idsgn (a design blog)

MTV International is launching a new look this week across all 64 of its worldwide channels, led by UK studio Universal Everything.

The new look, referred to by the design team as “pop x 1000%”, retains the old logo but strips it of the colors and textures that often adorned the iconic symbol since its launch in 1981. “Now the logo is sacred,” says Roberto Bagatti, Vice President of Creative for MTV Networks.

After witnessing Calvin Klein's now infamous ‘orgy’ billboard in New York City, and the controversy surrounding it, contributing writer Josh Smith looks into the history of sex in advertising.

A few weeks ago, while rushing in the morning commute, I noticed a new Calvin Klein billboard in Manhattan's SoHo district. The suggestive poses and bare skin seemed pretty typical for a fashion ad. In fact, I might not have even noticed it, except that it seemed unusual to show such intimacy between one girl and three guys. I carried on my way though, without too much thought.

Later that day, the public outcry broke to major news outlets. Had I been witness to a newsworthy event? It was odd.

Advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, known for pushing boundaries in their work, have launched an experimental new website. In their own words: “Part agency website, part digital experiment.”

Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight is a documentary about the legendary designer, who last week celebrated his 80th birthday. I was able to catch the film on the final night of its run in New York. 

Largely spoken in his own words, the film takes a captivating look into the life and work of Glaser. Visiting his studio, his home, meeting his wife and many of his coleagues, the film leaves you with the feeling you've just had a conversation with a close friend.

Glaser shares many inspiring theories about the industry and his career

Trailing a series of failed and questionable commercials, Microsoft has launched an experimental new advertising campaign. Can Superman, puke jokes, and lolcats make IE cool again?

The new campaign features actor Dean Cain (former Superman from TV's Lois and Clark) in a series of mock-PSAs, advertising the launch of Internet Explorer 8. Produced by Indiana-based ad agency Bradley and Montgomery, the commercials try hard to be funny in spots like S.H.Y.N.E.S.S. ("Sharing Heavily Yet Not Enough Sharing Still") poking fun at web users who over-share lolcats, while going for the gross-out factor in O.M.G.I.G.P. ("Oh My God I'm Gonna Puke") featuring a woman who's accidentally seen her partner's obscene browser history.

Michael Jackson may have been more famous for his eccentricities as the years went by, but at the height of his fame, it was his music and talent as an entertainer that inspired a generation; including many of today's most talented artists.

As a tribute to the recently passed ‘king’, we've collected some of the defining marks he left on popular culture, believing that the creative spark of one artist can light a flame for many others.

Forget about decision engines. A new tool is here to revolutionize the way we search, visually. Introducing Spezify.

For most of us Googling is like second nature, but a couple guys in Sweden are trying get away from the endless lists of blue text links and create a more intuitive experience. Spezify searches websites, blogs, images, tweets, even video, arranging the results into a virtual bulletin board. Providing an instant ‘big picture’ overview of your subject.

Using Tokyo Metro as a guide, Information Architects maps the world's most influential websites as a virtual subway system.

Information Architects (iA) recently published Web Trend Map 4, the latest version of their popular web diagram. The diagram references a selection of the top 333 websites based on traffic, revenue, age, ownership, and character.

NBA basketball team The Philadelphia 76ers are officially making a switch back to their classic 1977 logo. Making fans happy and adding to the growing list of brands going ‘retro’ in 2009.

Introduced in 1977, the vintage blue and red logo was used famously during the Sixers' heyday, including their 1982-83 championship run. In 1997 it was replaced with the ‘modernized’ gold and silver logo, which has been in use ever since.

I'm no sports fanatic but I'm happy to see the classic logo come back. We've already seen leading soft drink and snack companies do it, so why not professional sports teams? The '77 logo still looks clean and refreshing next to the mess of swooshes and stars that reek of bad 90's design. I'm only amazed it took them this long to make the switch.

HandMadeFont creates unique, untraditional fonts out of some crazy materials—dirt, grass, toast, yarn... you name it. 

Estonia-based HandMadeFont was founded in 2008 by Vladimir Loginov and Maksim Loginov. With an amazing 168 alphabets now available in their collection, you can find pretty much anything to make unique, striking headlines. Most sets are limited to single-case A-Z characters with numbers and limited punctuation, available as high-resolution Photoshop/Illustrator files.

A 10 font pack goes for 250 € (about $350) and or 780 € (around $1,050) for the entire collection.

Although many people will never realize the change, Mozilla has just announced a new logo for the upcoming Firefox 3.5.

The (slightly) refreshed identity was designed by Anthony Piraino from the Iconfactory, directed by the logo's original designer along with the team at Mozilla. As described in the extensive creative brief, the goal was to modernize the overall look of the logo. Did it really look out of date?

You have to look close (grab your magnifying glass), but the most notable differences include finer hair detail and depth shading on the fox, flames that wrap around the globe, and a few heavy coats of gloss on the globe itself. I don't know if it really looks more modern, but it is definitely more detailed. Which is not necessarily a good thing for an identity—a lot of the charm of the original logo was in its iconic stylization. But truth be told, it looks pretty much the same.

