book (design) stories: modernist book design in germany and switzerland 1925–1965 (and beyond)
posted on Aug 5, 2008 - View this thread

Designer Jeff Staple may have his name on Levis but he really made his name in 2005 when, in conjunction with Nike, he put a pigeon logo on 200 pairs of Nike Dunks. Today they sell for up to $3000. In June The Pigeon made a special appearance on a camera and now The Pigeon returns on 650 pairs of New Balance shoes that are released globally on Wednesday. Nike probably wont be impressed.
posted on Aug 3, 2008 - View this thread

The Draplin Design Company is embarking on the World's Longest Yard Sale. Also: The Draplin Project, by Jess Gibson, and Why America Is Fucked. Alternate YouTube link.
posted on Jul 31, 2008 - View this thread

Stream graphs, or stacked graphs, are a new form of (sometimes interactive) visualization that present data in a fluid timescale format. For example, the NY Times website has a graph showing the box office receipts from 1996-2008. There's a Twitter streamgraph based on keywords. Here's one of all the musicians a Last.fm user has listened to over time. Track the popularity of baby names back to the 1880s. Possibly the most striking, if not necessarily intuitive, is this visualization of US population by county, 1790-2000. There's already an academic study of the technique.
posted on Jul 31, 2008 - View this thread

15 awful mistakes made by designers in the music and apparel industries - such as not charging enough, ignoring typography, and unprofessional behaviour.
posted on Jul 25, 2008 - View this thread

"I haven’t figured out whether cracking open your computer, attaching it to an Underwood typewriter, then inserting it into a combination Victorian mantel clock/desk and calling it “The Nagy Magical-Movable-Type Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine” is some sort of daft wit or evidence of a pedantry bordering on the pathological. " - Steampunk'd, Or Humbug by Design, design writer Randy Nakamura takes a look at the Steampunk phenomenon.
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - View this thread

The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has an extensive, searchable online collection. It focuse on material art and household items and has objects from all over the world. The website can be browsed either by geographic orgin: Africa, Asia, North and Central America, Pacific, South America, or through its two exhibits, Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives and Fowler in Focus. Some of my favorite objects (but really, everything is entrancing) are The Blind Scholar (a Taiwanese handpuppet), Chikunga (a Zambian mask) and a stirrup spout bottle which looks like a puma eating a piglet (Peruvian). All items have accompanying descriptions and some have short texts or audioguides with further information.
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - View this thread

Art Deco was the dominant style of the interwar era, coming out of Paris in the 1920's and ruling the roost until World War II broke out. Randy Juster's Decopix - The Art Deco Resource has enough pictures of Art Deco architecture to send one hurtling into The Gernsback Continuum. If that's not enough then there's always the 11000+ images of the Flickr Art Deco Pool. But Art Deco wasn't just about architecture. On the Victoria and Albert Musem's Art Deco site one can view Art Deco objects in great detail, rotating them and listening to audio lectures on each object. But before Art Deco was a design aesthetic it was an art-style. Illustrations for the Art Deco Book in France has more than 170 images from the proponents of that then-new style (some images are not safe for work, especially in the George Barbier section).
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

Tiled Background Designer is just a small, useful tool to create patterns. Experiment with pictures, colors, textures and transparency to get best result.
posted on Jul 17, 2008 - View this thread

Sean Tevis Takes On Intelligent Designer with Some Intelligent Design of His Own... Sean Tevis is running for State Representative in Kansas, against an opponent he describes as a proponent of intelligent design. Short on name recognition (and campaign funds) he took it upon himself to use his skills as an information designer to connect to his "constituents" - could he be the first true candidate for a generation that grew up on the Internet? Very clever xkcd-style infographic deployed against the agents of doom... (I donated, couldn't help myself) via BoingBoing
posted on Jul 16, 2008 - View this thread

Rumplo will help you waste even more of your hard-earned cash on artist and designer created T-Shirts. You can submit shirts you've found anywhere online, as well as comment on and favorite other people's findings. Thanks to user-submitted tags, you can browse by color, type ('boys', 'girls', 'kids'), and many other attributes. If you get bored of browsing aimlessly, you can always check out what's popular.
posted on Jul 12, 2008 - View this thread

Today is R. Buckminster Fuller's 113th birthday. Visionary, designer, inventor, engineer - 'Bucky' continues to inspire us. Known as the grandfather of sustainability, even today we discover that we've barely scratched the surface of his thinking and still have far to go and much to learn about managing Spaceship Earth. [ previously]
posted on Jul 12, 2008 - View this thread

