A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards

world2vec•about 2 hours ago

Seems some of them would get the key contact details "clipped" by the rolodex itself. Maybe a good design would put the phone number and address at the top.

mopsi•about 1 hour ago

Indeed! Interesting that leaving a bottom margin for Rolodex didn't become a design standard.

hellisothers•about 3 hours ago

Love the logos, colors, and at the same time simplicity. These are so much more memorable than what you see today which I find to be bland or over the top “grafix”.

tanseydavid•about 1 hour ago

"Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark."

dylan604•3 minutes ago

I love that scene and its commentary. Right up there with the Ikea catalog scene in Fight Club

retired•8 minutes ago

I'm starting to see ChatGPT generated business promotions along the side of the road more and more often and it saddens me.

I'd rather have something your daughter doodled on a piece of paper + the title of your company over some obvious AI slop.

wxw•about 3 hours ago

> The rolodexes came from the now dispersed collection of former lab employee Ed Grothus, who operated a salvage company of lab cast-offs known as The Black Hole.

Too good.

paradox460•about 2 hours ago

Many of my childhood science fair projects started at the black hole. You could always find something weird or interesting, and occasionally hot, while browsing through the place

Bluestein•about 2 hours ago

> occasionally hot

Am I understanding correctly?

ErroneousBosh•about 1 hour ago

It depends on the exact definition of the word "hot" you mean.

No, wait, it doesn't, you'll find any kind of hot you like.

fumeux_fume•43 minutes ago

"Blast-N-Peen" got a good chuckle out of me. On the other end of the spectrum, Ken Riddle at Electronic Memories was unsettlingly spare, a little bit sinister in its lack of graphic expression of any kind.

cjkaminski•about 3 hours ago

A bunch of those names sound fake, like they should be from Fallout instead of Los Alamos.

But then I remember that I know someone who worked at one of those companies.

defen•about 1 hour ago

If the "Zero Blast-N-Peen" company operating out of "Hooker Circle" with the robot logo showed up in a Fallout game, it would be criticized as too over the top - breaks the immersion too much since it's so absurd.

jjkaczor•about 1 hour ago

I wonder how many of these were essentially 1-person consulting LLC's - which meant a probably higher degree of "whimsy", "sarcasm", or "whit" when naming... (and/or a little counter-culture rebelliousness thrown in where possible)

dcrazy•about 2 hours ago

“Universal Voltronics” sounds the most made-up to me. But “Nuclear Defense Research Corporation of New Mexico, Inc.” takes the cake.

SoftTalker•about 2 hours ago

I always liked "General Atomics" (though it wasn't among the cards listed). Still opertating today under that name.

If there were a Harbor Freight of nuclear techonlogy, that sounds like a name I'd expect to see.

hans0l074•42 minutes ago

Came here to see if anyone mentioned Fallout and I'm pleased to see someone else made the reference. I presume it is notes and texts like this that inspired the narrative designers of the Fallout series. So cool!

A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (16 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews