A Bridge Too Far?

The Bridge from China at the development stage

In 1989, an earthquake hit California and the Bay Area of San Francisco. Part of the Eastern span was damaged and plans began immediately to fix the bridge. More than twenty years later, parts of the span were still being installed. However, this bridge was a huge change from the past. This bridge had a Made In China tag.

When the bids were opened, the planning commission for the Bay Bridge realized that costs would be astronomical and began looking for ways to save money. They quickly found that if they relied on Chinese steel and labor, they could build the bridge for less. However, what were the other costs? All of that money that could have gone toward revitalizing our own construction industry just went to China.

Buying local has huge benefits. For one, you save on shipping because your goods don’t have to travel as far. Two, the money that you spend locally stays local. With more business, the local company can expand and hire more workers. Small businesses create jobs and have a personal stake in making sure that they hold on customers.

We here at Atlas Signs and Plaques are committed to bringing you the absolute best signs we can. We’re also proud to keep jobs and commerce within the United States. We have pledged to use American Materials and Labor in all of our signs. We have also partnered with Metalcraft Industries to bring you American made brackets to hang your signs.

Let’s keep local businesses alive and support American companies. In the short term, it may cost more, but in the long run, we’ll be better off.

Who is Frank Lloyd Wright?

Sharp Lines and a Font FLW Would be Proud Of

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire devastated the downtown area of Chicago. More than 4 square kilometers of city were destroyed and 100,000 thousand people were left homeless. Less than 20 years later, Chicago was still rebuilding, but there was a new architect rising through the ranks: Frank Lloyd Wright. By the time of his death in the 1959, he had become the most preeminent American architect and is widely argued to be the father of modernism.

Falling Water House

Frank Lloyd Wright’s style, which came to be known as the Prairie Style, emphasizes geometrical lines and a natural feel. His houses usually worked with the land, incorporating features rather than blocking them. For example, one of his most famous works is Fallingwater, a house with a river running through it. The sharp horizontal and vertical lines are a hallmark of Wright’s style. However, he is not an easy architect to classify. Case in point: he also designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Seeing as we are a Wisconsin company and Frank Lloyd Wright is from Wisconsin, we found it would be only natural to honor his contributions to architecture with a few signs. Our Eaglefeather-style signs take a healthy dose of inspiration from him, and we’ve named a different sign after him. We feel that he’d quite like these signs.

All our signs and plaques are made in Lake Mills from American Materials and Labor.

Steampunk Goggles from Parkers and Quinn on Etsy

In recent years, people have started hearing more about steampunk, dieselpunk, cyberpunk, and a whole host of other ‘punks. Steampunk is one of the newer genres of fiction, but it has a surprisingly large following. However, steampunk is not the original ‘punk’ genre. Let’s take a look through the years in ‘punk’.

The parent genre of all of the ‘punk’s is called cyberpunk. During the late 1980’s, the world was becoming a very different place and fiction began to reflect that. As technology grew fantastically quickly, authors extrapolated the trends that they were seeing into the future. All of these extrapolations had a few common themes:

1. Dystopic undertones. In the late 80’s, Japan and other Asian countries were on a meteoric rise, in part thanks to a vicious corporate culture. As Japan, Korea, and China got stronger and stronger, the United States started slowing down. Authors began viewing the future as dominated by large corporations, not by nations.
2. Dark and gritty settings. Following on from the fact that large corporations would take over, settings became darker. People became interchangeable cogs in the corporate world and the tone was cynical.
3. A protagonist who is outside the system. The protagonists in cyberpunk are usually fighting to break down the system or to break the power of a corporation.
4. Somewhat advanced technology. Technology is ahead of what we have today, but it’s not so far advanced that we can’t conceive of it happening soon. For example, a staple is a direct link between a brain and a computer.

But steampunk is a little different from cyberpunk. The first and most notable differences are the lack of modern computers and the more positive tone. However, that isn’t to say that computers don’t exist. To the contrary, one of the original stories in steampunk (The Difference Engine) is based on the idea that the Information Age (our age, basically) could have come early through the Difference Engine. (The Difference Engine is a large calculator and is considered the forerunner to the modern computer.) Another is mechanical systems. Because steampunk is based in the Victorian Age (during the reign of Queen Victoria, roughly from 1840 to the turn of the century), steam power is well-developed and very widely used.  Three: gadgets. Lots and lots of gadgets, all running on steam power or springs. Four: Modern Values. A key feature of steampunk is that the characters are roughly modern, with modern value systems and beliefs. Effectively, authors of steampunk have taken our time, stripped out all electronics and replaced them with mechanical gadgets.

The steampunk movement has also occurred in real life, not just fiction. There is a decent-size community that modifies household items to steampunk specifications. What do these things look like? Lots of brass, delicate gears, polished wood. In addition, there is a loosely defined steampunk fashion. As long as it fits roughly into the Victorian era, it’s fair play. Military uniforms in particular have a strong influence in steampunk fashion, but there are also anachronistic touches, like aviator goggles or ray guns.

Biopunk at an early stage

But what is dieselpunk? That’s the beauty of the ‘punk’ genres: you can project them over any time period. That said, some time periods will work better than others, but even the Stone Age has a ‘punk genre.

