May 2013
5 posts
2 tags
#NOM03: Jam On...
Actually, the better question is: “Jam on what?” For her latest selection of Bay Area treats, Veronica Belmont sent two fresh Inna jams that were as unconventional as they were delectable. The first is made from pluots; the second, spicy Fresno chili. She also included Rustic Bakery’s Olive Oil and Sea Salt Crackers——but she encouraged subscribers to think outside the (cracker)...
3 tags
Now on Quarterly: Laughing Squid
The Internet in 2013 is a treasure trove of offbeat entertainments. But if you’re like us, you need someone to pan for all that gold. That video of a dog walking in sneakers? A jacket made out of Ziploc bags, to facilitate the carrying of many sandwiches? We were alerted to both by Laughing Squid. And that’s just this morning.
But what’s even more fun than reading Laughing...
2 tags
#JAK04: Kottke Goes to the "Movies"
OK, those quotation marks were overkill——you probably know what “movies” are. But how long has that been the case? When does a common term lose its “quotes”?
In #JAK04, Jason Kottke explored that question as it related to a classic movie phrase: “Lights! Camera! Action!” Here’s Jason:
“In 1910, D.W. Griffith made the first movie in Hollywood,...
5 tags
#NDL06: Clean Classics
With so many natural cosmetics now available, it’s easy to find non-toxic items that you’ll never, ever use. But what about the classics? Lipstick. Mascara. Can the clean versions match their “conventional” counterparts?
In their latest mailing, Siobhan and Alexandra of No More Dirty Looks admit that mascara has long been their kryptonite. “Mascara is without...
3 tags
#NWT03: A Sense of Where You Are
Maud Newton is from Miami. She’s also from Brooklyn. And Mississippi and Texas, kind of. As anyone who’s moved around knows, picking a place to call “home” isn’t as simple as it seems.
For #NWT03, Maud explored the profound impact that location can have on writing, and included a stash of her place-based favorites: Colson Whitehead’s Colossus of New York,...
April 2013
12 posts
3 tags
A Butler You Can Afford: Jesse Kornbluth
Having your own butler would really be a trip, no? Sadly, Quarterly doesn’t offer a personal valet feature (yet…) but today we launch the next best thing: the “cultural concierge” services of one Head Butler, a.k.a. Jesse Kornbluth.
Just like an actual butler, Jesse does the legwork, retrieving (cultural) gems and laying out the finer things for you. He’s been...
2 tags
#TIM01: All In
If you know one thing about Timothy Ferriss, it’s that he does nothing halfway. Whether it’s exercise, diet, or work habits, the author of the bestselling 4-Hour series asks you to start from scratch and fully commit.
His debut Quarterly mailing captured that intensity: #TIM01 subscribers got a box overflowing with his latest obsessions (see above), from protein powder to...
3 tags
#TRU01: How to Fuel a Startup
What does it really take to launch a startup? It takes a vision, advice from those who’ve done it before… and caffeine. Lots of caffeine.
The adventurous VCs on the True Ventures team can’t cover the vision part——that’s up to you. But great guidance and great coffee? Those they’ve got covered. In #TRU01, they paired fresh Blue Bottle beans——an investment in their...
2 tags
5 Questions for Joel Johnson
In #BVH02, Joel Johnson sent subscribers a sauerkraut kit, a masher, and the Lay of Hildebrand, “one of the first literary works in German.” Joel’s subscribers know what ties these items together: his eccentric family history——in particular, his grandmother’s——which he explores in his nostalgia-soaked mailings.
This time, Joel dug into the fraught implications of his...
3 tags
Subtraction by Addition: Unclutterer on Quarterly
At Quarterly, we’re in the business of sending you cool stuff. So we acknowledge the irony that our newest contributor is all about clearing “stuff” away.
The truth is, we’ve had our eye on Unclutterer for awhile: We love their focus on clean workspaces and junk-free living. And with their Quarterly, the math will actually be in your favor. For every useful item they...
