How I (almost) got an iPhone for Father's Day

See the phone on the right? That's been my phone screen since about 1:00 this afternoon. According to the people at Sprint, not only is it completely unfixable, but they can't even get any--ANY--information out of the phone. This is, as Ashlee would say, an epic fail.

As a result, I spent quite a bit of my day at various Sprint stores, and on the phone with various Sprint reps. Very long story short? Our contract isn't up until the end of November (155 days left; believe me, every one will be counted), and it would cost an obscene amount of money to A) Buy a new phone (even the cheap, crappy ones are almost $200); and B) walk out on the contract, switch to AT&T, and get the new iPhone. So, we wait.

In the meantime, you can giggle to yourself every time you call me; I'll be answering with that bad boy up on the left. It's practically a collector's item, what with the old Sprint logo and all. Miraculously, we found the charger (keep in mind that most days I can't find my keys, yet we've managed to keep track of a 5+ year old phone charger that hasn't been used in years) and charged it up--it's all set to go. Yipee, I think.

155 more days... 155 more days...

Redesign!

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for a redesign. So this week, when I came across the new (and smaller--but we'll get to that in a sec) NY Times Magazine, I devoured it.

First: According to the editor's letter, it's 9% smaller. Just enough to notice. What I don't like was the reasoning behind the size change: paper costs. Really, NY Times Magazine? It couldn't be about paper costs AND the environment? Just a little bit?

Second: "The cut in trim size does not mean there is 9 percent less room on every page for words and pictures." Can we say, new--condensed--font? Introducing Lyon Text:



Also? New display typeface Knockout and Nyte. New, brighter color palette. New design elements and TOC. The addition of KenKen to the puzzle page (Oh, alright, I really don't care about that one--I haven't quite caught onto KenKen just yet). And now, finally, The Way We Eat added to the front-of-the-magazine section, The Way We Live Now.

I really liked the old design of the magazine--so I haven't quite formed my opinion of this redesign quite yet. I do like the addition of the witty illustrations at the tops of the pages; however I'm not 100% sold on the new font. In time, I suppose...

Interns...

...found where you least expect them.

Today's profile on FPO is a Dylan poster (no, not that Dylan poster):



Oh, did I mention that the artists are 4 and 6?

The poster is great. The fact that it was produced by a 4 and 6 year old is just the icing on the cake. From their father:

Due to the impatience of the crew and pressure on the squeegee, each poster had differing amounts of ink coverage. As an introduction to screen printing and poster design, this project was perfect for my two kids. They were pretty much engaged throughout the process. Of course, they had nothing to do with the clean up. Based on this experience, they each designed and made another poster the very next weekend. Now, they are giving out these posters to friends and figuring out what their next compositions will be. Mission accomplished.

What a fun Saturday afternoon project (if, you know, you're into silkscreening. Oh, and have patience)! I think my favorite aspect of this whole experiment is the fact that the experience left the kids wanting to make more. Adorable. It sounds like it's win, win, win all around (with the exception of clean-up).

Love this!

It's pretty clever; but then again, I'm a sucker for negative space.

(via Inspire me now)

Conan responds

Hee hee hee!

I guess the real question here is...

...Will Conan save the princess?

I'm not a big late night TV fan--if I can stay up past Jon Stewart's monologue, that means I'm usually up working--so in our house, Jay Leno's last show came and went without mention, as did Conan's first week as Tonight Show host.

However, I got in late last night, and I did turn Conan on right before bed, if only to see his new backdrop. Have you seen it?



It's fine, it's a backdrop; serving the exact purpose it's there to do... look nice behind the host. However, the folks over at Serious Lunch (found via Gizmodo) must have played a LOT of Nintendo back in the day, because they found that Conan's kind-of stained glass backdrop is really Super Mario in disguise!



Check out Serious Lunch for an animated gif layover of both images.

I think it's really cool--plus, it gives me an excuse to restart my quest to beat MarioKart; apparently, there's a ton of inspiration I'm missing as I try not to fall off Rainbow Road!

So yeah... I want this

First of all, let me just say that I am a huge, huge fan of Swiss Miss. Not just a (huge) fan of the blog, but a fan of her; as her personality shines through in most everything she writes about. I really want to sit down and chat with her for a bit; we clearly like the same sort of things, and if we ever ran out of cool design stuff to talk about (ha!) we have parenthood in common as well.

