Ever wondered what legendary stories from science fiction, horror and fantasy took place in your neck-of-the-woods? Maybe just curious exactly where those raiders finally put that Lost Ark into deep storage? This subtly distorted map of the 48 contiguous states does exactly that, and is aptly dubbed The Altered States of America (click the image for a better view). For this task, Chop Shop researched a large number of films, television shows, comics and more to discover not some these things were filmed or produced, but where according to the scripts and scenes these stories are supposed to have actually taken place. Continue at the jump for the key to the above map. Read More…
The National Constitution Center recently asked for The Chopping Block to tackle a very prickly issue… The Second Amendment. The challenge was to somehow illustrate the controversial amendment in a way that simply speaks to the amendment’s meaning. Taken directly from the ratified document:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Considering that the controversy surrounding this amendment has been ongoing for well over 40+ years, it seemed fitting that some kind of struggle should be depicted in the illustration. Initial sketches simply flanked the terms “militia” and “individual” which are the two terms that truly provide the ambiguity in the amendment which arguably has become the focus of all such public discussion. The added entanglement of the revolutionary and modern firearms with the very banners that are displaying the two terms really says it all… without taking any sides.
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Cassini / Hugens mission to Saturn
Seen above is Poster #2 from our Historic Robotic Spacecraft Poster Series for the Cassini/Huygens mission at Saturn. Cassini has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and has generated some of the most striking images ever taken in planetary exploration history. Consider backing our Kickstarter project and receive a limited edition Cassini, Voyager or Curiosity screen printed poster for your trouble.
Our new Kickstarter project proposes the creation of three screen-printed posters celebrating the most popular and notable interplanetary robotic space missions in history. Going into this, we knew that poster #1 had to go to the hugely popular Voyager missions. However, we need your help selecting the themes of posters #2 and #3. So head over to The Planetary Society now to vote on your three favorite missions, but do it by the 19th to have it count for the poster selection. If this goes better than expected we could even wind up designing a fourth or fifth.
We are pretty serious about design in print these days. Despite having a pretty amazing Epson digital printer in-house that comes pretty damn close to making things look screen-printed, we still have a deep appreciation for the beauty of letter press. Apparently we are not alone — according to Etsy Wholesale, one of the biggest trends for 2014 is all things Letter Pressed. And we were thinking that stuff was really just for just for type and designerds like us. So we just launched our inaugural line of letter pressed greeting cards.
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