Robots and Rovers!
It's space week!
There are currently four people on their way back from the moon, so excuse me for being a little space-heavy this week. I've just been glued to the live-stream crying and laughing and just being in awe in general. It has been a nice break from the constant chaos.
in this issue:
🚙 Rovers.land
👩🚀 NASA branding
💽 Fred Again..
🚙 Rovers.land
Do you know what the best thing about NASA is? It's government funded by our taxes! Weird thing to be excited, I know. Especially because everyone is always complaining about how much it costs which was about $24 Billion in 2026 (roughly 1/34th of an Elon or half a tank of gas nowadays). The good thing about our taxes paying for it is that we get access to pretty much all of NASA's data for free! There is some data that have limits to how many times you can hit their API, and merchandising their logos can be tricky, but other than that you can pretty much do whatever you want with the data. Which brings me to this awesome site called rover.land.
Rover.land is a website made by Laurent Del Rey that lets you scroll through every image the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers have taken on mars. It's an interactive map of the location of both rovers as they roam around the surface of our neighboring planet. You can scroll all the way to see the first pictures ever taken all the way until now. Scroll away!
👩🚀 NASA branding
Like the rest of the world I've been locked in on everything NASA this week. One thing that I came across and spent too long looking at was the branding guidelines for NASA, which are fascinating. I'm not a designer and I've never had to put together a branding style guide but I've always been fascinated by them. I remember when my coworkers Tim and Michael put one together for The Studio channel and I sat there wishing I could make one cohesive document like that and this gives me those same feels.
It goes over font, graphics, and even signage at the bases. My favorite part is towards the end when it details how logos should look on everything from vans to flight jackets. I've been looking to do a giant rebrand of Cool Supply when I have the time so seeing documents like this is really inspiring and insightful. One fun tidbit about the logos is that red letter logo is called "worm" and the classic circular logo is called "meatball" which I only learned because the creative director from NASA was on Threads replying to people. What a time to be alive.
💽 Fred Again..
Coming back down to the Earth for a bit, I fell like it's my duty to tell you about this Fred Again.. set just in case you missed it. This is what I've been jamming to all week. I've had this playing constantly in the background whether I'm doing dishes, commuting, or editing at work. Not only does Fred Again.. do amazing but he shares the set with Thomas Bangalter!
I know, not a name you're probably familiar with. Neither was I until about halfway through the set when I decided to Google him. That's when I discovered that he's 1/2 of Daft Punk. If Daft Punk ever does a reunion tour I'll sell a foot to go see it, but it is one of those things on my bucket list that will most likely never happen. So this set is the closest I'll probably get. Good thing it's an absolute banger.