But enough gushing--about Swiss Miss, anyway. Let's gush about this awesome, AWESOME chest of drawers she came across:





Made by Kent and London, it is definitely drool-inducing.

Inspired by vintage printing blocks, this beautifully finished chest of 26 drawers is made from solid oak - the perfect place to file everything from A-Z!

I think they probably could have stopped at the word perfect--because it is.

(Thanks swiss-miss!)

Hey Microsoft, Bing this!

OK, maybe I'm just biased; but man, when it comes to design, Apple really gets it right. Microsoft? Yeah, not so much. Behold, the new Bing logo:



Bing is supposed to be the next Google--the search engine that is going to change. Your. Life. Or, at least help you find things better. And, taking a page from Google's book, they've designed a pretty bad logo. Brand New has a pretty good post titled Bing sets New Record in Horizontal Scaling. I think we all know where this is going to go:

This is like setting the resolution of your screen to 6,000 pixels wide by 1,000 high. I can’t even imagine how someone arrives at a design solution like this. The shapes resulting from the strenuous horizontal scaling are simply too unflattering and unattractive. There is bad taste and then there is this. What was going through the designer’s mind? “I’ll scale it a little bit. Hmmm, maybe just a little more. More. More. I have so much power. I’m drunk in scaling power. More. More. Scale it more. Don’t stop. Do it. Okay, that’s enough.”

So there you go; yet another check in the bad design column for Microsoft. I think one of the commenters said it best when they said: "Was it designed by an engineer?"

New logos: refreshing, or no?

This weekend I was thumbing through the Week In Review, and what would have been a pretty decent article on some recent logo redesigns was completely ruined by the fact that the magenta plate was about 1/16 of an inch off on press, which meant that every image that had even the tiniest bit of magenta in it pretty much sucked.

Thank goodness the article is online.

Behold the new breed of corporate logo — non-threatening, reassuring, playful, even child-like. Not emblems of distant behemoths, but faces of friends.

Companies like Walmart, Stop and Shop, and even Cheer laundry detergent are going out with the old; in with the new, softer, more fun, wheeeeeeeeee, we're having a good time over here! I mean, lots more lowercase and swooshes (but not those late 90's/early millennium tech swooshes).

Check out the slideshow at the top of the page for some before and afters.

Toy Story 3

Seeing as though we just saw Up this weekend (I love you, Pixar!), I thought this was appropriate:



Can't wait!

Right on Target

I have a love (love, love, love, love)/hate relationship with Target. I love the place, I really do. However, I hate the fact that I can't go into one without spending $200 in one pop. Seriously. It's like their pumping the air full of some kind of chemical that makes me want to buy every. single. thing. in. the. store.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for packaging.

Not that their old packaging was anything to brag about... but their new packaging certainly is.

Last time I was at Target (probably last week--maybe the week before; I try and stretch out the time in between trips but it never quite works out the way I want it to), I was in the baby section, and I noticed that the Target brand diapers and wipes had a new, exciting look:



Fancy, fancy, I thought. Turns out, all of Target brand health and beauty products (all 800+ of them), will be looking more fancy fancy. Check out Brand New for a side by side comparison of old versus new packaging, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Yet another check in the love (love, love, love, love) Target column.

Beer!

I love beer, and I love design; so what's not to love about the following post on the history of beer packaging?

Beer has come a long way since breweries first had the idea of developing can packaging nearly 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, breweries had a problem producing a can that would withstand the pasteurization process and allow the beer to still taste good when it reached the consumer. In order to withstand the heat and pressure of the process, the first beer cans were constructed of tin and steel and were much more thick and sturdy than the ones we see today. By 1935, the first commercially produced beer in a can hit the market.

Some of the vintage cans are so cool--I love the art deco look of Krueger's. Very interesting to read--and see--the evolution of beer in a can.

(Thanks designsoft, via Twitter)

Salt

The installation in the following image is made of salt. Salt, people.



I can't even wrap my head around that one. I mean, when I was a kid, and we went out to eat, I loved to pour out a package of sugar and trace designs into it. However, this takes it about a bazillion levels beyond that.

Here's video of just how Motoi Yamamoto does it:



And here's some links to view even more of his absolutely amazing work:

Design You Can Trust

Colectiva

Booooooom

Salt.

