democracy in action part 2!

wow! everyone is catching on to this vote for your license plate thing! this time it's the great state of south carolina, not to be confused with the backwoods north carolina. at first i thought these options were created by the rude window tellers at the dmv but then i realized that the smart people named the files with people's names. i assume it's the designers. so kudos to matt kamnn, tom crosby, and karen nelson. brilliant job!

my personal choice is number 3 because it is by far the fugliest and it seems to have incorporated a sheet and a tampon string into one stunning visual. karen outdid herself with that gem.

vote now!

spotted at fark

desktop(2)

core 77 posted a link to a blog that has images of designer's desktops and their desktops. how witty. i wouldn't mind spending a day at sagmeister's desk watching the world go by.

famous desktops

the toast of the ICFF

inseq design came up with the most practical of inventions: a toaster which toasts pixelated images right onto your wonderbread, adding a dash of delight to your breakfast or your b.l.t. you can set it to burn images at random, select one of their images, or even design your own! i don't know if i can enjoy breakfast until i have one of these in the commune.

picture toast is not a new concept. i know of someone who had a hello kitty toaster:



this belonged, however, to a single middle-aged crazy cat lady, so it wasn't so cool in my book. anyways, pixelated creatures are way cooler than hello kitty.

[via:apartment therapy & moco loco]

panic on the streets of london

i debated whether or not i should even bother posting about this. i'm sure you've all seen it by now, and i'm sure you've all formulated your own opinion. what can i say about this that hasn't already been said, thought, or written? it reminds me of saved by the bell. an animated sequence was pulled from the olympics website, on the grounds that it triggers epileptic seizures. i think they should just pull the whole thing. it triggers my gag reflex.


i still really love lance wyman's entry for the '68 games in mexico city, including all the pictograms. but, geez. talk about triggering epileptic seizures! his website is fun to poke around in, too. so is this.


is my mind in the gutter or is this sorta phallic looking? or does it look like the olympic rings are giving me the finger? eff you too, georges huel. i must say, however, i'm really digging on all the product that came out of those games. especially those bitchin' fold up sport glasses.

[look at more olympics logos here]

it's like all futuristic

who does the set design for these presidential debate things? they need to lay off the pipe for a few minutes. dude, it's like all shiny like a spaceship.

pics from cnn

extra squishy

this just arrived in my hot little inbox... a present from marius and i loves it. especially the cookie.

extra extra

if you aren't familiar with mario's work you should get with the times. i think the extra people ripped him off.

el valdes

keeping up with the (james earl) jones'

okay, so jej is the voice of cnn and cnn is following msnbc by launching a new redesigned look, but sometimes my corny puns can only go so far.

cnn launched a new beta version of their site today:



this is cnn, beta

of course since msnbc did a redesign in april it is only fitting that cnn followed suit soon after. and of course i'm not crazy about it.

msnbc refresh

you're in good hands, just not with your branding agency

old

new


allstate has a fancy new 2.0 logo with custom highlights and gradients. thank goodness, i thought a week would go by when i wouldn't see one of those special #4 combos. the new type is decent enough but then again i don't know how you could not improve on the original typography. i just hope when they implement this logo in signage that they include a bubbly backlit sign that will create the same fluid movement.

blech, whatever happened to simple logos that work really well in b/w? will someone chip in with me to bring rand back from the dead to kick some "branding agency" ass. i can't wait to read the bs rationalization behind this one.

filtertastic

maps, it will find you
director: chris richmond

from antville

and the watercolored girls go "doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo-doo..."

swedish illustrator stina persson uses the same media i love (watercolor, india ink) but executes with such panache that it both makes my mouth water and my heart break. there's something very sultry about the drippy layering, evoking hot and humid summer days. she is particularly clever with masking.

"immacolata and her friends" is persson's solo show, currently at nyc's gallery hanahou, 611 b'way @ houston. it will be up until july 6th. go take a look, and if you have an extra $500-800, think about picking up a piece for my birthday. you know i'd love you forever.

[via:apartment therapy].

"i'm 50! and i can kick... and stretch! and kick!"

is anyone else tired of hearing about helvetica? i sort of am. it was entertaining for awhile, but now it just won't stop. i guess that's what happens when things turn fifty.

regardless, victrola nachtmuzik has pointed me in the direction of slate.com's slideshow/article tribute to the modernist's quintessential typeface. despite everything i just said about being tired of hearing about it, it was a nice little ode to helvetica, due in large part to the pictures. because i'm not tired of looking at helvetica. just hearing about it.



"It's the tofu of typefaces: bland in itself but ready to absorb whatever flavors you add to it. It's clean, legible, and well-designed, but its real power lies in its uncanny mutability."

modest papercut

thx to catherine!



