It’s a tradition, or at least a habit, in America to get up on Friday morning shake off the turkey induced comma and SHOP!

Black Friday, it is many things;  icon of consumerism, savior of our economy, over the top, teeming with costumers.

The term Black Friday started off as a way to describe the economic crisis of 1869, sort of like how they described the start of the Great Depression (Black Tuesday). Ironically, it is now they day many economists look to to describe the state of our economy.

Stores open early and are soon swamped with shoppers, people looking to get a jump on their Christmas shopping and take advantage of great deals.

Black Friday is American consumerism at its best. But in a recession just how hard will America shop? Discount retail stores like Wal-Mart tend to do better in hard economic times.

If a pricier store like Nordstroms shows a healthy take that could be an indication of a healing economy.

Personally, we are a little claustrophobic and prefer to sleep in on Friday morning. How do you, our faithful readers, feel about black eye shopping?

Hopefully you’ve checked out the Baltimore Book Thing before, but if you haven’t, you really should! Basically, it’s a huge space where you can both donate books you’re finished with them and take any books from the space that you like for free! There’s always something interesting, the books are organized by subject matter, and it’s definitely a project that you should help support! Visit their website for more information and to learn how to get involved. Their hours for browsing are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

Typographeee. Design and typography for dummies, but in a good way. From their website:

Typographeee.com is the online incarnation of a book which was designed as a typographic primer for fledgling design students as well as a reference tool for all designers with a passion for typography . On a quest for knowledge, the book is also a documention of the typographic research expedition of three colleagues who were themselves students of design.