So cool. Unbelievable--but man, so cool.

Yummy, yummy posters

Ann Clarke designed these beautiful posters for the 2012 Olympics. I love the graphic simplicity... just stunning.







(via kottke.org)

The Design Disease

Print Magazine tweeted a link to The Design Disease yesterday, and it totally made me laugh.

It seems to me that if you're a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it's there in every aspect of life. You can't stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.

The post goes on to show a day in the life of a designer, through pictures. As in, you're out and about, and came across this parking garage sign:

and it would annoy you, really annoy you, that it wasn't quite centred and it wasn't quite justified and it wasn't left aligned and it wasn't right aligned. You see sometimes the disease will stop you enjoying things...

(Yes. Yes it would.)

Then you'd see this:

...and wonder how on earth that can be allowed to happened. Who would space type like that?

(Seriously. Why is this out for public viewing?)

The entire post is very, very funny--and very, very true (at least for me!)

Dear American...

...Your website stinks!

My friend Marcy tweeted this link to Dustin Curtis's website yesterday, and I think it's pretty genius:

Dear American Airlines,

I redesigned your website's front page, and I'd like to get your opinion.

I’m a user interface designer. I travel sometimes. Recently, I had the horrific displeasure of booking a flight on your website, aa.com. The experience was so bad that I vowed never to fly your airline again. But before we part ways, I have a couple questions and three suggestions for you.

How did this happen? If I was running a company with the distinction and history of American Airlines, I would be embarrassed -- no ashamed -- to have a website with a customer experience as terrible as the one you have now. How does your CEO, Gerard J. Arpey, justify treating customers this way? Why does your board of directors approve of this? Your website is abusive to your customers, it is limiting your revenue possibilities, and it is permanently destroying the brand and image of your company in the mind of every visitor.

Dustin then goes on to show the current home page (view it here--blech, I know), and his suggested redesign.

What a great way to grab a company's attention! Not to mention market yourself as well. Brilliant, all around!

(Thanks Marcy!)

One Day of Design

I'm pretty excited for this book to come out:

When I wake up, when I check the time, when I brush my teeth, when I get dressed, when I have breakfast, when I cross the street, when I call to say I’ll be late again, when I work, when I have a break, when I get back home, when I relax and when I go to sleep I am surrounded by graphics and illustrations.

'One Day' takes a comprehensive look at how these graphics have entered our daily lives, and adorn everything from alarm clocks to skateboards. Not only do these graphics apply beauty, life and personality to our objects, but they also create a relationship with us, when they become part of the “visual soundtrack” to our lives.

According to Amazon, it will be released stateside at the end of next week. Which is when I will be ordering it!

More stuff I love

This business card:



A card for a developer, with a behind the scenes peek at all the code? Excellent idea! (My husband is a developer--I wish I came up with something like this for him!)

Check out webdesignerdepot for 99 more really cool cards--some you've seen, others you haven't... either way, a lot of these cards are great!

(thanks to Andrew Kelsall, via Twitter for the link)

Love it!

I want this shirt!



Visit Typography Shop ("Our Neue Blog." Heh heh heh) for all the font addicts in your life. I think I may have to get the kiddies some shirts as well--I love the tagline on that page, too: "Teach your children well. About type."

I love it!

(thanks to HOWmag, via Twitter)

Yummy, yummy print

I am in love with FPO--For Print Only--a new site from Under Consideration. I think they say it best:

FPO is a blog dedicated to both the visual stimulus and the detailing of the development and production of printed matter... The content of FPO will be gathered by submissions from our readers as well as by the findings we make online. We will do our best to show the most recent work produced, so that the blog doesn't feel like you have seen everything before. Whenever possible we will have the full scope of production details and project overview but we will also post projects where we are unable to gather all that information when we think they are worth sharing despite the lack of minutia.

Jessica Hische Business Cards

The work featured thus far is so inspiring, so beautiful. I love that they are trying to feature all the specs: production costs and time, printer credits, etc. It's nice to see beautiful work, even nicer to see how long it took, how much it cost, and--of course--giving credit to all those involved in the process, not just the designer (because even though we designers rock, printed work doesn't happen without the, er, printer).

Stop by FPO and drink up some lovely printed work. Because print is SO not dead.