Catalog design is one of the most difficult and, when done well, among the most enticing of design projects. Even a catalog of quotidian rubber products – hot water bottles, surgical supplies, and bags of all kinds — are swathed in a certain je ne sais quoi when printed in inducing and seducing colors. The Faultless and Wearever catalog with its Kumfy brand is the piece de resistance — the rubber soul, if you will — of the rubber industry. Arguably, rubber never looked so good.
Did you know: The first reference to rubber in England appears to be in 1770, when Joseph Priestley observed that a piece of the material was extremely good for rubbing out pencil marks on paper, hence the name “rubber.” Around the same time, Edward Nairne began selling cubes of natural rubber from his shop at 20 Cornhill in London. The cubes, meant to be erasers, sold for the astonishingly high price of three shillings per half-inch cube. (New World Encyclopedia)
Did you also know: Rubber fetishism, or latex fetishism, is an attraction to people wearing latex clothing. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) fetishism is closely related to rubber fetishism, with the former referring to shiny clothes made of the synthetic plastic PVC and the latter referring to clothes made of rubber, which is generally thicker, less shiny, and more matte than latex. Latex or rubber fetishists sometimes refer to themselves as “rubberists”.
Did you further know
Rubber was discovered from a rubber producing plant. While over 2,000 different plant species are known to produce rubber, only a small number of plant species are capable of producing large amounts of high quality rubber. At first, production of the worldly famous commodity of rubber was isolated to mainly the Amazon, South East Asia, and Africa. Every country wanted to monopolize the commodity in order to make the greatest profit from it by exporting it around the world. This element of the rubber discovery leading into greed resulted in extreme downfalls within each country’s economy. (History of Rubber)
Did you ever know for a minute
Rubber toys first appeared in the late 1800s, when manufacturers made use of Charles Goodyear’s process for rendering rubber into malleable material. The first rubber ducks didn’t even float: they were cast solid and intended as chew toys. By the 1940s, rubber ducks developed into the iconic floating yellow figure with bright orange bill we recognize today. For many decades, most duck figures have been made of vinyl, but we still call them rubber ducks. Proof positive that he truth, you see, is flexible and elastic.
