Lots of us have favorite hobbies, favorite foods, favorite just about anything. Have you ever wondered how much time or how often you take part in that favorite thing? Or, have you just wanted to collect information on, well, just about anything? That’s where Daytum comes in. Daytum is an extremely user friendly site that simply put, “helps you collect, categorize and communicate your everyday data.”

Now let’s say one of your favorite things is tacos. I mean who doesn’t love this tasty dish? With millions of different recipes out there in the world, this classic dish shouldn’t get dull. Our friends at Faust love tacos so much that they started keeping track on Daytum, and it turns out they aren’t the only firm in the Chicago area that loves tacos.

Take a common love of tacos, add a little competitive spirit and a great resource like Daytum, and you have yourself a Taco Challenge. Throughout the month of June, Rule29 will be competing in this epic event against Faust, Grip, and Floodlight. Winner is determined by dividing the total amount of tacos consumed by the amount of participants per office.

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For those of you who are familiar with the traditional Rule29 trip to the Utopia paper mill in Appleton, Wisconsin, it should come as no surprise that this year was as informative, educational, and enjoyable as years past. In fact, this trip was particularly inspirational since we spent the day with our amigos, the talented team from Grip Design along with our hosts from Appleton Coated. But this year, instead of touring the mill itself, we visited the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, which was just a short trip from the Appleton farm house.

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum is operated by volunteers from the Two Rivers Historical Society who are dedicated to the preservation, study, production and printing of wood type. Our tour guide, Jim Van Lanen, taught us about the history of wood type, as well as the functional operations of printing with it. We had the opportunity to see the equipment used to print with wood and metal type and even watched as one of the volunteers carved out a letter “C” with centuries-old machinery.

As we walked through the museum, which looked far more like a workshop, it was amazing to consider the evolution and development of both type and typography. Jim had mentioned to us that the catalyst for the creation of the Hamilton Wood type factory in 1880 was that the local newspaper editor wanted to promote a Grand Ball being hosted at Turner Hall. He requested that Edward Hamilton create a block printing surface to be used in the printing of promotional posters for the event. Sitting on his mother’s porch, using a foot-powered scroll saw, Hamilton carved out the type that would be used for the Grand Ball promotion and become the foundation for the J.E. Hamilton Hollywood Type Company.

Running my fingers over the metal and wood type laid out in California Job Cases and little wooden drawers, it was easy to see how this method could produce such beautiful and tactile works of both art and design. From the walls of the museum, examples of this type of work hung as great impressions of a bygone era. And, even a few locally created samples by our favorite pal Jim Sheridan from Hatch Show Print dangled from the ceilings and walls around the museum.

Returning to the farm, we enjoyed a nice evening of playing shuffle board, chess, tossing a football around, and even watching as the international space station passed overhead silently through the night sky. We all really enjoyed spending the day with our hosts from Appleton and our friends from Grip. Special thanks to Ferko and Nicole for all their help and time spent with us over the years.

Take a look at the good times captured on Flickr.