Inspired by such diverse influences as Pee-Wee's Playhouse to Frank Gehry and Warner Brothers Cartoons to Philippe Starck, Vancouver, BC based woodworker Judson Beaumont's furniture is whimsical yet fully functional and is suited for children and adults alike.
posted on Jul 9, 2008 - View this thread

The Gerd Arntz Web Archive collects graphics from the career of the man who - in creating over 4000 Isotypes for social scientist Otto Neurath in 1930s Red Vienna - can make a serious claim to be the inventor of the modern stick figure. He attacked the corruption of German society as the Nazis rose to power, then joined Neurath in an attempt to create a transnational visual language that bore later fruit in Otl Aicher's 1972 Olympic pictograms and the AIGA passenger/pedestrian symbol signs. [via Mark Larson and Austin Kleon]
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

Dress patterns made from bleeding markers. Simple, but totally awesome. (via ymk)
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

Poolga: iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers from a selection of designers and illustrators from around the world.
posted on Jul 6, 2008 - View this thread

I Met the Walrus In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. This is the whimsically animated film that Jerry has produced about the interview.
posted on Jul 6, 2008 - View this thread

Web Designer Wall is the personal weblog of Nick La who is N.Design Studio. He talks about design ideas he has, design tutorials from Photoshop to CSS, etc., and trends in modern web design. (see previous)
posted on Jul 3, 2008 - View this thread

A Philippe Starck designed Wind Turbine?
posted on Jul 2, 2008 - View this thread

Marian Bantjes, typographer, designer, and Layer Tennis competitor, received a 419 spam email and turned it into this print.
posted on Jun 27, 2008 - View this thread

Project Genesis - "It's destined to be the world's largest cruise ship—when launched next year, Royal Caribbean's US$1.24 billion Project Genesis will be 1,180 feet long, and carry 5400 passengers (6,400 at a pinch). It's the most expensive ship in history, and it's longer, wider and taller than the largest ocean liner ever built, (Cunard's QE II), 43 per cent larger in size than the world's largest cruise ship, (Freedom of the Seas [previously]) and remarkably, bigger than any military ship ever built, aircraft carriers included. In a world where choice of amenities count, Project Genesis has yet another trump card—in the the center of the ship is a lush, tropical park which opens to the sky." cf. The Lilypad
posted on Jun 24, 2008 - View this thread

Pecha Kucha - get to the point. 20 slides in 20 seconds. Talk about what you want. Your city probably has a night for it.
posted on Jun 24, 2008 - View this thread

The late, great Tony Wilson is being honoured today with a 24-hour long "intelligent" conversation in Manchester, England. Wilson was a musical Svengali par excellence. He co-founded Factory Records, helped discover both Joy Division and the Happy Mondays and has been credited with reviving the city that was cradle to the industrial revolution.
posted on Jun 21, 2008 - View this thread

It began when Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”
Sometimes when you make a simple suggestion about the remodeling of your $8.5 million 5th Ave. apartment, the designer goes a little overboard. In an awesome way. Don't miss the slideshow.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

Once home to the Naval Shipyards, L'Ile de Nantes now houses the workshop of Les Machines de l'Ile. The 12m high Elephant made its debut last year (although a predecessor was spotted 3 years ago) and is the first of 3 major projects to be undertaken.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report . via
posted on Jun 8, 2008 - View this thread

Designers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer, so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors. At their best, desktop wallpapers bring animation to often lifeless computer screens, reflecting the personality of the user and acting as a calling card for creative talent. The Desktopography Project first arrived in 2005 as a place to download nature / topological themed wallpapers with edits from selected designers. They have just released their 2008 library.
posted on Jun 7, 2008 - View this thread

"The Magazineer is a blog about magazine design and print culture, written by people who love, and make, magazines." {The most recent entry is by Jess, actually.}
posted on Jun 6, 2008 - View this thread

Humble abode: Loftcube // Rucksack House // Micro-Compact Home // Superadobe // Zigzag Cabin // Tree Sphere // Mirador // La Petite Maison du Weekend _ all via.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Come, take a ride and look at some of the Islamic Art of the past. Or, you could call it Art of the Islamic World if you're so inclined. If not, then how about taking into account some of the major milestones of Islam throughout the centuries, from past till present (more examples here), including the art of Calligraphy and Architecture. Not to mention the Arab world's contribution to music, both old and new. [Previously mentioned, here, here, here, and here, with a wonderful comment from nickyskye as usual]
posted on May 29, 2008 - View this thread

