot Magazine is the successor to a 48 Hour Magazine, which ran into some legal issues with the CBS who claimed that they owned the rights to the name for their television series “48 Hours”.

TIME has just announced TIME Advanced, a new version of the magazine that targets adults.

The Wall Street Journal imagines what the hedcut would look like for Don Draper of Mad Men.

Sidenote: WSJ did not introduce hedcuts until 1979.

Playboy recently launched The Smoking Jacket, their new safe-for-work website which will “provide guys with smart, snarky, and sexy distractions throughout the day”.

via Jason Laskodi

Field Notes have released their new “County Fair” colors honoring all 50 US states.

Each COUNTY FAIR 3-Pack highlights an individual U.S. state, with one memo book each in the colors of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place County Fair ribbons; blue, red and yellow. They’re printed on 100-lb. linen cover stock and all three feature metallic gold printing and 48 pages of graph paper with light blue/grey lines inside. The back covers feature a bevy of meticulously-researched state facts and figures.