2 tags
#LAD06: Time Travels
We’ve all longed to time travel. But what happens when time itself travels? In her latest mindbending mailing, Liz Danzico gave a brief history of clocks on airplanes and other strange-but-true tales of horological relativity. Did you know that time passes at a different rate between your head and your toes? Liz did:
“In 2010, Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and...
4 tags
Jeffrey Zeldman Raises Our Standards
Have you ever looked at a terrible website and thundered, “Where are the standards?!” OK, that’s a little dramatic. But that’s the effect ugly design can have. It’s enough to make you wish the Internet had some sort of design watchdog. Good news: It does, his name is Jeffrey Zeldman, and he’s our newest Quarterly contributor.
Deemed “King of Web...
3 tags
#JXF05: Prism Spectacles
Humans weren’t built for a lot of the things we do every day: sitting down at a desk and reading a blog post on a screen being just one example. In fact, we didn’t evolve for reading at all, a theme Joshua Foer explored in #JXF05:
“No hunter-gatherer’s survival ever depended on keeping a copy of War and Peace propped open at eye level. Which is why, when when we read...
2 tags
#QTT Goes Live—Featuring Tech & Toys
We hope you’ve all now gotten the memo about the ‘Q’ mailings——our new series of packages curated in-house by the Quarterly team. Last month, we launched Food & Home and Travel & Adventure boxes. And today, we’re excited to announce our third in the series: Technology & Toys.
We’re really geeking out over this one, and we do mean that literally. #QTT is...
4 tags
#FAR02: Survive in Style
Sometimes, you don’t ask to travel——the world just plucks you from your comfort zone. In #FAR02, Keenan and Jeremy of Wander helped subscribers prepare for disasters they hope will never strike. Their stylish survival kit featured a Luci inflatable solar lantern, an Acme shepherd’s mouth whistle, the classic U.S. Army Survival Field Manual, and——coolest of all——a Japanese pocket knife...
4 tags
#MLF02: Downright Visionary
Mark Frauenfelder’s mailings are some of the most delightful we send; they’re just always so surprising. In #MLF01, the Boing Boing founder sent humble everyday items that’ll blow your mind a little: Mexican jumping beans, a jelly watch, and more. And in #MLF02, he found a new way to surprise: He turned our sense of sight on its head.
This package featured 3 items to make you...
5 tags
Now on Quarterly: The Art of Non-Conformity
If you could only follow one “lifehacker” blog, which would it be? Here at Quarterly, we’d cast our vote for Chris Guillebeau and his groundbreaking Art of Non-Conformity.
Chris’s site majors in travel and minors in smart work habits (the kind that let you spend time traveling). But it’s really about much bigger themes. Want to quit your job and be your own...
March 2013
10 posts
4 tags
#SGF01: Back to Basics
If you’re Megan “Style Girlfriend” Collins, sending guys items to clean up their act, where do you begin? With literally cleaning up their act.
In #SGF01, Megan wrote about the “grooming product cemetery” that is a typical lad’s shower. And she sent a whole bunch of upgrades, plus a fresh dopp kit to hold them.
But you know another great thing about Megan?...
4 tags
Colossal News: Christopher Jobson Comes to...
The Internet is a seemingly bottomless jar of eye candy——provided you know where to look. Us? We don’t know where to look. So we let Christopher Jobson do that for us.
As editor of Colossal, Christopher tracks down the most arresting visuals, photography, and art on the web. As our newest Quarterly contributor, he won’t just put great designs on your screen——he’ll drop them...
3 tags
#SKB06: A Dose of Good
Scott Belsky’s subscribers know his two favorite terms: “productive” and “fascinating.” (The Behance founder’s mailings always feature items in each category.) This quarter, Scott announced a third word: “good.”
How do you put “good” in a box? Here’s Scott:
“For this mailing, I wanted to experiment with a “distributed...
