SHOP of CHOP

The big 20 years has finally arrived. For myself and most of the world, the rumblings of the internet started about 20 years ago. At this time I had started The Chopping Block from a partner’s couch in a small NYC walk-up apartment crammed with three other roommates (not to mention random girlfriends of the time).

This is the first web site I had ever uploaded for all the world to see. Not much to say about the design except to note the very intentional “raw materials” look to it. For several years, websites were made to look futuristic because… they were built in cyberspace, don’t you know?! This was very much a reaction to that trend, not a bevelled button to be clicked upon (how will people know to click?).

I am going to be looking back 20 years every once in a while and post what I was working on at that time and hopefully some interesting stories will follow. Remember, this is a time when an animated roll-over effect was considered high-tech. That and the screen resolutions were 800×400 — if you can imagine that. http://ow.ly/i/mep3L

#JimiHendrix performs the final show of #Woodstock today in 1969. See more the whole Database and check out our related Kickstarter.

Cassini Huygens Poster #2 from the Historic Spacecraft Series

The original idea to design a poster celebrating the spacecraft mission started around 2007, inspired by a composite of Saturn created by Ian Regan [http://ow.ly/6Ihq303kTe0] (image #1). His original image had a section of the rings cropped off, so I sampled the image and rendered the missing segment by matching each ring color — thread by thread — in Illustrator to complete a full view.

Then around 2008, I began designing an actual poster of the Cassini mission in my spare time (image #2). That design was never completed, but there are some nice elements in there that didn’t make it to the Spacecraft Series such as the line drawings of Giovanni Domenico Cassini and Christiaan Huygens and the dimentional “Saturn” display type.

A few years later when the Historic Robotic Spacecraft Series [http://ow.ly/JXwG303kTsn] was on it’s way to being funded 400% I decided to borrow the overall layout of the 2008 design (image #3) and preserve Regan version of Saturn in the initial sketch.

You can then see the wire drawing of the Cassini spacecraft in progress with Saturn completed in image #4 and then the final design is framed in image #5. A copy of this limited edition print (from a series of 275) can be purchased at chopshopstore.com [http://ow.ly/wNKj303kSF2] along with more affordable archival digital print versions.

#Atari dragon is only one of a few icons featured from the 2600 system. See more the whole Database and check out our related Kickstarter.

New Icarus Interstellar tee [http://ow.ly/6sRS303km1m] prominently features the news worthy star #ProximaCentauri who seems to be hosting an Earth-like planet within it’s habitable zone! [http://ow.ly/8iRS303knuS] http://ow.ly/i/mcikd

#RobertDeNiro (seen here as #Frankenstein) was born today in 1943. See more: http://ow.ly/yXe7303jabl and support our Kickstarter.

#SpaceX Dragon is the precursor to what may one day deliver astronauts back to the Moon and more. See http://ow.ly/yQZJ303j8Uv