Who's the nerd now?

Learned a fun little fact while browsing on dictionary.com... (I love words!)

Did you know Dr. Seuss invented the word nerd? 
The slang term, which means "and intelligent byt single-minded person, obsessed with a certain hobby or pursuit"first appeared in Dr. Seuss's 1950 children's book If I Ran the Zoo. 

According to Seuss, a "nerd" is a small animal from the land of KaTroo, not the pale kid with taped glasses that we think of today!

And no, I'm so not a nerd for hanging out on dictionary.com.

Changing Corporate & Personal Identities

In these email crazed days, there isn't often an occasion where I find the need to actually run a piece of letterhead through the printer. But there is no simpler example of design functionality over form, and I love to see letterhead done right!

Originally made popular during the advent of Industrial design and the invention of the printing press, letterhead allowed people and business to create an identity for themselves—letting people know who they are and what they do.

Notable and historic letterhead samples can be found on Letterheady.com. Now I scrolled down this page for quite some time, wondering when, or even, if it had an end. Using the archives is actually an easier way to browse. (December 2009 is where it begins, to ease your curiosity). But take a look—there is hundreds of amazing corporate and celebrity highlights. If they were arranged chronologically, it would be an incredible spanse of identity design history.

The whimsy of Warhol next to the modernism of Paul Rand

Dr. Seuss meets the Muppets

Calvin and Hobbes colliding with Nikola Tesla

Beautiful roofs that endure against Paranormal Activity

If you're interested in little more insight on the Evolution of Letterhead Design you can get it from inspirationfeed here.

Brought to you by Dr. Seuss

Before he was known for his doodles, rhymes and lovable characters, Dr. Seuss drew the world of advertising. He supported himself and his wife Helen through the Great Depression drawing ads for names as big as Ford, GE and NBC.

The University of California in San Diego has compiled a fantastic collection of the Doctor's illustrated, advertising work.

The work of Seuss pre-children's book fame, is clearly from the same hand that brought us Horton, The Lorax and the Sneetches. If you look at the ads, you'll see characters that surely look familiar.

I encourage you to browse the whole collection— being a Seuss fan myself, this is like an unearthed treasure!