3 tags
#YAY06: The Lost Art of Penmanship
At Quarterly, we get really excited about sending you actual paper letters. We take pride in carrying the analog torch. But the latest letter from Tina Roth Eisenberg (a.k.a. “swissmiss”) reminded us just how much more analog a letter can get…
For #YAY06, Tina didn’t just write you a letter; she handwrote you a letter. Writing (literally) about the lost art of penmanship,...
3 tags
#DSC03: Stanford + Play-Doh = Brilliant
Here’s the thing about Stanford: Most of us don’t get to go there. Which is what we love about the Stanford d.school Quarterly mailings. They’re a way to sample the creativity happening inside those hallowed halls. (And at $25 a quarter, they’re the cheapest tuition you’ll ever pay.)
Another thing we love: Sometimes Stanford lessons involve Play-Doh. And pipe...
1 tag
5 Questions for Felix Salmon
Felix Salmon is a finance blogger for Reuters, but if you only knew him through Quarterly, you could mistake him for a camping obsessive with a passion for modern art. In his latest mailing, he and his wife attempted to recreate a Mel Bochner painting, inviting subscribers to do the same. Here’s an excerpt from his letter:
“In 1980s England, minimal and conceptual art often elicited...
5 tags
Now on Quarterly: Pharrell Williams
We’ve been looking to add a musician to the Quarterly roster for awhile——and we figured, why not aim high?
Well, it doesn’t get much higher than Billboard’s “Producer of the Decade.” As the prolific genius behind the Neptunes and N.E.R.D., Pharrell Williams has cranked out more pop classics than we can begin to name here. Put it this way: The man should pay rent...
4 tags
#PIG04: The Most Cowbell
Take a look at the four items below: Craft Coffee from Irving Farm Roasters, green D&D dice, a vintage game cartridge, and a 3” bright yellow cowbell. How could these four items possibly tie together, you ask? And that’s the point: Quarterly contributors are wizards at bringing together very different items to tell their story. That’s why the letter is our favorite part.
And...
4 tags
#JAK03: It's Alive!
Jason Kottke sends creative packages. So creative, in fact, that postal services sometimes don’t know what to make of him. Turns out the Australian authorities do not have a soft spot for Wisconsin sausage. Whoops:
But did that stop Jason from sending living organisms in #JAK03? It did not. In his letter, Jason related the history of the US parcel post, plus the original “living...
3 tags
#F5204: Calming Your Kitchen
A lesson we’ve learned reading Amanda and Merrill of Food52: Half of being a serious home cook is making your kitchen a more Zen place. In #F5204, they sent a trio of items to make your kitchen cleaner, healthier——and downright calmer.
The stars of the package were Barkeepers Friend, a legendary cleaning product that revived Amanda’s pots, and a handsome Japanese charcoal filter...
February 2013
10 posts
5 tags
2 New Subscriptions Launch: Poketo and #QTA
We’re ending February on a high note at Quarterly: We just launched two great new subscriptions!
The first is Poketo, a curated collection of design objects and beautiful home items. The Poketo motto is “Art For Your Everyday”——they’ll send you artful pieces you can actually use and keep.
And once you’ve got your home wares on lock … get ready to leave the...
2 tags
#THP05: Happiness Is Easy
A nifty thing Gretchen Rubin has learned about happiness: Sometimes it’s really simple to create. An evocative scent. A perfect hit of flavor (#THP01 featured a flight of wild honeys). Or in the case of #THP05, an unexpected dash of color.
In this mailing, Gretchen sent subscribers a toolkit to compose more vivid meals: bright gold dust, colorful wrappers and sprinkles, and Ateco food dye,...
5 Questions for Alexis Ohanian
When you think of Alexis Ohanian, you probably don’t think of snail mail. As the force behind reddit, breadpig, and hipmunk, he’s a master of the digital realm. But as our interview reveals, even Internet superstars aren’t exempt from pesky supermarket flyers. We chatted with Alexis about great mail, terrible mail, and the thinking behind #PIG04.
1. How did you come up with...
#CHQ05: Coolest. Hunting. Ever.
