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community weblog
Commission on Federal Paperwork (Drawings by Carol)
In the late 1970s, the United States Commission on Federal Paperwork … published a set of reports and studies[.] … These sober government publications were illustrated with fantastical drawings of paper out of control, heaped on desks, overflowing filing cabinets, and generally besieging people, all signed "Carol".
This site collects Carol's public-domain illustrations; individual pages link to the images in the context of the original reports.
posted by Going To Maine on Oct 24, 2026 at 9:24 PM
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They are extremely 1970s. They kind of remind me of Schoolhouse Rock. And they also remind me of New Yorker cartoons.
posted by surlyben at 9:50 PM
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Damn it! Beat me to it. And yeah, this is really cool.
posted by brundlefly at 11:11 PM
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I am envious of Carol's talent and imagination on display here.
posted by Art_Pot at 12:33 AM
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Wonderful stuff. Love the dragon, and the whale. What a shame that her full name is lost... presumably she worked for the federal government.
posted by rory at 1:32 AM
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I grew up in the 1970s, and that style looks very familiar. There must be someone out there who knows who she is. I bet AskMe could figure it out!
posted by TedW at 1:39 AM
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It's so disappointing that a rediculous quest for government (and corporate but that's a different problem) efficiency has wrung all the whimsy out of the system.
posted by Mitheral at 4:50 AM
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Why is there seemingly no attempt by anyone official to credit who drew these? Such a shame, they are excellent.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:17 AM
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While there were still paper forms you needed to fill out to travel the USA, the extra paper on the form required to print the bit about the "Federal Paperwork Reduction Act" always delighted me. We're gonna use more paper to say that we're using less paper!
Bureaucracy is violence, after all.
posted by scruss at 6:54 AM
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Love the paper dragon!
posted by supermedusa at 8:58 AM
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wrung all the whimsy out of the system.
It seems to go in cycles or phases. I'd say the 70s were whimsical, the 80s were about seriousness, power, and prestige, with serif fonts, bold logos, authoritative copy, Very Special Episodes. The 90s were about being modern, authentic, worldly and cool, which morphed by the early 2000s into being edgy and alternative.
The late 2000s/early 2010s were another high whimsy period: remember the tech companies with cutesy names and colorful chairs, Keep Calm and X signs, playful indie pop music, narwhal bacon internet humor, guys with mustaches on penny farthings. Now we're back to efficiency, power, serious adulthood, conformity, austerity, "pick your protein," etc. but the backlash to that is in the works and will probably rapidly accelerate once Trump is out of office and the AI bubble loses steam.
posted by smelendez at 10:30 AM
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The Paper Sea by Leslie Fish rocks, although Better Than Who? is my favorite song off that album.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:41 AM
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These are great. They remind me a bit of Quino, not Mafalda so much as his other stuff
posted by chavenet at 2:00 AM
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