Welcome to ‘Chure Thing

Hello and welcome to the very first post on the ‘Chure Thing blog! My name is Grace, and I created this website because I love collecting “grey literature” – brochures, pamphlets, maps, etc. My mission is to digitize my massive (and growing!) collection and share an appreciation for these cool pieces of paper with the world.

What does 'Chure Thing mean?

All I can tell you is that “chure” comes from the word “brochure”. Does most of my collection actually consist of road maps, and not brochures? Yes, but that’s not important. What’s important is that my brain conceived a single play-on-word name, and couldn’t come up with anything else.

Where did this obsession with brochures come from?

You know when something pops into your head and then you become obsessed with it for absolutely no reason? That happened to me in July of 2023, when I was cleaning out some old files at work and came across this Worker’s Comp brochure: “Facts for Injured Workers.”

For some reason, the design of this brochure spoke to me and I decided to take it home. Maybe it was the simplistic nature, or the font choice, or the specific shade of red the authors used…I’m not sure. Either way, I took pictures of it and put them in my notes app, with this idea: “design a fake brochure, print some out, and hand them out to people on the street. Make a website for the brochures and allow people to download them for free.” Like a group prank idea, I guess?

I will say that when I was in elementary school and we had to make brochures for different projects, that was a top-tier task for me. Designing and formatting it in Microsoft Word, printing it out, making sure the folds are perfect…genuinely a very fun activity for 8-year-old me. So maybe it takes me back to the good old times.

So anyways, in the same month (July 2023), I went to my grandparents’ house to start cleaning out my grandpa’s “office” – it was a spacious upstairs attic-style area, with the entry room containing several tables and bookshelves, his massive desk, a TV, and pretty much any other object you could think of. There was a bathroom with some ancient deodorant in the medicine cabinet, a bedroom (with children’s wallpaper still plastered around the walls) that had become a storage room, and a back “library” with racks of books and camera supplies.

My grandpa was a collector of many, many things. My grandma asked if I could help clean it out because his health was declining and it was difficult for her to manage, so I went in and filled up bags and bags of trash, took a bunch of old computers to an e-recycling center, sorted through family photos and film reels, and stumbled across a lot of treasures. One thing I kept coming across was road maps – a brochure & map in one! Each time I saw one, it caught my attention with a cool front cover design. Then I’d open it up and learn new things about a place I’d never been, or see a map with roads that don’t exist anymore. The designs used colors that had somehow remained vibrant after all these years, with hand-drawn artwork that had personality. I kept adding them to my “take home” stack, until eventually it was 95% road maps! There were a couple photography handbooks I threw in, along with some other items, too. Of course, my grandma was happy for me to have them since they’d otherwise be tossed in the trash.

So within the span of a few days, the amount of time I’d spent thinking about brochures went from 0 to 100. Strange coincidence, I guess.

Why create a digital archive?

One important fact about me is that I love websites – making them, browsing them, …simply existing on a fun website counts as a hobby in my book. So when my collection of these road maps (& related items) started to grow, I began to consider how I could turn it into a web project. I considered the idea of a digital archive (inspired by the Internet Archive), but wasn’t really sure if I wanted to take on such a large project.

Then, in October of 2023, my grandpa passed away. Naturally, I became extremely sentimental about the items of his that were now in my possession. Something immediately clicked in my brain that gave me the motivation – I wanted to grow my collection and digitize every item, so I can share these cool things with other people. If it weren’t for my grandpa, I wouldn’t have gotten to play around with so many things that just don’t exist anymore. He had a ton of rotary phones, so he gave me an aqua-colored one to play with as a kid. He was an engineer, among many other things, but a photographer too, and gifted old cameras to me throughout my life. I definitely have an appreciation for older items because of him – their quality, their personality, and the importance of good design to make an item hold value over long periods of time.

Anyways, let’s take it back to paper. My grandpa’s collecting habits might not have always been practical, but that’s where we’re different. A massive benefit to collecting paper items: they’re (relatively) flat. So…they’re easy to store and don’t take up too much space! P.S. I am lying to myself. They take up more space than I’d like to admit.

What is grey literature / ephemera?

The term “grey literature” describes materials that are not produced for traditional commercial or academic uses, including pamphlets, handbooks, maps, brochures, blog posts (hi!), and more. Items that are considered “ephemera” fall under the grey literature umbrella: flyers, tickets, posters, postcards, etc. These materials are often intended to be temporary, but I find them to be great artifacts of daily history. If you’ve ever tucked a museum map into your bag or kept a national park brochure after the trip ended, then you get it.

What can you gain from browsing grey literature / ephemera?

The items in this collection fall at the intersection of three things I love: design, history, and marketing. For graphic design enthusiasts, they serve as rich sources of inspiration. From a historical perspective, they offer a glimpse into the context of the time periods and locations in which they were created. They also provide valuable insights into marketing and advertising trends, showcasing how information was communicated through different designs over the years.

Where is 'Chure Thing based?

I am in San Diego, California, and my grandfather lived in Riverside, California for a long time. For that reason, you'll see a lot of Southern California-based road maps in the JCS Collection, but also things like an Iowa travel guide, because he lived there briefly, too. You might also see a lot of brochures from Texas in my collection, because I have lots of family there as well. And since they know about my collection now, my friends and family also pick up maps for me when they travel. I hope to have a brochure from every state, and also incorporate more items from outside the United States as my collection grows!

What's next?

Well, I have a massive collection of road maps (+ more) to archive.

As I continue the archiving process, I will be sharing my favorite stand-out items, historical tidbits, and more on this blog, plus some photos & videos on Instagram (@chure_thing) and behind-the-scenes content & discussion posts on Bluesky (@churething.bsky.social). I have some fun things planned for this project in the future, so feel free to join and follow along for what’s next! Thanks for reading!