HOW Design Question of the Week

HOW magazine has started asking a design question of the week in their online forums. The first question was: "What was the best and/or worst part of your first design job? What made it memorable?"

Monochrom

Fun for Friday: check out the fun icons and wallpapers over at Monochrom, including the fruit label iconset, shown above.
[via ILT on Twitter]

Charley Harper: The World of Birds

The Dinosaurs and Robots blog showcases Charley Harper's We Think the World of Birds, a commissioned illustration for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. There is an interview with Harper and a link to purchase the poster online. [via Coudal Partners]

iGoogle Artist Themes

Google has introduced Artist Themes for personalized Google homepages. Artists and designers in the lineup include Jeff Koons, Michael Graves, Philippe Stark (who doesn't seem to be listening to his own recent proclamation that "design is a dreadful form of expression"), glass master Dale Chihuly, aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and more.

Japanese Crepe Paper Illustrations

Over at BibliOdyssey, PK showcases a charming collection of Japanese crepe paper fairy tales. The books were produced between about 1880 and 1940 in various languages and feature wonderfully atmospheric illustrations.

Zeldman: The Vanishing Personal Site

Jeffrey Zeldman muses on the vanishing personal site. "We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments." He showcases the site of interactive art director Jody Ferry (shown above), which sends you immediately to several external web services—the LinkedIn resume, the Flickr portfolio, etc. Zeldman doesn't approve or disapprove, but calls for conscious decision-making when it comes to scattering ourselves around the internet. He notes that "outsourcing the publication of our own content has long-term implications that point to more traffic for the web services we rely on, and less traffic and fewer readers for ourselves." This is an interesting point, especially for designers and artists looking to present a focused online presence—to quote from the insightful comment session: "technology has changed the way we market ourselves and our skills." Worth a read!

Keep Calm: Mai 68 Posters

Limited edition printer proofs of Mai 68 posters are available at Keep Calm. This May marks the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Paris rebellions, which (in ridiculously brief summary) mark the turbulent shift from conservative to liberal values in French society. During the protests, students and faculty took over the École des Beaux-Arts and silkscreened hundreds of political posters. An exhibition of these posters is currently on in London, and a book cataloging 40 posters from the collection has been produced. Keep Calm is offering printer proofs of the book—each is a large format, hand-screened printed reproduction of an original Mai 68 poster. There are fewer of 10 proofs of each design, so get them while you can! Meanwhile, if your history is hazy, Wikipedia has more info on the events of May 1968 and how the rebellions both impacted and were influenced by other things happening around the globe.

Font Bots

Fun for Friday: Jonathon Yule's awesome Font Bots, created from sans serif typefaces. Yule is a Toronto-based freelancer who is interested in "typography, grids and the intertwinement of design and play." Shown: the bots for Helvetica (Helbotica!) and Futura. [via HOW]

Quit Your Job

Food for Thought Fun for Friday: 37signals features a Fine Living TV special called Quit Your Job! "These companies aren’t going to beat Google, they aren’t building a better iPod or bread slicer. These entrepreneurs are doing simple things they love and making a pretty decent living from it. They didn’t leave their careers to make millions, they just made a lateral change to a job that is more fulfilling and makes them happier." Advocating small steps towards a more fulfilling professional life, the post also boasts a very interesting comment session. This one goes out to all my designer friends who are frustrated in their current situations and dreaming of a higher level creative satisfaction.

Q&A with Khoi Vinh, NYTimes.com Design Director

Though Subtraction.com often gives readers a peek into Khoi Vinh's life as design director of the NYTimes website, this week there was an official Q&A with Vinh. The discussion is part of the ongoing NYTimes Talk to the Newsroom series—the Q&A with graphics director Steve Duenes was recently featured here.

Photos from the NY Typography Walking Tour

In case you missed the recent typography walking tour of the Lower East Side led by Tobias Frere-Jones (which, like me, you probably did, seeing as how it sold out almost instantly), Jason Santa Maria has photos from the day available to view on Flickr.

Transparent Image Tape Transfer

(Say that five times fast!) The Wishing On Clovers blog has an interesting tutorial up: Transparent Image Tape Transfer Tutorial for ATC, Collage, and Altered Art. Potentially a very handy trick for art school projects or production comps. [via How About Orange]

Preventative Maintenance Monthly

Don't miss BibliOdyssey's showcase of vintage army publication Preventative Maintenance Monthly, featuring covers drawn by legendary comic illustrator Will Eisner.

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press

At last! The Machine That Made Us, Stephen Fry's BBC Four documentary about the Gutenberg Press, is now available to view—all six parts are on YouTube: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6. Fry investigates the history of the Gutenberg Press, following the drama-laden trail of Johannes Gutenberg, apprenticing in a metal foundry, and even rallying a team of craftsmen to build a working replica of the original press. Even if Fry wasn't one of my favorites, I'd consider this a must-see series!

i love typography (iLT)

The i love typography blog, born last August, is the endeavor of Japan-based typophile John Boardley. "iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them." Plan on spending lots of time on this site! Also: Boardley has one of the coolest Twitter backgrounds I've seen. [via 37signals]

The Rather Difficult Font Game

More Fun for Friday: try your hand at The Rather Difficult Font Game.

Speak Up Book Recommendations

Fun for Friday: Browse the latest list of design book recommendations over at Speak Up. Their recipe for recommended reading has some great ingredients: posters, Vignellis, typography, Bierut, history, criticism, logos, a dash of Heller... worth a look!

Viget Labs

I'm enjoying what the web developers at Viget Labs have done with their site(s). Instead of one giant blog, they've split their sites into four divisions: Advance, Inspire, Extend and Engage. Each blog has a separate design theme—the Inspire blog was made for designers. [via Patrick Haney's Web Design Inspiration set on Flickr]

Starbucks Goes Retro

Brand New muses on the return of the original Starbucks logo and what happens when a globally recognized brand decides to make a visual shift. For quick reference, Brand Autopsy has an older post showing the evolution of the Starbucks logo from the original siren to the ubiquitous green circle.

Progresswear: Helvetica Neue Shirt

Progresswear has a new Helvetica Neue shirt showing the typeface in weights descending from Ultra Black 95 to Ultra Light 25. It's the first in their new line of shirts focusing on design and typography and is available now at a special pre-release price of $18.99. [via JS]

Coroflot: Six Things to Never Do

Carl Alviani has written an article called Building Your Portfolio Website: Six Things to Never Do for Coroflot's Creative Seeds column. Everyone should have a portfolio site, says Alviani: "The problem is, they're so easy to get wrong."