• Prehistoric- Stonepunk (Example: The Flintstones)
• Renaissance- Clockpunk (Leonard Da Vinci, if his sketches had worked)
• Victorian Age- Steampunk (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells)
• Post World War 1- Dieselpunk (1984, Indiana Jones)
• Post World War 2- Atompunk (Visions of the future from the 1950’s, Star Trek)
• Late 1990’s- Cyberpunk* (The Matrix Trilogy, A.I., Minority Report)
• Late 1990’s- Biopunk* (Gattaca, Splice, Frankenstein)

There’s a lot more to the ‘punk’ genre than I’ve been able to cover here. If you’re interested in steampunk, check out H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. If all of this interests you, look up “Retro-Futurism”, which is the study of the past visions of the future (or today). Check it out and enjoy.

*Note that these two genres are set from the same time. Biopunk takes the fears of genetic engineering, while cyberpunk takes the fears of computers and robots. More simply, cyberpunk=machines, biopunk=genes.

What to do with these?

We just got our 2011-2012 Lake Mills, Wisconsin Phone Book here at Atlas Signs and Plaques and we have to wonder, why? Why do we still have the phone book? There are at least 6 problems with phone books.

First problem: How do you deliver it? You can’t leave it in the mailbox, that’s a federal offense. No, seriously, it’s a federal offense to put anything in a mailbox that isn’t official mail. So if you’ve been leaf-letting, make sure you don’t put them in the mailbox.

Second problem: It’s arguably littering. When you deliver a phone book, unless you get permission to leave it on a porch or driveway, it could be considered littering. You’re leaving something behind that is unwanted.

Third problem: Why? As the people who are reading this well know, there’s this thing called the Internet. All joking aside, more than 55% of businesses have a website and the 45% that don’t must be seriously looking at one or are making a stand against it, like the businesses that didn’t get phones.

Fourth problem: Paper. An average phone book is more than 1000 pages, which is a heck of a lot of paper. The worst part is that the phone book is printed annually(maybe biannually). That means for Lake Mills, a town of 5000 people, the phone company has to print more than 5 million pages of paper.

Fifth problem: Time. As mentioned above, the phone book is either annual or biannual, but in that time businesses change. Let’s say a business leaves town. Well, their phone number will be disconnected and won’t be useful for that business. Now the phone book is outdated and needs to be replaced. But the vast majority of the book is the same. Again, the internet is instantly changeable. Problem solved.

Sixth problem: Cell phones. Cell phones aren’t listed in the phone book at all. I don’t have a land line whatsoever and that’s a conscious choice. A cell phone can do everything that a land line does and is just as easy to use. In addition, you can save numbers in the phone, further negating the need for a phone book.

I will admit that there are some problems with using the Internet. Getting a decent connection, paying for the service, not having it at home, having dial-up, poorly designed websites. But those problems are problems that have to be fixed anyway. Let’s use the money that we’ll save from not printing phone books and use it more wisely.

Don't Be Afraid

Naked in the sense of honest, upfront, and basic.

Mostly, with signs and plaques, the issue revolves around the use of the lowly and misunderstood apostrophe.

The apostrophe is actually a tyrant and a bully. A bully? Yes because the apostrophe changes everything with one little mark, wielding power that is far out of proportion to its size and apparent importance. See, it is a tyrant too.

Here is a recap of how the apostrophe should be used to show possession.

Place the apostrophe before the s to show singular possession as in Ms Smith’s home. Names ending in an “s” or “s” sound are not required to have the second s added in possessive form, but it is the most often used method. Both Mr. Jones’ garden and Mr. Jones’s garden are fine with the second example usually preferable. To show plural possession, make the noun plural first. Then immediately use the apostrophe. As in the Joneses’ garden, or the Smiths’ home. Do not use an apostrophe for the plural of a name. As in the Nelsons have a an historic home. Use an apostrophe and an s after the second name only if two people possess the same item. As in Sally and Jim’s home. And finally, Don’t ever use an apostrophe with his, hers, its, theirs, ours, yours, whose. They do not require an apostrophe because the  words already show possession. See! Actually kind of easy and fun when you get the hang of it.

Is the customer always right? No! Yes! Maybe!

But the customer is always the final authority on the text included in signs and plaques created by Atlas Signs and Plaques. Ok, here is the dilemma. How, or even if,  to tell a customer that their punctuation is wrong, or probably wrong, or possibly wrong, or that they should do a little more research before locking in the text.

Most people don’t like to be told that they are wrong, especially if they are right. So what do we do at Atlas? We have to trust that you have done your homework and that what you send is the way you want it. Just be careful about the meaning you intend to convey. There are numerous websites that can help. You can even go to one of our previous blog postings about the apostrophe. But beware, we are experts in several fields and disciplines, but not the English Language. Use this as a starting point, but verify your decision from another source.

We would like to hear about your thoughts and feelings about this post. Just send us an email and we will review with the intent of publishing if we feel it is appropriate. We are not averse to disagreement, and contrasting opinions will not disqualify your comments. We don’t publish links, shouting, vulgar language, or insults, but honor spirited discourse.