“Open mailbox,” haha! See the movie.

Via DF.

“Good designers are a dime a dozen, he said. Coming up with a great design solution is the easy part. The hard part, he said, is getting the client to accept the solution.” Mad Men.

25 new classic book covers from the past 25 years.

And the wonderful 25books.com Bildschöne Bücher was based on.

The dead art of book cover is so not dead: have a look at the winners and shortlist of the 2008 Penguin Design Award.

Via Kottke.

“The U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.” Read Paper money unfair to blind.

“Our designers, production and client facing people are living dog-years. They live seven years to any normal designer’s one year” — Attik’s new NoiseBlog.

Noteworthy even given that I’m against design competitions: a 26-year-old first-time currency designer redraws UK coinage. And Jonathan Hoefler’s bitter perspective. Via Kottke.

Starck went on to say that he believed that design on the whole was dead. This “I’m so ashamed to make this job” story is hardly new, but what about fighting “barbaria”?

“If you want options, go talk with other people! I’ll solve your problem for you.” 1993 Steve Jobs interview about working with Paul Rand at paul-rand.com.

Charles Baldwin on biohazard symbol development: three-sided, easily stenciled and striking enough that it would be remembered. Via Creative Bits.

Curious Ikea Futura punctuation marks, Gruber-style.

Need some nice stock photos? Buy Getty Images. Only $1.5bn and you’re all set.

This type has been bastardised and other “visual enforcement kit parts.” Genius!

When the book cover bets against its content — the typographic joke of the year.

Who do you think it might hate designers? Take the quote: “Stealing some hundreds of euros is by far MUCH more work than any designer will accomplish in his/her whole life.” This kind of people.

It is a real quotation from a blog. And stare in the abyss.

Typography, from Stanley Kubrick’s favorite font to the cover design of The Catcher in the Rye in Michael Bierut’s video interview.

138 brands, sorted alphabetically: pencils.

This is on ID Magazine’s list of Most Ingenious Products of 2007. Maybe it was a bad year. Via DO.

Wikipedia is a meritorious effort, but when it comes to design or design history its model fails.

The Making of FF Meta Serif.

Some like calendars [link in Romanian], others like their calendars to be very, very compact. Not too late to redesign anything. Thanks, Eugen.

“This page contains some works of ‘anomalous motion illusion’, which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick. Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave this page immediately.”Via DO.

A great cover telling a great story, that’s one thing that separates print magazines from web magazines’ mashed look and crummy little thumbs: best magazine covers of 2007. Via DO.

At sixty, Mr Spiekermann has the verve of a thirty years old. The effect of information design or typeface design?

Effortlessly jump-start your career: design like Khoi Vinh in five easy steps. No design studies required. Piece of cake!

“When you give people what they want, they actually complain more.” Weird but true. [Thanks, Iancu.]

Dots and NeoSans in Norwegian national broadcaster’s idents. [Via 1+1=3.]

“What is ‘sustainable architecture’? The expression doesn’t really mean much. I prefer ‘responsible architecture’.” Françoise-Hélène Jourda in Le Monde. Applies just the same for design: ‘responsible design’ instead of ‘sustainable design’. I like that. [Via CoS.]

“Combining a full-witted individual with a half-wit only yields a half-wit.” The curve it’s about web design, but applies to identity as well. [Via Longboard.]

So neglected, the poor thing. Love it and it’ll bloom like a flower. Lowercase ‘g’, that is.

The Lord of the Lord of the Lord of the Lord of—the credits roll, insert yawning emoticon—the Rings. [Via H&FJ.]

Ever fancied a corporate ID with a Mona Lisa-inspired color palette? A Botticelli-colored web site? Well then, knock yourself out! [Via 1+1=3]

The “can’t tell rebranding from redesign—hey, who cares?—I’ll rank that stuff regardless” school of thought. [Via Core77]

When the sound is not enough, brand the music! Hmm, I wonder when will slogans appear next to those logos? Via Design Forum.

Follow-up: John Nack, a Senior Product Manager from Adobe Photoshop team, introduces the new Photoshop logo to the public on his adobe-dot-com-hosted blog and a tidal wave on negative comments flows right in. No wonder. [via DF] Others put together long lists (and rather incomplete) of speech bubble logos to demonstrate the inflationism.

Adobe® Photoshop® has a (new) logo, 3D candy, shiny and poor—looks like it’s targeted at teenagers and amateurs. And the slogan—“See what’s possible”—looks crafted towards inducing trial. Photoshop is “the ultimate playground”… what’s wrong with Adobe?!? 100% penetration in the pro market and they try to lure some kids now with colorful balloons?

If you worked with Copperplate Gothic you’ll feel deep in your stomach the point Armin makes in Dr. Copperplate and Mr. Gothic: this apparently submissive typeface is a hard-boiled motherf**ker.

After making a royal mess out of their PMS lately, Pantone plans to clean up their act by launching Pantone Goe spot-color matching system. New inks, new numbers, new books and new software. I don’t like it. At all.

Microsoft font rendering vs Apple font rendering — what do you respect more: the pixel grid, or the font designer? Read Respecting The Pixel Grid. [via DF]

To find out how Gobierno de Gerpaña got a nice logo — and why — read Erik Spiekermann’s blog post Viva España or what?

Design issues in mainstream media: The New York Times runs an article on typography — “a minor technicality of civilized life” — with the occasion of replacing Highway Gothic with Clearview on road signage. Read The Road to Clarity and don’t sigh wile reading quotes like “I’ve always thought that design can be a form of social activism.”

Hilarious design-gangsta rap video. It kinda makes sense after all — isn’t our professional ethos minority-like? Ghetto-like?

Times (New) Roman and its part in the Development of Scalable Font Technology by Charles Bigelow, initially posted this article to the Usenet in May 1994 in response to the question: What’s the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman?

IDEO took seven IDEA awards, four gold, one silver, two bronze, plus four Catalyst prizes at 2007 International Design Excellence Awards. Read about it in BusinessWeek’s Best Product Design Of 2007 (or jump directly to the slide show).

Why “Arial is little more than a shameless impostor”? Read The Scourge of Arial.

Wikipedia entry: “Mon, also monshō, mondokoro, or kamon, are Japanese family heraldic symbols. Mon refers to any symbol, while kamon and mondokoro refer specifically to family symbols.” Now you know why Japanese symbol-based logos are so beautiful: tradition. [via PingMag]

Diesel leaves audience open-mouthed in Florence with “Liquid Spaces” holographic catwalk show created by the Spanish CGI animation studio Dvein using the amazing technology developed by the Danish multi-media production agency Vizoo. Download the video and have a look. [Via Cool Hunting]

Are thou a graphic designer? Then learn how to properly pray like a graphic designer. Amen. [via