The premise of Cool Hunting is simple: Evan and Josh do the hard work of locating the cool, wherever it may be hiding. Well, the cool probably thought its secret was safe, up in the remote Mexican mountains. The cool was wrong.
On a trip to the region, they discovered the traditional craft of Huichol, an intricate style of beadwork. And their next package was born. For #CHQ05, they worked with...
2 tags
#NOM02: You're Getting Warmer...
Veronica Belmont lives in San Francisco now, but she grew up in New England, and she knew her second package would hit doorsteps at the coldest time of the year. So she offered a solution: heat. 3 versions of it, in fact.
For #NOM02, Veronica boxed up mulling spices for killer apple cider, plus bittersweet drinking chocolate (which we really wish had been around during our childhood snow days)....
3 tags
#NWT02: Pen to the Grindstone
Maud Newton is a star book blogger. That’s how you know her, anyway. By day, she also punches the clock at a legal publishing firm. Why are we mentioning this? Because so many creative people balance the demands of art and rent——and that’s the subject Maud explored in #NWT02.
Maud’s book this round was Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry From Kensington, a British classic about a...
2 tags
Announcing the "Q" Mailings—Curated by the...
Back in December, Quarterly tried a little experiment. We created a limited-edition trio of holiday packages (one each in Food, Art, and Exploration) and did the curating ourselves. We hoped “Best of Quarterly” would be a hit, but no one in the office guessed how popular it would be: We sold out of every single package in 2 hours.
Turned out, the Quarterly team could curate. Who knew?...
3 tags
#NDL05: Wake Up Glowing
One of our favorite things about the No More Dirty Looks packages is the way they turn tiresome routines into joyful rituals. Have a tendency to flop into bed and hope for sleep? Back in #NDL02, they sent a range of Zzz-related products that made hitting the hay as calming as it should be. And for #NDL05, they did something similar for the mornings.
Calling this their “Wake Up...
#FTW05: More Like 'NSFTW'
Just when we think Mike Monteiro can’t shock us any further, he outdoes himself. Even recapping his packages requires some artful phrasing from your humble editor; just what is the Quarterly blog rated, anyway?
Here goes nothing: burnt porn. For his fifth package, Mike boxed up a particularly shameful and thrilling episode in his adventurous youth. The results were frowned upon by prudes...
Now on Quarterly: Dogs and Design
We’re proud of our eclectic offerings here on Quarterly, but till now we’ve admittedly been a little one-dimensional——we’ve only focused on human subscribers. Today, we branch out into our first new species: canines.
No, the dogs won’t be assembling the packages (not by themselves, anyway). That falls to Stephanie Todaro, whose House of Harvey blog highlights creative...
January 2013
10 posts
5 Questions for Mark Frauenfelder
Mark Frauenfelder’s Boing Boing is the Internet at its best: a grab bag of strange——yet strangely enlightening——online treats. His Quarterly mailings are curated in the same spirit: They’re shiny and entertaining, and they make you smarter almost by accident. We talked toys and more with Mark.
1. How did you come up with the idea for your latest Quarterly mailing?
As a kid, I...
4 tags
#BVH01: In Grandma's Kitchen
We don’t play favorites here at Quarterly, but we have a serious soft spot for Joel Johnson’s theme. Each of Joel’s mailings is inspired by his grandmother, Bessie Vivian Hildebrand——from the smell of her cooking to the life lessons she imparted. How cool is that?
#BVH01 put subscribers squarely in Bessie’s kitchen, circa childhood. Joel sent the fixings for his...
6 tags
#LAD05: Secret Shortcuts
Liz Danzico’s Quarterly theme is time: that funny thing we’re always trying to save, yet still don’t quite comprehend. Her letters are among most thought-provoking we send, and #LAD05 was no exception. It focused on shortcuts, those favored time-savers Liz calls “secrets for locals——a form of belonging to a community.”
Here’s an excerpt from her letter, and a...
