Podcast Guild Logo Contest

Er, apparently there is a Podcast Guild, united in their fight to provide "resources, information, and advocacy for podcasters"... and they are in need of a logo. Their logo contest runs until early May.

New York Magazine: High Priority

Five listings. Two colors. Over 60 designers, including Neville Brody, Jonathan Hoefler, Ellen Lupton, Milton Glaser, and Chip Kidd. As Michael Bierut says, "This exercise, with its prescribed limitations and one-swing-and-you're-out intensity, is as close as the graphic design world gets to an Olympic event." Check out the gallery of designs submitted for New York Magazine's "High Priority" typographic illustration. [via Design Observer]

BibliOdyssey

"Books, Illustrations, Science, History, Visual Materia Obscura, Eclectic Bookart"—if you're interested in any of the aforementioned items, then the BibliOdyssey blog is right up your alley. Best of all, it provides a little fix for those of us who can't quite afford to shell out hundreds for the glorious Albertus Seba Taschen biggie.

The Ultimate... Pen

A recent addition to the MOMA design store is the multi-function pen, designed this year by Adrian Olabuenaga. Pen is kind of an understatement—it's a black ballpoint pen, an orange highlighter, a lead pencil, a stylus for PDAs and a ruler. Personally I'm looking forward to the day when we can just graft design tools to the bones of our fingers (like an artistic Wolverine), but until then, this will do.

Drop Shadows Not Bombs Tee

Brilliant. Funny. Grey. So wrong. So right. Truly the lesser of these two evils. Yours for the wearing for just a few bucks: the Drop Shadows Not Bombs t-shirt from Playground of the Stars.

3-D Alphabets

3-D letters as limited edition Dutch furniture, poems told in 3-D Univers Revolved... modern renderings of typography in the third dimension (including a shout out to Parsons instructor Ji Lee) are showcased by Cool Hunting.

iDesign: Design Thinking

While Dr. Charles Burnette's concept of design thinking is not specifically targeted to creative professionals (rather to educators), surely anything that hones and develops creative and critical thinking skills is useful to designers like ourselves. Burnette defines seven ways of design thinking: intending, Defining, Exploring, Suggesting, Innovating, Goal getting, and kNowing. Learn more and potentially improve your process at idesignthinking.com.

Industries Stationery Warehouse Sale

The annual Industries Stationery warehouse sale starts Saturday, March 25th. They'll be offerring 40% off a huge selection of their own in-house items and Lexon products. If you've never been to IS, you should check it out—they make a beautiful range of blank books, calendars and datebooks (it's a good place for nice yet neutral gifts). Everything is showcased in their Soho store at 91 Crosby Street (slightly north of the corner of Crosby & Spring—near the MOMA design store).

New Quark Logo... Again

Six months ago (see previous post), Quark unveiled a new logo and got blasted for ripping off... well, everybody: Speak Up has a nice visual rundown of what happened, complete with photos of all logos involved. Today Quark unveiled another new logo. The resulting comment session over at 37signals is pretty interesting...

Joshua Davis... Again

Joshua Davis, the "punk, provocateur, the bad boy of design" (or, if you prefer, "the Jackson Pollock of the Internet age"), is in the press again in this showcase from Wired Magazine. Davis has recently collaborated with BMW and the Tate Modern wants a piece of him as well. If you're not familiar with Davis, read the article. Many laud him as a groundbreaking genius, others dismiss him as a cheating hot-shot hack. It's an interesting debate.

Art in a Petri Dish

Anyone interested in pattern design should check out this petri dish art gallery, where naturally occurring biological patterns are infused with vibrant color. Prof Eshel Ben-Jacob (Tel-Aviv University) and Prof. Herbert Levine (UCSD’s National Science Foundation Frontier Center for Theoretical Biological Physics) may have aimed simply to "unravel the adaptation secrets enabling bacterial survival against all odds", but the resulting images often are beautiful little works of art.

Adidas Adicolor

Yes, another Adidas post, but this is cool: Adicolor has returned. Adidas has brought back the DIY color concept it originally launched in 1983, and apparently people are loving it. Whether or not you're in it for the kicks, the site is fun and it's really interesting to see what people are doing with color when given a blank slate. The "inspiration" photo gallery alone makes the whole site worth visiting. www.adidas.com/us/adicolor

iPod shuffle DND

An interesting study in the language of stop and go, hotel doorhangers, type and weird trends, these stickers for the iPod shuffle (how many people have these anymore now that the Nano reigns?) are meant for communicating your conversational availability on the subway. [Via Gizmodo]

Paul Rand's Final Logo

The Speak Up Design Dialog site has an interesting 2-part article about Paul Rand's final logo. An adventure story for the true design school nerd in all of us, complete with a Rand backstory and a bit part for Steven Heller:
Part 1
Part 2

Job op: Color Expert for Adidas

Adidas is looking for a color expert to join their footwear design team in Portland, Oregon. Hey, how often does this chance arise? More details via Coolhunting.

Jan Von Holleben: Dreams of Flying

Photographer Jan Von Holleben's US debut exibition opens Friday and showcases the award-winning Dreams of Flying series. These are some of my favorite photos of the last year and are filled with fun, color, adventure and an interesting blend of effectively posed composition against the illusion of motion. The full series, along with Holleben's other work, can be viewed on his website www.janvonholleben.com.

