Space Miner / Tumblelogs I Love

20 Jul ∞

Tumblelogs I Love

A collection of excellent Tumblr sites.

What is popular is not always good, and what is good is not always popular. Many of the most viewed Tumblrs (per the Tumblr directory) are like Flickr “interestingness” or top 40 music: predictable.

I’ve had better luck finding my favorite tumblelogs through tweets, posts on other blogs, the staff pics, and completely random trips down the rabbit hole. After six months of using Tumblr, I feel pretty good about this set, and thought I’d share.

STYLE

Nerd Boyfriend

Classic pictures of nerd icons with links to similar but purchasable clothing pieces. Whoever you are, I appreciate you and your contribution to my “nerd wife” wardrobe.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photons

I love Tumblr, but the number of images posted without photographer credit makes me sad/angry/frustrated. (We’ve chatted about this before.) That’s why I love Photons, which features only work from Tumblr members, and makes it really easy to click through to their sites.

See also: A few blogs from individual photographers, http://funemployed.tumblr.com, http://claytoncubitt.tumblr.com (NSFW), http://blog.noahkalina.com

DOCUMENTARY

What It’s Like to Die

It seems like a blog about terminal illness would be depressing, but this one isn’t. It’s full of important life lessons like “Be nice to yourself” and “Find joy in the little things” from someone who’s been known to eat caramel corn for breakfast lately.

MUSIC

Just Watch the Sky

Ryan Sims, the designer of Virb, shares his new favorite songs along with type-art he’s created from the lyrics.

HUMOR

Illinois Airship

Gus Menary embellishes personal experiences in Chicago (soon to be LA) and he’s funny. Young, but funny. With heart. Careful sending this to coworkers—it’s been known to destroy office productivity.

See also: Gus also writes for http://bonerparty.tumblr.com (sometimes) and http://gusmenary.tumblr.com (always)

DESIGN

Curated by Jon Kyle

Wow. Gorgeous design. But more than gorgeous: really ingenious, too. Jon Kyle’s site is super wide, and he cleverly combines smaller source images to make them fit in the design. Also, his quote style looks individually constructed until you realize that the other quotes have the same background and font. And how many people realize Baskerville is a web font? (In Safari anyway.)

See also: Matthew Buchanan, who not only created a gorgeous design for himself, but also designed Tumblr’s best openly available templates: Vertigo and Esquire.

COMMUNITY

Dawdler

I’ve heard of Slow Food, but Slow Blogging? “I thought it was time we had a really slow Twitter.” Russell Davies rented a P.O. box and scans in snail mail answers to Twitter’s famous “What are you doing right now?” question.

EDUCATIONAL

Science Tumbled

Check in for a dose of education on everything from space travel to optical illusions.

INSPIRATION

Arts and Crafts

There are many tumblelogs that spit up inspirational photographs/drawings/designs and this is one of them. Arts and Crafts makes an attempt (though not a particularly successful one) at image attribution, which is why they get the nod over Ffffound’s more prolific tumbleloggers.

MEME

Crappy Taxidermy

Tumblr’s been getting a lot of attention lately for meme blogs like Look at this Fucking Hipster and This is Why You’re Fat. My favorite though, for its bizarre hilarity, is the amazing Crappy Taxidermy.

Do you have a 10+ favorite tumblelogs list you’d like to share? Blog it up and I’ll add the link at the bottom of this post.

Ben Lansky’s Top Tumblelogs

Carrie Ford’s Top Tumblelogs