How did I miss this? Europa Report is based upon a future manned mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. It was developed with mission specialists from NASA — so the details and events depicted are presented in more sciFiFact than in the traditional Hollywood SciFi. Sounds pretty incredible for lovers of real space exploration.
The Enterprise Emerges From Titan
Nice example of science meets Hollywood.
Chopping Block’s Tribute to Apollo (Circa 1998)
Not as long ago as 40 years ago, but just a little over 10 years ago – The Chopping Block adopted the look of NASA 
for one of our online incarnations. More specific our adopted look embraced the era of Apollo in hopes that a little of that former astro-glory might rub off on our small New York graphic design studio which was at that time only about a year old. So we thought it appropriate on this 40th anniversary of the touchdown at Tranquility Base, that we revisit our own journey through cyberspace and our small tribute to the historic landmark that is Apollo.
If there is one thing we like to do at The Chopping Block, it is to take our logo and make it look like something else. In this case, we became quite possibly the first design company to ever merge the design of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module with their own logo mark. Thusly, resulting in the world’s first merging of state-of-the-art of 196o’s technology with early web identity design.
And what fake space exploration site would be complete without fake astronaut training pix?
See the original site as it appeared in 1998 here. Also see our current site choppingblock.com for more recent projects.
My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past II
Scored another one. This time it is hi-res and I think this came out around 1996. I also just happened to get a copy of “Mars Underground” (unrelated) on DVD just yesterday which is about Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” concept of getting men (and women!) on Mars. I am thinking perhaps now this may finally be embraced as NASA’s Mars 2.0 plan going forward?
My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past
Once upon a time I did a large number of book covers (or dust jackets) for a Sci-Fi publisher known as Tor Books. While looking through old back-up files today I found this one that featured Saturn’s rings and it’s now famous moon Titan. Since I am currently working on a poster that celebrates the Cassini mission, I thought I should post this design on here as it happens to be one of my favorites.
I would have to guess that I have been involved with designing around 200 book jackets designs for Tor, both before and after starting the Chopping Block. Among some of the more famous titles I got to work on were Jonathan Lethem’s “Gun with Occasional Music”, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Three Californias” trilogy and vampire title, (soon to be a major motion picture) “I am Legend”. The Lethem and “Legend” books had provided artwork, but we also got to do a few other Lethem titles where we did all the art as well as the design.
Image Note: I found this file (not shown) I thought was the hard cover artwork, but instead it was the less impressive mass market edition of the jacket. I will upload a better hi-res version next week when I get back to the office. In the meantime I found this version online of the hard-cover and tried to clean up the jpg artifacts the best I could.