Palm Art House Series

According to Coolhunter, Palm Pictures is releasing a new series called Art House, Inc.... While the Palm website doesn't make any official mention of this yet, their art section is worth a look for the Matthew Barney Cremaster Cycle DVD and the Henri Cartier-Bresson documentary alone. Palm Pictures is responsible for the great Director's Label series, mentioned previously in January.

Dollar Bills as Makeshift Rulers

Random useful tip: Perhaps I am the last to know, but I've just been informed that every U.S. bill is 6 inches long. I know GDs who carry small rulers around with them, and I can think of several occasions where I've seen something and needed to measure... now I know that I can use cash in a pinch.

NYTimes Advertising Podcast

The New York Times has a range of weekly podcasts available, including an advertising podcast that mentions trends and spotlights agencies and new campaigns. The casts are refreshingly brief and are an interesting way to stay current—this week's cast, by NYT Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott, offers some food for thought about what's going on in branding and conceptual identity work.
Advertising Spotlight podcast
NYT podcasts index

Font Appropriateness 2

Gossip blog The Gilded Moose maintains the official "CNN Celebrity Death-Font Watch" (we posted about this earlier this month, but the watch continues to amuse, so here we are again). Poor Don Knotts (RIP) got "lowly" Helvetica and not the official death font Zapfino.

Lest this post be purely without real graphic relevance, more info about the history of Zapfino and Helvetica can be found on good old Linotype.

Visual Complexity

Parsons instructor Manuel Lima's VisualComplexity.com explores the visualization of complex networks across a diverse series of disciplines, resulting in a beautiful array of different maps and diagrams that make for truly inspirational information graphics and interesting ways of presenting information.

Did the teabag really need a makeover?

Packaging designers, you will have to weigh in on this one. Was the somewhat dramatic redesign of the everyday teabag by a brand called Tea Forté (complete with twee little leaf) really necessary? Come on... [via Treehugger]

I will say, though, that if this was done in as a conservation effort, I support it. While recently in London, I saw a student project at the Royal College of Art that commented on the planet's current paper consumption in a very visually arresting way. Everyday objects (cereal boxes, Post-it notes, etc.) were displayed with one quarter of the product separated from the rest, and all were accompanied by the statistic that we need to consume 75% less paper in order not to exhaust the earth's resources. On the wall was a teabag, with both the teabag itself and it's tiny tab divided into 25/75. At any rate, on the production end, making one of Tea Forté's tall isosceles triangular bags likely takes up just as much paper as one smaller standard rectangular teabag, so... I doubt it was a real conservational exercise (no, that would be trimming a standard size rectangle into a triangle that holds the same amount of tea). Sigh.

Navigator for Adobe CS

According to Logitech, their new NuLOOQ navigator device is "designed specifically to help Mac-based Creative Professionals work smarter". The tennis-ball sized peripheral controls settings in Adobe CS applications and is supposed to increase productivity. So if you're in the market to develop a dependence on a specialty device, check out the official product page or read up about this new toy on Gizmodo and/or Uncrate.

Spreadshirt

For fans of Café Press and other sites that let you make your own stuff (or rather, put your designs on stuff), Spreadshirt takes things to a new level of cool. Their range of products is nice (more than one choice for messenger bags!) and the options are extensive. Check out the Gothamist Spreadshirt Shop for a glimpse of things in action (so many possibilities!).

Multi-Touch User Interface

While the innovation of the multi-user interface (which Apple has filed to patent) may not immediately impact your design life, this video demo (from the NYU Media Research Lab) should provide food for thought. Whether you dabble in multi-media, animation, information graphics, or just plain print, at some point we will all have to relinquish some control to the user and consider the possibility that what we are designing may need to MOVE. Meanwhile, speculation about what Apple plans for this technology is rampant. Here's to the future!

MacBook Pro Packaging

Heads up, package designers, the new MacBook Pro packaging is getting buzz. Seems Apple has done it once again. [via Coolhunting]

Creative Commons

For those of you concerned with sharing and copyright issues, nonprofit organization Creative Commons may be a great thing indeed. Their licenses "provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators" and offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach... Huh? ReadyMade offers an alternate explanation.

Media Bistro Design Party

Media Bistro is having another design party on March 2nd. These parties are for full-time (staff and freelance) art/design/photo professionals only (no students or interns), and encourage networking but not job hunting. RSVP is required, so if you're interested, be sure to act soon.

If you're not familiar with Media Bistro, you should put them on your radar—they offer an interesting range of weekend and intensive training classes for creative professionals (2 Day InDesign immersion for all you designers still stuck in Quark, for example, or a seminar on how to pitch ideas, etc.).

Timbuk2 Artist Canvas Bags

Timbuk2 (you know, the bike messenger bag giants) has a product with tons of potential for graphic designers—their Artist's Canvas Bag features a canvas mid-panel that functions as a blank slate. Paint it, silkscreen it, mark it up with Sharpies... the possibilities for fun, creativity, and (most importantly?) self-promotion are endless. Note: Coolhunting was featuring a limited edition All Canvas Bag around the holidays—if you need to make a larger statement, they may still have some left.
Pictured: Artist Bag personalized by Yuri Shimojo

Personal Annual Report

Designer Nicholas Feltron created a personal annual report for 2005—now that would have been a fun art school project, no? I think we should all take a leaf from Feltron's book and do this every year, graphically summing up our choice of personal statistics (Feltron goes for travel, food, music, photography, etc.). What a great idea.

