“Inside C” logos
“Inside C” logos are those where the second letter of a word (usually an “o”) is tucked inside the initial capital C. Examples: Coca-Cola, Carnation, and Coffee-Mate.
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kottke.org posts about design
This article on how Google and eBay
This article on how Google and eBay are poorly designed seems really wrongheaded to me, although it may just be that essays that use the word “suckass” and mistake style for design will fail to convince me of anything.
A grid of logos of Web 2.0 companies.
A grid of logos of Web 2.0 companies. These names sound like a bunch of companies that make children’s toys (which when you think about it, isn’t too far from the truth).
Update: Original here.
Some people are so addicted to email,
Some people are so addicted to email, work, and their Crackberries that they’re upgrading their bathrooms with features like TV mirrors and waterproof computers. Grab the folding chairs….it’s intervention time!
A young designer offers some advice on
A young designer offers some advice on getting that first job right out of design school.
Winners of the Design Within Reach 2005 Champagne
Winners of the Design Within Reach 2005 Champagne Chair Contest. The salon dryer chair, the high chair, and the school desk chair are pretty neat.
The designer of Comic Sans on how
The designer of Comic Sans on how that beloved font came to be. Photos of Comic Sans in the wild.
Some interesting photomosaics. This one of Steve
Some interesting photomosaics. This one of Steve Jobs is made of OS X icons and this woman is a collage of Macs and other Apple products.
The beauty of simplicity. “Blame the [lack
The beauty of simplicity. “Blame the [lack of simplicity on the] closed feedback loop among engineers and industrial designers, who simply can’t conceive of someone so lame that she can’t figure out how to download a ringtone; blame a competitive landscape in which piling on new features is the easiest way to differentiate products, even if it makes them harder to use; blame marketers who haven’t figured out a way to make ‘ease of use’ sound hip.”
The NYTimes profiles Susan Orlean and John
The NYTimes profiles Susan Orlean and John Gillespie’s new house in upstate New York (audio slideshow). It looks gorgeous.
kottke.org favorites Andrew Zolli and Marissa
kottke.org favorites Andrew Zolli and Marissa Meyer (from a little company called Google) are going to be speaking at Core77’s panel on Design 2.0 in NYC at the end of February. Looks pretty interesting.
Michael Bierut on the “slow design” of
Michael Bierut on the “slow design” of the New Yorker. “In contrast, one senses that each of the changes in The New Yorker was arrived at almost grudgingly. Designers are used to lecturing timid clients that change requires bravery. But after a certain point — 80 years? — not changing begins to seem like the bravest thing of all.”
The NY Times spends some time at
The NY Times spends some time at home with Paula Scher. The gallery displaying her work is right around the corner from Eyebeam….I think I’ll head over there today.
Best new trend (if one is a
Best new trend (if one is a trend…): personal annual reports. See also personal branding, personal outsourcing, personal board of advisors.
Fine gallery of well-designed book covers with
Fine gallery of well-designed book covers with an opportunity for you, the visitor, to comment on them. (via coudal)
Kodak has themselves a new logo and
Kodak has themselves a new logo and gosh it looks plain and boring and undistinctive. Who are the folks convincing companies like Intel and Kodak that these logo/brand overhauls are going to revitalize their companies? Revitalization is a hard business…a new coat of paint isn’t going to cut it.
Update: More on Kodak’s new logo at Speak Up.
Erik Spiekermann explains how Nokia’s corporate typeface
Erik Spiekermann explains how Nokia’s corporate typeface came to be. Looks like it was based on one of Nokia’s onscreen bitmap fonts. I’ve always wanted to create a “real” version of Silkscreen like that.
Neat information design on the menu for
Neat information design on the menu for Alinea. The size, positions, and darkness of the circles on the menu represent the sweetness/tartness, size, and flavor intensity of each course.
Update: Better photo of the menu here.
Best Google logo yet…a Braille version
Best Google logo yet…a Braille version to celebrate the birthday of Louis Braille.