Exhibition: 17 March thru 29 April 2006
(Reception on Friday, 17 March, 6-8pm)
Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
223 West 21st St., # 2G

Start Mobile Call For Animation

Start Mobile, brainchild of San Francisco art gallery Start SOMA and purveyor of downloadable urban art for phone wallpapers, has an open call for animated submissions. "I have absolutely no idea what mobile art is going to look like," says John Doffing, creator of Start Mobile, "but I know that by empowering artists to actually create new art for this new medium, we will all find out shortly!" More info and specs available from Coolhunter.

RIP: Martin Solomon

Designer, typographer, artist and beloved Parsons instructor Martin Solomon passed away last week on Wednesday, March 7, 2006. He is perhaps best known for his book The Art of Typography and the typographical logos he designed for Hyundai, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Fisher Price, and Volvo Automobiles, which are recognized worldwide. A wonderful quote from Solomon himself: "Drawing letters is synonymous with studying the fine arts. It is a disciplined art because of its exactness, yet within its rigorous requirements, it reveals the free flow of mystical lines."

A memorial service is scheduled for Thursday, May 4, 2006 at FIT. More info.

Solomon was highly respected and adored by many of his colleagues and students. Mara Kurtz, who studied with him and then went on to become an instructor herself, shared these words of tribute with the Parsons community:

"He was an incredible influence in my life and was the person who truly motivated me to become a graphic designer. It was because of Martin that I became President of the Type Directors Club and because of his encouragement that I pursued my photoillustration career. He was the model for my teaching at Parsons and was always there for me, with a big smile and hug, whenever I asked him for advice.

"Martin was a great, supportive friend for whom I had the greatest admiration. I will never forget him and hope you will all take a few minutes to think about this very special man and the marvelous, memorable work he shared with all of us."

Getty Images: Edit Magazine

Tagged as "A magazine by the people who create images for the people who use them", Getty Images Edit Magazine is actually a very interesting read. It touches on all sorts of photo-related areas (book cover design, reportage, motion graphics, etc.) and is available in online and print versions. Lots of info and images packed into one place—definitely worth a look!

AmoebaCorp Online Scrapbooks

The guys at AmoebaCorp, a Toronto based design firm, have a great section of online scrapbooks. Full of sketches, photos, media and miscellany, the presentation is fun and flipping through them makes for a great design blast.
Bizarre side note: while cruising the AmoebaCorp website, I came across a wedding invitation they'd designed for a girl I went to summer camp with in 9th grade... !! It's a small, small (design) world...

Handselecta: Graffiti Fonts

A font foundry specializing in graffiti fonts? Handselecta is just that (though they call it "urban calligraphy"). Their first volume of fonts was just released in January, with more in production.

Web Logos

Fontshop has an interesting rundown of some of the latest logo trends on the web, highlighting the typefaces of each and noting current style and color preferences (lime Shrek green is still going strong).

Elements of Typographic Style for Web

FontShop highlights a new site dedicated to the daunting task of trying to control type on the web. Based on Robert Bringhurt’s The Elements of Typographic Style (the "bible of typography"), the Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web site sets age-old typographical practices against the established difficulties of manipulating type within web design, to interesting results. Certainly worth a look if you work with type on the web, especially if you haven't been paying attention to the new ways of the web (you'll be surprised). Note to web designers: the author, Richard Rutter, scores major points for working with the standards and accessibility practices of the W3C.

Furniture Design Tattoos

Do you love the Eames lounge enough to have it emblazoned on your body? Or do you prefer the Eames rocker? Or perhaps the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair is more your style... Whatever your preference, Connecticut-based tattoo artist Nick Baxter will ink it onto your skin. [via Needled]
Note to Parsons crew: Do you think a gesture this dramatic could have improved our grades in Process & Skills? Maybe. I bet La Gruda has one of these underneath her clothes.

Spell with Flickr

Well, thanks to the wonders of Flickr and API technology, lazy graphic design students everywhere can now cheat on those inevitable assignments that involve going out and photographing type. Now there is Spell with Flickr, a simple mashup that spells with photographs of letters and numbers (you click until you're happy with what you see). Go on... try it.

Greenwich Letterpress

Sometimes Daily Candy surprises me—today's feature is a letterpress shop on Christopher Street (between 6th &: 7th). DC is touting it as a haven for gifts, but we designers know that places like this can often yield unexpected finds for our own projects. I'm looking forward to checking it out—here's hoping it's a cool indie-version of Kate's Paperie rather than just more of the same... though I'm not sure that's what's promised by the DC writeup (cute twentysomething sisters cranking out whimsy on an old-school press). We'll see. Looks like they just opened in January, so their website is still in progress.

Wonderbra Ad

Apparently this Wonderbra ad caused quite a fuss last week. Between cries of tastelessness and the claim that it was ripped off an ad done several years ago by a South African agency, it's been interesting. Personally, I think it's a clever use of advertising space—eye-catching, interactive, and appealing to the masses (all the women who wield the Wonderbra and all those who love the result). I also think this is one of those things that walks the line—people are heralding it as brilliance, but I have a feeling if any of us had tried something like this in art school we'd have been laughed out of the room. Ah well. [via Adverbox]