Arago: People, Postage & the Post is the online collection of the National Postal Museum. The site showcases a ton of stamps and postal operations artifacts and antiques like the 1930′s Airway route of the US (above) and the Westcoaster Mailster (below).

The haunting photos above are from the article about the Sicily Crypts in this month’s National Geographic. The corpses were originally preserved by the cool and dry climate of the catacombs, later embalmers utilized chemicals to further the preservation.

I guess I’m a little late discovering this game…we just got a 360 over the holidays. Team Fortress 2 has some of the most well-crafted character trailers I have seen in a long time. The art direction picks up on a vinyl toy-ish/cell-shaded style, which works very well. Learn more about Valve’s Illustrative Rendering and the Visual Design. Check out the link for Meet The Sniper for some incredible art direction, expert animation and hilarious dialogue.

Meet The Engineer is a close second:

Above are two interesting monolithic facades by Aires Mateus. Above is the Student Residence at the Universidade de Coimbra and below is the Rector’s Office of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The oblique angles below reveal the siting of the solid masses on the relatively flat sites.

I came across the Lippi Selk Bag in an issue of Backpacker this past weekend. Instead of a sleeping bag, you would use one of these insulated suits to sleep in to allow more freedom in sleeping positions. The temperature ratings are for moderate to cool weather. It would be fun to wear one of these for a snowball fight, you’d feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Hi all -

Sorry for the lack of posts today. A family emergency has come up, and we’re going to be flying west on Friday to be with my family. I’m not sure how often we’ll be able to post between now and when we get back, but if we can, we will. Sean will be back on the 20th, and I’ll be back on the 28th. When we do get back, I promise one of my first tasks will be to update the Ideas column…:) Thanks for your understanding and patience!

Anna

Engrave Your Book is back with new leather covers for your Moleskines. After learning that laser engraving directly onto Moleskines was unsafe, Joe Mansfield rethought his process and came up with these beautiful jackets instead. Each is made from high quality, undyed full-grain cowhide. The leather covers feature a card pocket in addition to retaining access to the built-in Moleskine card pocket. Besides being able to custom-make your own jacket, Joe also launched a new artist series featuring work from Justine Ashbee, Dan Funderburgh, Option-G and Jesse Hora, among others. Being that they are reusable, we feel that $60 is a pretty good investment.

I thought they smelled bad on the outside! It’s too bad the I Am The Boss dinosaur by K’s Kids may have missed a gold mine of an opportunity by making it look like a tauntaun. Either way, it still looks like fun for kids.

The Kunsthalle Bonn by Gustav Peichl is one of my favorite projects of all time. The fictional landscape created by the plinth and the scattered elements on the site build a building-as-garden narrative. Unfortunately, the project site does not detail what Peichl was thinking.

The Barn House, by Belgian architecture firm Buro2, was transformed from an old barn into a residence. The traditional form of the original barn remains, with a wooden outer skin integrating the house into the landscape. I love that the slatted skin slips past the volume of the house to create a shaded exterior area.

Portions of the exterior skin hinge to reveal windows behind. Floor to ceiling windows on either end of the rectangular volume bring light into the home and connect the interior with the exterior.