Intel is retiring the “Intel Inside” saying/
Intel is retiring the “Intel Inside” saying/logo and is getting a new company logo as well…no more of the familiar “dropped e” logo. Now they’ll look like everyone else.
Khoi Vinh on the move…he’s the
Khoi Vinh on the move…he’s the new Design Director for NYTimes.com. From the outside, it’s one of the best jobs in web design and it’s been filled well. (via waxy)
More and more, shoppers are judging books
More and more, shoppers are judging books by their covers. “Studies show that a book on a three-for-two table has about one and a half seconds to catch a reader’s eye.”
John Lasseter at MoMA
MoMA just opened their show about Pixar last week and on Friday, we went to a presentation by John Lasseter, head creative guy at the company. Interesting talk, although I’d heard some of it in various places before, most notably in this interview with him on WNYC. Two quick highlights:
- Lasseter showed colorscripts from Pixar’s films (which can be viewed in the exhibition). A colorscript is a storyboarding technique that Pixar developed to “visually describe the emotional content of an entire story through color and lighting”. They are compact enough that the entire story fits on a single sheet and if you’re familar enough with the films, you can follow along with the story pretty well. But mostly it’s just for illustrating the mood of the film. Very cool technique (that could certainly be adopted for web design and branding projects).
- Near the end of the talk he showed a 2-3 minute clip of Cars, prefacing it with an announcement that it had never before been shown outside of Pixar.[1] Some of the CGI wasn’t completely finished, but it was certainly enough to get the gist. When the first preview trailer for Cars was released, I was skeptical; it just didn’t look like it was going to be that good. Based on the clip Lasseter showed and some of his other comments, I’m happy to report that I was wrong to be so skeptical and am very much looking forward to its release in 2006.
At 15 minutes long, the Q&A session at the end of his talk was too short. The MoMA audience is sufficiently interesting and Lasseter was so quick on his feet and willing to share his views that 30 to 40 minutes of Q&A would have been great.
[1] For you Pixar completists and AICN folks out there, the clip showed Lightning McQueen leaving a race track on the back of a flat-bed truck, bound for a big race in California. As the truck drives across the US, you see the criss-crossing expressways of the city stretch out into the long straight freeways of the American west, the roads literally cutting into the beautiful scenery. A cover of Tom Cochran’s Life is a Highway plays as the truck drives. The world of the movie features only cars, no humans…the cars are driving themselves.
I missed this while in Asia last
I missed this while in Asia last month, but AT&T has a new logo, which is pretty much the same as the old one.
A museum of pull-down menus, for US
A museum of pull-down menus, for US states, currency, colors, etc. (via do)
New Swiss banknotes, the result of a
New Swiss banknotes, the result of a design competition, feature an embryo, the AIDS virus, and a skull. “Considering the history of Swiss banking, one cannot help but make the connection between the gold bar on the 1000-Franc bill (the gold of African dictators hidden in Swiss vaults) and the skull on the same bill (that of their victims).”
Safe: Design Takes On Risk
At the risk (ha!) of missing it, I waited until this late in the game to check out Safe: Design Takes On Risk at the MoMA. Great show. Two of my favorite items:
- Safe Bedside Table by James McAdam. If the need should arise in the middle of the night, the top of the table separates from the leg and can be worn on the arm as a shield while you use the leg to beat the crap out of a surprised burglar.
- Suited for Subversion by Ralph Borland. Don this highly visable suit before heading out for a day of protesting. It’s padded to protect against police brutality, an optional wireless camera acts as a witness to the day’s events, and a speaker amplifies the wearer’s heatbeat, letting those around him know that’s he’s scared, anxious, exhilarated, or simply human.
For you armchair museum goers, what looks to be the entire exhibition is available online.
Also, the MoMA around holiday time, not so crowded. (Well, relatively so. There were still a fair number of people there, just not so many as in the Build-A-Bear store on 5th Avenue.)
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