"Myself and a couple have friends have entered the above into the Modest Mouse video competition. Using green screen footage provided by the band we cut a simple music video. We then degraded the images and printed out each frame sequentially. (all 4133 of them) We then nailed each "shot" of 50-100 posters to various structures and posts. Then using a digital SLR camera with a long exposure we frame by frame shot each poster. Oh, and theres a little video projection (again, frame by frame on the SLR) just to mix it up. There is no compositing, no shortcuts, just lots of blood, sweat and tears, and a huge Kinkos bill!".... Max

spotted by catherine! somewhere on the internets.

it's hip to be a square

i am a self-confessed product whore. i don't consider myself a metro per se but i do love a good product, and nothing makes me whip out the plastic faster than interesting industrial design and packaging. so of course when i saw this fun method bodywash at target i knew i had to have it. sure, it's not really convenient to hold a square bottle in the shower. nor is it really possible to squeeze because it's somewhat hard plastic. but come on, it looks cool. so cool in fact that several other products have adopted the square format including jack black (although they opt for a faux-wood block on top which the product flows from). whether it's a blobby teardrop bottle of method soap, a pill air freshener also from method, or really cool designed packaging for sumotech i'm all about it. by god, design might actually matter!

vacuum lovin'

when this dyson commercial comes on it makes me seriously happy.

no, really. a+++, would definitely watch again. i wish all commercials were like you. would definitely recommend.

not so pretty pictures

if anyone has any advice on stock photography houses that offer decent pictures that don't look like crappy happy cliche snapshots please hit me up. i've tried gettyone, punchstock, media bakery, random googling for stock photo houses and basically it all sux. all.

xoxoxo
depressed designer stuck with using stock photos

don't switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh-no

i was poking around the tribeca site looking for anything visually compelling that came out of the film fest, besides pictures of faux-indie actors of course. lo and behold i found one interesting movie poster! it's almost as rare as a day without hearing about paris hilton.

"Due out in theaters this August, Charlie Bartlett enjoyed its world premiere this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's a film that carries a heavy message about the mis-use of prescription medication amongst today's teens, but does so in a very clever (and fun) way."

blah blah blah. downey plays a drunk and though i quite like him as an actor how many times can he play that role? it's like a burton film with depp, it's gotta happen.

very lengthy and wordy review can be found here charlie bartlett


good lord, did you know that jason schwartzman has a song out now? it's playing on my itunes and i am pretty sure my ears are gushing blood. annoying as an actor but even more annoying as an emo singer.

ugh, lost another one to redesign

old

new

well i must say this is quite an improvement. still not amazing, but goodbye dotcom startup designed by logos r'us and hello thingie growing out of the t. then again maybe they are changing their name to dilech?

and just a mini rant, but why did companies ever feel the need to include ".com" in their logos? whomever started that trend should be strung up beside the creator of the original swooshy logo. along with the person who created filters in photoshop. and the creator of comic sans.

back from the dead, to sell shoes

these images have been floating around for a few days (no pun intended). the new doc martens uk campaign features the dearly departed standing around, sitting, and other exciting stuff like that. i guess the theme is bringing something back from the dead, like doc martens.

spotted at drunken stepfather – not at all sfw.

13 ways of looking at a typeface

michael beirut very eloquently describes the thought process behind selecting a typeface.

"Liberated from monogamy, I became typographically promiscuous. I have since, I think, learned to modulate my behavior — like any substance abuser, I learned that binges are time-consuming, costly, and ultimately counterproductive — but I've never gone back to five-typeface sobriety."

(this link was sent my way by my good friend victrola nachtmuzik. he's been lurking here for months, but for some reason refuses to make any comments. therefore, i will just keep referring to him here as victrola until he decides to chime in with a username of his own choosing.)

computer nerd alert

the new dell monitor

from reddit:

At Dell's launch of its "Hybrid Business" strategy today, the company spent a few minutes talking about its history of developing new standards, and forcing them on the industry. One of the standards discussed: Display Port. This new interconnect, according to Dell CTO Kevin Kettler, will redefine what an LCD monitor looks like.

It will support up to 4x the current HDTV resolutions, allow for integrated peripherals around the display, and will let you daisychain multiple monitors, rather than installing them in a star configuration. Everyting, including audio, microphone, panel I/O and more will all go through a single bi-directional cable.

Even better, by eliminating a lot of the electronics used for video conversion, new LCD monitors will be super-thin, and super sleek. The prototype, displayed above, should be available later this year. It's only about a half an inch thick. Display Port also promises to make notebook monitors thinner too, said Kettler.

-Jim Louderback

interesting that sony vaio has a similar model that was publicized in an ad campaign in wallpaper* last month. this model is way shinier, i guess that is the main difference. computer nerd out.