In Graphics We Trust

Well, apparently the latest trend in online portfolio display is in-your-face mess. Is award-winning young designer Sebastian Onufszak showing a stroke of genius by simply blasting us with his style? Some think so. You be the judge. His portfolio site is In Graphics We Trust.

Six Degrees

Six Degrees is a magazine project put out by students at North Carolina State University. Intended as an outlet for student work, a community of process and collaboration, and a way to increase visibility for the individual student designers and for the NC State GD department in general, the samples available online are all pretty interesting (especially some of the QuickTime bits!). What appeals to me about this project is that it's student created and student fueled—there is some nice initiative being shown here, and a community of collaboration and showcase is being formed. That's always nice to see among independent designers, student or no. You can check it all out at sixdegreeszine.com

Design For Africa

"Design for me is to solve problems, regardless if it’s a broken drive shaft in the jungle, water distribution in the slum or a website for Adidas." —Staffan Weigel, Design For Africa

Two recent design school grads are taking an ambitious year-long trip through Africa with the aim of bringing design as a development tool for the third world into focus. They've just set out—should be interesting to see how things take shape. For more info visit the Design For Africa website.

DIY Design

Just published in January, Ellen Lupton's new book is called DIY—Design It Yourself. Billed as having "all the tools you'll need to create your own projects, from conception through production," the book features practical solutions, budget projections, and apparently everything else you need to know to be an indie design entrepeneur.
More info available from Cool Hunting and the publisher.

UPDATE: 3/10: Having now read this book, I was disappointed to learn that it is not actually useful to the professional designer—we already know this stuff. Instead, it is truly targeted to the non-professional, and gives a Design 101 overview that some people think just ends up creating amateur monsters. However, there is the opposing argument that anything responsible for educating the general public about design is good, so... Under Consideration has a great review of the book's assets and drawbacks, and a spirited comment session (including posts from Lupton herself) that argues the spectrum of reaction to the DIY book.

Design Kit T-Shirt

Threadless has a new shirt design called Everyone Is A Designer, featuring a "design kit" of various items that—let's face it—we all basically use and abuse.

Special deal: Until February 25th, use this special code (thanks, Cool Hunting!) to get shirts for the staggeringly low price of only $10 each (the catch: you must buy at least 3 shirts). Enter code tenbucks20 at checkout.

New York Numbers Calendar, Call for Calendars

Gothamist highlights photographer Jenny Tobias, who has made a 2006 calendar of number photos taken around NYC. I love Gothamist, but I think they're off with this one—didn't we all do stuff like this (and do it better?) in GD1? Sigh. But meanwhile, they call for other calendars: "If you are a designer who has a made a 2006 calendar, send us in a link." So the opportunity to upstage poor Jenny's student-calibre project (hopefully with better composition and photos of more interesting typography) awaits.

The Greatest Artist of the 20th Century?

A Chicago-based economist is claiming that Picasso was the greatest artist of the 20th century, followed closely by Matisse, Duchamp and Mondrian. How did he come to these conclusions? Math.

Typecasting

Type nerds, rejoice!—flagrant misuse of type (on the silver screen, anyway) has been getting lots of press lately. From the recent New York Times article (subscription only) called "Good Film, Shame About the Helvetica" to a resuscitated and very thorough article by Mark Simonson, people are starting to speak up if typography is used anachronistically in film.

For example, in "Good Night, and Good Luck" (currently nominated for several Oscars), the prominent CBS News newsroom sign uses Helvetica. Helvetica was not designed until 1957. The movie takes place in the early 1950's. Michael Bierut of Pentagram says (rather dramatically) that he found this typographic inaccuracy "jarring."

New career opportunity for designers: Hollywood Type Consultant... ?

Font Appropriateness

The Gilded Moose has an amusing if perplexing review of the typographic treatment of Coretta Scott King's death. Can it really be true that Zapfino is the death-font of choice???

Wallpaper and more wallpaper

For any of you interested in textile or pattern design, wallpaper seems to be the latest creative outlet. Check out the lovely papers from Brooklyn-based Wook Kim, or go less traditional with Extratapete (you can even have them put their Berlin spin on your own art).

Design in New York, 1974 -1984

Anarchy to Affluence: Design in New York, 1974 -1984
Parsons School of Design: Aronson Galleries (66 Fifth Ave)
Through April 2, 2006

"Parsons presents the first exhibition to explore one of the most avant-garde periods in 20th-century American Design, titled Anarchy to Affluence: Design in New York, 1974 -1984. The exhibit aims to examine important interior, furniture, fashion, and graphics design produced in New York City from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s." Presented in collaboration with "The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984" at NYU. Trusty Gothamist and Gridskipper have more info.

New Kodak logo

Kodak has redesigned their logo, and the people at Gizmodo make some excellent points about why this is potentially problematic (be sure to scroll down for the comments). Overall, not quite as disappointing as the UPS redesign (sheesh), but equally unnecessary.

retrievr

An interesting new form of potential online inspiration can be found in retrievr, which defines itself as "an experimental service which lets you search and explore in a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch". For example, a sketch of a red circle yields images that are round-ish and red (flowers, fruit, lips, cupcakes... cupcakes?). Doesn't make much sense until you try it—but you're guaranteed interesting results.

FontShop Calendar, Kerning

FontShop's has started their 2006 calender. Each month is downloadable as a pdf featuring a different typeface. The calendar is free, the fonts are available for purchase on the site.

FontShop also recently highlighted the whole Intel rebranding kerning disaster that had type nerds all up in arms.