4 tags
Sneak Peeks: #THP05 and #DSC03
We’ve been featuring so many package recaps lately that we’ve barely had the chance to drop future package hints. Well, here it is: the return of the abstract, impossible-to-decipher photo——only sleuths need apply.
We’re about to ship great packages from Gretchen Rubin and Stanford d school. Below are pictures of items from both packages, deliberately offered out of order and...
5 tags
#SKB05: Crowdsourcing Invention
Scott Belsky of Behance is an ideas man; he’s also a busy man. In #SKB05, he invited folks to participate in a solution to that problem. Rather than let his unused ideas rot away in a drawer, he wrote them down on cards and sent them to his subscribers. We thought it was an innovative way to use Quarterly, and we hope his concepts get put to good use! (You’ll have to chat up a #SKB05...
4 tags
#JXF04: Horologium Florae
For his fourth Quarterly mailing, science author and memory champion Joshua Foer raised the bar on his ambitious theme, “machines for experimental living.” He sent a clock made out of flowers. What the heck is that? Allow him to explain:
“Carl Linnaeus noted in Philosophia Botanica that if one possessed a sufficiently large variety of “aequinoctal” species, it would...
4 tags
#PIG03: Ohanian for (Internet) President
Alexis Ohanian is all about making the world suck less, and a world without Internet freedom would be sucky indeed. This fall, he took a campaign-style bus tour in support of the Web. His latest package, #PIG03, featured a limited edition button from that tour, plus an interactive breadpig book, a hipmunk luggage tag, and his own “in-the-weeds playbook” packed with startup lessons. All...
4 tags
#YAY05: Hydration Inspiration
In her Quarterly theme, Tina Roth Eisenberg——better known as swissmiss——writes, “I don’t want anything on my desk that isn’t useful or beautiful.” She could easily have been describing the contents of #YAY05. For her latest package, Tina sent subscribers a beautiful (and quite useful) Sigg water bottle. Even better? The limited-edition design.
But there was more to her...
2 tags
#FMS01: Let's Go Glamping
By day, Reuters’ Felix Salmon is one of the more clever money writers out there: the guy whose finance blog you read if you only read one. But by night, when he has his way, Felix likes to unplug and hit the woods.
In #FMS01, the Internet star unmasked himself as a camping aficionado, writing of his love for Moonrise Kingdom and sharing some of his favorite forest tools——along with some...
3 tags
#FAR01: Timeless Tools
We’ve got a passion for all things analog at Quarterly——so we really loved the first mailing from Jeremy and Keenan of Wander. They wanted to feature classic objects that modernity hasn’t improved upon.
With a Holga camera, 120-format film, a classic Blackwing pencil, a custom journal, and some of the loveliest tape (yes, tape) we’ve ever touched, they certainly delivered.
...
December 2012
8 posts
#MLF01: Toys Galore
If Quarterly is about replicating the fun you had opening presents as a kid (and it is *exactly* about that), then Mark Frauenfelder is our resident Awesome Dad. Mark’s got a knack for finding shiny toys that deliver perfect doses of fun, and #MLF01 was stuffed with them.
You’re looking at a jelly watch, a pez dispenser, and a sound grenade. (A snapper and Mexican jumping beans also...
4 tags
#F5203 Recap: Mastering the Holiday Meal
It seems to happen every year: You spend weeks planning a perfect holiday dinner, and 30 minutes before your family sits down at the table, the bird is underdone and your brain is overcooked.
We kind of suspect those kitchen mishaps never happen to Amanda and Merrill of Food52, but they’re nice enough to play along. Their latest package, #F5203, was all about the holiday roast, and it...
3 tags
#JAK02: Old-Fashioned Wisconsin
New York City has a lot of “littles,” from Little Italy on down. But its most exotic neighborhood may be Little Wisconsin, a slice of cheddar heaven tucked into the West Village. Just ask Jason Kottke. He grew up in Big Wisconsin but now lives in the Big Apple, and he themed #JAK02 around treats from his home state.
Here’s an excerpt from Jason’s letter, and a few shots...
