One of our most prolific users on Mixel is John DeFord of Bad Axe, Michigan. In a month a half, he’s posted over one hundred mixels (we’re working on adding profile pages to our Web site, so soon you’ll be able to see all of a user’s work outside of the app). I didn’t realize until I read this blog post that he also suffers from multiple sclerosis.

“If you have MS and are mobility restricted, like me, and if you have the means, I again recommend that you obtain an iPad and mount it to your wheelchair. It connects you to the world again. And, with Mixel all you will need is two working fingers to create beautiful collage art and meet other people around the world, all from your wheelchair.”

That just blew me away. Thank you, John, for sharing that. Read the full blog post here.

If you really care about printed media and want to see it succeed, then you’d probably acknowledge it must change in some way. The husband and wife team of Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio seem to understand this better than most; they remain passionately devoted to paper goods but also embrace the possibilities of digital technology. (Full disclosure: they’re friends of mine.)

Their latest project, “The Adventures of You and I,” is a great example of this. It’s a beautifully illustrated and imaginatively written children’s book that you can customize for the special child in your life. That doesn’t just mean you can add the child’s name to the cover or even to the title, though both are possible. No, more than that, you can configure the central character of the book, changing his or her hair color, hair style, skin color and clothing color. The child’s name gets seamlessly integrated into the storyline too, making the whole thing uniquely personal.

This is a hint of what a healthy marriage of print and digital can be, not just in its configurability, but in the fact that “The Adventures of You and I” is a thoroughly indie affair, too. No big publishing house was involved in this production, both because no big publishing house was necessary and because no big publishing house could have done this so well. Find out more here.

Scans from five decades of Vogue Magazine dating back to the 1920s.

Over 1,600 images. Amazing. See them all here.

It could probably have used a more distinctive title, though. Find out more here.

This promotional video for the upcoming movie “Chronicle” is neat. The marketing team built three remote controlled airplanes that were human-like enough in shape to fool the eye from a distance and flew them over the East River in New York City. The effect is surprisingly effective. Watch the video here.

While entertaining, the video is probably more interesting as an illustration of how to capture “super-human” feats believably on film. The motions in this video are seen from the ground, from the vantage point of a ‘normal’ person.

It’s always surprised me that I’ve never seen this perspective in any of the countless super-hero movies that Hollywood can’t stop making. The norm seems to be to shoot super-human leaps and flights from impossible and therefore intrinsically unbelievable angles, traversing vast distances at mechanically unfeasible speeds, and capitalizing on the limitless and often superfluous agility of the CG ‘camera.” As this video proves, shooting from the perspective of a regular person would be much more convincing.

Writer Connie Bruck wrote this piece that ran a few weeks ago in The New Yorker about the men behind a plan to build a new NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. One of them, Phillip Anschutz, is a politically conservative billionaire seven times over, who made his fortune in oil and gas, real estate, railroads, telecommunications, and sports and entertainment. It’s a fascinating article, even though I’m not particularly sympathetic to his agenda or that of his compatriots. But I did really like this quote from him:

“It helps to have your back against the wall. Adversity is a huge advantage — as long as you think of it as an advantage — because it helps you do things you never thought you were capable of doing.”

Words to remember. You can read the full article here — but unfortunately, only if you’re a subscriber.

This Madrid-based designer has a stunning portfolio that uses a contemporary, intricate take on modernism. He’s also apparently a collage artist, as suggested in this poster he designed for what looks like a show of his collage works.

He seems like someone I would like to meet. Visit his site here.

Architect and designer Jerome Daksiewicz of Nomo Design has produced these beautifully matter-of-fact poster designs that capture the runway designs of various American airports.

You can see them in more detail at this link, or buy prints at their shop.

Riffing on a post I wrote a year ago called “The Sad Story of Illustration on the Web,” the always-incisive Paul Carr writes in the recently launched Pando Daily that, just as illustration has suffered because of the Web, so too has the rich tradition of punning at news publications been in decline since the advent of blogging.

“Here in the blogosphere [there’s] little-to-no place for editorial cleverness in headlines. Search engine optimization of headlines and a relentless drive for clickthroughs means that headlines must either be absolutely directЁ…or infuriatingly opaque.”

While Subtraction.com is not a serious news source or a significant publication, Carr’s lament has been my experience here too. I used to really enjoy writing mildly clever headlines for my posts, making frequent and at least passable use of puns. I gave up on that a while back, though, realizing that it wasn’t doing me any good in terms of maximizing the reach of what I write. I changed over to the more direct approach with great reluctance; it felt a lot like giving up something meaningfully human in order to more efficiently appeal to the machines. But hey, they’re going to rule us one day soon anyway, so may as well make nice sooner rather than later. Read Paul’s full post here.

It won’t be long before podcasting is a whole decade old, which I find amazing because I remember sampling my first podcasts when the medium was still brand new, even before they’d been rolled into iTunes. For almost the entirety of that almost-decade, I’ve been listening to podcasting impresario extraordinaire Leo Laporte, whose This Week in Tech (TWiT) empire has been one of the form’s biggest successes.

That’s why I was so flattered when I was invited to appear on one of Leo’s new shows, TWiT Photo, which he co-hosts with the amazing photographer Catherine Hall. The episode was recorded live on Tuesday and you can download it here.

Truth be told, I was a little nervous about appearing on TWiT Photo because, if you peruse the show’s already deep archives, they typically feature lots of really talented professional photographers. By contrast, I regard myself as nothing more than a lucky amateur, but Catherine and Leo structured a great discussion about the intersection of design and photography, where the two disciplines overlap and how they can each complement the other. And, of course, we got a chance to talk about Mixel, too. It was loads of fun. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast here.