Consumer Reports

We recently discovered a stash of loose vintage U.S. Forest Service pamphlets under the sofa mattress in the basement office of our Information Ambassador, Pokey the Pigeon. Apparently, he teamed up with Woodsy Owl—a lesser-known but equally strange Forest Service mascot who is now banned from several national parks for reasons we won’t get into—and […]

We recently found a copy of a 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Guide inside the unlocked desk drawer of one of our unpaid interns. It appears they were applying techniques from the pamphlet to their job at the Department. These included tactics such as “bringing up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible,” “misfiling essential documents,” and […]

One of our unpaid interns found this pamphlet from 1978 underneath the office kitchen fridge while cleaning the drip pan after they spilled one of those paper trays of to-go coffees all over the floor. In exchange for class credit and office redemption we had them sterilize and photograph it for our consumer report and […]

Have you seen strange lights in the night sky above New Jersey or the Tri-state area? Call our tip line to leave us a voice memo of what you saw. Our Information Scientists will use the anonymous data in future experiments and consumer products. Telephone and fax: 1-844-DOI-9003 E-mail: info@departmentofinformation.org Non-exclusive list of sightings we […]

It’s that time of year again! We’ve enlisted our Head of Accounting and Budget, Officer Bill, to scrape together the absolute best public procurement notices, notices of intent, and/or requests for proposals from governmental, quasi-governmental, and non-governmental entities from 2024. Please enjoy our much-anticipated end of year roundup and let’s all thank Bill for the […]

The Department of Information Office of Public Awareness, Division of Film, Radio, Television, and Books is proud to release the first publication in a series of unsanctioned but greatly improved reproductions of original USDA Fruit and Vegetable Market News Reports from the National Agricultural Library. These semi-faithful reproductions have been lovingly brought back to life […]

On a recent Department field trip to a local bookstore (for our bi-monthly cultural enrichment outing and team-building activity), our visiting botanist-in-residence and eclectic zine expert, Bjorn, picked up an interesting book by Brooklyn-based artist, designer, and author, Nikki Scioscia. Sentient Sidewalk: Lessons from New York City’s Wild Medicinal Plants is a striking risograph-printed and […]

During a recent official Department research expedition that took place deep in the mountains of Colorado our team uncovered a peculiar artifact. The object appeared to be a self-published journal of observations from a respected and storied career medical professional. The subject of which focused on the personal treatment possibilities of legal (state-level in Colorado, […]

While some of the objects in Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects are actually very much still around, it is true that all of them more fully belong to a now distant period of time that appreciated them more. Advertised by the University of Chicago Press as a “visual tour through futures past via the […]

Ruben Pater and Amsterdam-based Valiz Publishers’ CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It is an extensive (552 pages) but very engaging, accessible, and portable account of graphic design’s current and historical relationship with capitalism (and theories on how, as a designer, to potentially decouple the inextricably-linked duo). […]

The Miami-based Islandia Journal offers a refreshing and strange look at some of Florida’s more eccentric angles and anomalies through the hazy, sun-drenched, and mysterious lenses of local visual artists and writers. It is focused around the paranormal, weird, historical, and uniquely Floridian. The 8 ½’’ x 5 ½’’ limited-run journal’s first issue was published […]

Eindhoven, Netherlands’ Onomatopee Projects, with Nicolas Nova and Dislocation.org, use reflective silver ink on 255 pages of matte black paper to illustrate and explain to us what kinds of strange, wonderful, and terrifying things we might expect to encounter in the latest epoch of geological time. The A5 size publication, while quite thick, feels accessible […]

James E. Lawrence would have been about 25 years old when he was assigned to survey the wild deer population outside of Brookhaven National Laboratory, a top-secret government research center full of particle physicists and experimental happenings, where said deer were running amok scaling the 12ft tall fence to eat radioactive plants. Was this the […]

Extrapolation Factory Operator’s Manual by Elliott P. Montgomery and Chris Woebken is a dual-language guide full of beautiful photos, thoughtful typesetting, curious illustrated diagrams, and words you have never seen before. The Factory itself is a design-based research studio in Brooklyn founded by the two authors. It is here they develop “experimental methods for collaboratively […]

Hamilton Morris, chemist and indie zine hobbyist, took it upon himself to update and republish the cult classic “ethnoherpetological”* pamphlet, Bufo Alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert, from 1983. A notable addition to the new version includes Mr. Morris’ untold history of how the original author, Ken Nelson, who had published under a […]

MY BODY FEELS AMAZING is a meditation on space, the body, and form. Originally printed in 2019, this latest edition was recently re-printed via risograph with a thermographic cover and saddle stitch binding. The heat-printed method creates this raised, rubbery effect, making gliding your hands over the the cover and back page a pleasant tactile […]

Mushrooms & Friends 3 is an 8.5” x 11” staple-bound high-fidelity celebration of wild mushrooms, their friends, imagination, and the color spectrum. It is not necessary to know that Cantharellus cinnabarinus–commonly known as a chanterelle–is edible, or that it’s Greek name refers to it’s cup-like shape, to appreciate that the mushroom looks really cool and […]