The Branding of Polaroid 1957-1977: How we beat Eastman Kodak and its little yellow boxes at point of purchase despite a clunky product and an irrelevant corporate name. Graphic designer Paul Giambarba blogs about his experience creating Polaroid's iconic corporate identity, product packaging and print advertising while freelancing for Polaroid through the company's rise and fall.
posted on May 22, 2008 - View this thread

Some readers will appreciate their typographic form, while others will see further strategies at work — informational, strategic, philosophical, literary. There are odd, even anachronistic cultural references, gestures that date these books in a manner oddly soothing.
The Next Page: Thirty Tables of Contents
posted on May 16, 2008 - View this thread

United States election logos, 2008-1960.
posted on May 15, 2008 - View this thread

If hydrogen-cell cars are no good, how about hydrogen-cell motorbikes!
posted on May 14, 2008 - View this thread

Wall stickers to stick on your wall (or furniture, or other stuff).
posted on May 13, 2008 - View this thread

A supportive blogging community of mainly women cross-linked on each other's blogrolls and leading an increasingly compelling marketplace of small-scale goods and handmade lives , green-living ideas , product promotion , and lifestyle-making suggest that the internet may be able to foster a localized economy model of living on an international scale--or at least gain the attention of that other idyllic-life icon.
posted on May 12, 2008 - View this thread

If you can make it through the glacially paced intro and can put up with the typically clunky, often laughable and jingoistic fifties-style narration, this 1958 film from Chevrolet, The American Look is worth viewing. Chock full of futuristic telephones, toasters, blenders, office machines, architecture and more, it's a mid-century design lover's dream. The film is visually striking and elegant, and presented in widescreen format. Here's part 2 and part 3. Or see it here in its entirety.
posted on May 12, 2008 - View this thread

15 Great Examples of Web Typography. Because 95% of web design is about typography in the first place.
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

The incredible landscapes of game designer Daniel Dociu.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

Viktor Schreckengost who died last year at the grand age of 101, was regarded by some as the father of industrial design. Every adult in America has ridden in, ridden on, drunk out of, stored their things in, eaten off of, been costumed in, etc… and there is no going past his gorgeous pedal cars. Some of his work can also be seen online at The Cleveland Museum of Art.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Ubuntu 8.04's Hardy Heron has recently perched on millions of desktops worldwide, but what does the future look like for the darling of the open source world? Now entering a new 2-year art developent cycle, Ubuntu's continuing quest for "pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty" has begun again in earnest. Bleeding edge desktop effects [youtube, music] are already creeping into the official distribution and the community is eagerly awaiting the new graphical look, promised as a ground-up re-imagination in the next release, Intrepid Ibex. Watch this space.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Two visions of the ideal city rise in the Persian Gulf: "Waterfront City will probably be where a lot of Middle Eastern investors will put their money—and where international architectural stars will build their putative landmarks—but if little Masdar develops successfully, it may hold much more important lessons for us all."
posted on Apr 27, 2008 - View this thread

Interactive Architecture is for both geeks and design freaks. Lots of interesting and WTF stuff here, like SandScapes, Funky Forests, Swarming Structures, Colour Responsive Chairs, and Jelly Architecture. Not to mention the amazing Touch, a tower with 4200 windows equipped with RGB color LEDs that can be controlled by passersby.
posted on Apr 26, 2008 - View this thread

Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 NYC subway map is back Yours for the low, low price of 299 bucks for one copy of the limited edition of 500. (Previous MeFi comments on the famed design, which the New York MTA eventually shitcanned. [Via.])
posted on Apr 24, 2008 - View this thread

More cool business card designs. (Previously.)
posted on Apr 24, 2008 - View this thread

Rick Poynor asks - isn't it time we demanded more from design conferences?
posted on Apr 18, 2008 - View this thread

Soviet Lemonade Labels
posted on Apr 17, 2008 - View this thread

Tokyo By Night - Just one of the posts on ArkiBlog, a blog about architecture and design. {via}
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - View this thread

Biomimetics: Design by Nature. "Burs on a dog's coat led to the invention of Velcro. That's an example of biomimetics—the young science of adapting designs from nature to solve modern problems. Now it may be coming of age."
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread