An Oldie But A Goodie

Dockers has a new campaign out for men. Nice use of typography and although it's not a new concept using type as the body's silhouette (which, by the way, is terrible if you read the message), I can't help but admire the way they did theirs. It's so eye-catching I hardly noticed the khakis that they're trying to sell!

New Ways of Reading

How clever is this? This is a nice little product from what looks like a nice little company called twelvesouth. I love it for personal use because you can hide it away if you leave it at home... and there it shall lie safe within your library. Now, aside from it being well made, it's also a really nice price (considering how much interesting laptop bags go for these days). Pretty good out-of-the-box thinking on this one if you ask me!

Newbies

I'm always paying attention to refreshing things being posted out there and saw these newbies this morning and thought I'd share them along.

This wine label (made by an experienced labelmaker) was screen-printed and named after the country’s international phone code. The font is based on the one used by the Bulgarian Post in the 1960s. A selective transparent UV matt varnish was applied on the pattern of circles around the logo against a glossy background--and then a transparent puff-up varnish on the +359 logo to create the appearance of wave lines. The label is also bordered with a glossy hot foil stamp and there are some tiny hot foil dots around the logo as well. Turned out really fun looking!




I found this label's technique interesting too. It was a seasonal greeting of spiced mulled wine made for clients and friends from a design firm over in London called Buddy. Their Christmas wishes were pad printed matt silver directly onto the bottle glass (the design being suggestive of measuring jug graphics). The concept went: the more you drunk the merrier the message. Very festive, indeed!

The Junk That Gets Made

I was going through my email and found this. Totally forgot to post it from way back last spring when my best friend was visiting me from Hawaii. She and her husband stayed at this old hotel in Kenmore Square and in the room was this hilarious, unforgettable bar of soap. I think we gawked and examined it for an hour because none of us had ever seen such BAD DESIGN!

What we couldn't figure out was: on the packaging it boasted about being "green" and saving the environment, blah, blah, blah, yet the waste it produced by the expensive die cut of the box and eliminating the center of the bar of soap itself! "Waste reducing"... hardly.

Whoever thought it to be clever to die cut a hole in a small bar of hotel cheap soap so you can put 3 fingers through it?? I wish my clients were so care-free with their budgets to allow such madness... for I could put it to much better use.

Visionary Cardboard Boxes

This one can't go without sharing before I head out on holiday. Came across another awesome and innovative concept coming out of Oz. A design firm in Melbourne, Australia, have designed a Perforated House!

"The use of operable walls, doors, curtains and glass walls enables the occupants to change the experience and environment. This architectural manipulation of space blurred the boundaries between inside and outside, the public and private realm. The manipulated spaces overlapped and borrowed the amenity and context of it’s surrounding environment." -- KUD

An Interesting Catch

I'm aways looking around to discover talented work being done inside my favorite mediums because it's the best way to inspire my mind and motivate me to work. I found some new silkscreen styles that looked good to share due of their use of contrasting color. Also found a couple of interesting ways to use script which, by the way, look almost exactly like something I did way back in design school years ago. I'll see if I still have that around so I can scan it and show it to you. Hoping I do.








Now the script. I keep looking at this and wonder if nothing is really that new when it comes to conceptualization -- that it's just been recreated, recycled, reconstructed, redesigned by someone else's different perspectival mind. So many decades of creative thinking going around the world and back. Our unconscious mind sees many things, who's to know how it collects it all? Just uncanny that this first and second poster below are not only doing that, but they also came out of Australia. Kind of interesting to me.

Coffee Pressed Right!

To letterpress -- let me tell you, it is every designer's dream. Nothing stands out more than the gorgeous texture and delicate look of letterpress printing. This is a new coffee that opted for this treatment on their new packaging. How classy was that?! Nicely designed... I just want to pick it up and hug those beans!

Nice Branding Movie

I thought this would be fun to share because--for those not in the know--it's exactly how it's done. It's a little movie about brand and design development for a chocolate company called TCHO.

What I like about it is how they put the steps together as if it were as easy as saying the alphabet. Well done (!) for it takes MONTHS to do what they visually share in this quick 3-minute vid. WISH it was so fast and simple!

Switchplate Style

These clever canucks came up with a good idea which I thought I'd share--unfortunately they are only prototypes at the moment. Actually, they do have one which was produced and is now selling on MoMA, but it's not as grand as these two down below (why they didn't get chosen just baffles me). Anyway, how ingenious to take advantage of the light switch space, no?! Simply up my alley.

Ethereal Etsy

Etsy is really an extraordinary online marketplace. There are so many thousands upon thousands of talented people out there sharing art. You can spend weeks on that site always discovering something new by the hour.

I came across this interesting photographer who experiments with different styles -- thus creating very whimsical, ethereal and kind of gritty photos. They are remarkable. You sort of get lost in them making up your own fairytale to the story she's showing you. Check out her shop irenesuchocki next time you visit Etsy! She also has a blog which showcases her gorgeous work if you click here.

Evian Couture

You've got to love it. Evian selecting high-end fashion designers to bring fun design to life with their famously clear bottles. It's a great age to live in with everyone being so design-forward these days.

From top down are: Christian Lacroix, Paul Smith and Jean Paul Gaultier.