Today is about stopping SOPA and PIPA, which I definitely support and want to participate in. Certainly I should be marching on our senators’ offices and demanding freedom, or something. But as it happens I’m doing some research for a website today for a new company I’m helping to brand (!) and I’m seeing some freaking beautiful things. So I wanted to share. All images are from the Library of Congress, where I seem to spend much of my digital timespace lately. I am looking today specifically in the advertising ephemera section, as in: how advertising emerged in the U.S. I’m looking for interesting layouts, typography, illustrations, textures, printing, etc. Also hilariousness (death dust?). (And if you are a designer or illustrator or interested at all in the past, my official recommendation is to spend no less than an hour a day studying the archives, if you can’t make it to an actual library. Which many of us can’t, daily at least.)

[I'll stop here. But know that I wanted to continue for a very long time.]