When we think of finding images online we normally think in keywords. It works. But when we want to find a particular image, trying to think of the right keywords can be tough. A new site, TinEye, is trying to change that by allowing users to search using pictures instead.

Upload an image to TinEye and it will do a pixel-by-pixel search for similar images across the Internet, even images that have been cropped or Photoshopped.

Quickly becoming a favorite among copyright-conscious creatives, it provides an easy way to find unauthorized use of copyrighted work (something that was nearly impossible before). Idée, the company behind TinEye was proud to announce on their blog that TinEye helped photographer Shelia Smart to recover 1,000 Euros after discovering the unlicensed usage of her image on a book cover. Not too bad for a free service.

With a significant decline in sales, Pizza Hut is responding to the tough economic times by launching a new branding strategy. Will ‘The Hut’ make you want to eat out again?

It's no secret, more consumers are choosing to dine at home and avoid 'junk' foods to save money. The largest player in the pizza industry is trying to win back pizza fans with a new image and menu items like all-natural multigrain pizza, lasagna, and wings.

This is the third installment in the “Know your type” series, where we take a look into the origins of some of the most interesting and commonly used typefaces in design today. This month, we look at the classic, geometric sans-serif, Futura.

Inspired by the Bauhaus

Following the Bauhaus design philosophy, German type designer Paul Renner first created Futura between 1924 and 1926. Although Renner was not a member of the Bauhaus, he shared many of its views, believing that a modern typeface should express modern models rather than be a rivial of a previous design. Futura was commercially released in 1927, commissioned by the Bauer type foundry.

Once a mainstay of the pre-digital design & advertising industry, Photo-Lettering is making a comeback thanks to independent type foundry House Industries.

The Photo-Lettering library, a collection of film-based display type, was widely used by art directors and designers from 1936 until the rise of desktop publishing. Pioneering type house Photo-Lettering, Inc. (or PLINC, as it was affectionately known) utilized photo technology in the production of commercial typography and lettering, offering the largest library from a single foundry (before or since). Featuring type hand-drawn by the likes of Herb Lubalin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, New York City-based PLINC employed such influential designers as Ed Benguiat. Since going out of business in the late 1980s, graphic designers today best know Photo-Lettering from its highly collected type catalogs.

Why do we keep recreating the same thing over and over?

It's what I began asking myself after attending the premiere of Gary Hustwit's new film Objectified. The film features several heavyweights in the design industry, among many others: Jonathan Ive, Paola Antonelli and Karim Rashid, who was present for a discussion and Q&A after the film.

I was struck by an opinion shared by Karim Rashid that shed some light on his own work, an opinion which has lingered in my creative process ever since

David Lynch's Interview Project is a documentary road trip across the United States, offering a fascinating look into the lives of 121 different people along the way. 

The online series is currently in its third episode, with a new 3-4 minute interview released every three days over the next year. The filming took place over 70 days (and 20,000 miles), directed by Austin Lynch (David Lynch's son) and Jason S. Subjects were randomly found driving along roads, going into bars and different locations, and asked to share their personal story.

2009 is turning out to be the year of retro food packaging. We've already seen Pepsi and General Mills try it out, now Nabisco is following suit with vintage renditions of Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies.

The vintage-inspired packaging, from Kraft-owned Nabisco, focuses on a clean minimal aesthetic—gone are the countless gradients, glows, and warped type. While simple, it is a breath of fresh air on supermarket shelves typically stuffed with over-designed products. A nice way to reinvent a couple of otherwise boring products.

Microsoft officially launched Bing worldwide today, a rebranding of their Live Search engine. With a new identity and features that promise to make searching easier, will you say goodbye to Google and ‘Bing it’?

Bing, dubbed as a "decision engine", is Microsoft's attempt at winning some of the search market from Google and Yahoo in a fight for advertising dollars. The name was conceived with help from branding company Interbrand, chosen for its simplistic spelling (and the fact it can be used as a verb). To launch the service, Microsoft has hired JWT for a nearly $100 million marketing campaign, beginning with a 60 second TV ad.

Just when you thought the Disney brand couldn't be stretched any further, here comes Disney-branded produce. The most recent addition to the family of products: Disney "Farm Fresh" eggs. Now available at your local grocery store alongside High School Musical avocados and Finding Nemo oranges.

What makes an egg Disney? A small one-color stamp of "your pals" on the shells... and a higher price tag. It is obviously aimed at kids, but what kids even see the egg shells? The TV commercial shows eggs prepared in a "fun" Mickey Mouse shape, but good luck creating that at home. Still, these eggs are flying off the shelves.

LiveSurface is a Photoshop template library that allows you to easily place your own designs on a variety of surfaces like billboards, t-shirts, and boxes. 

I've known about LiveSurface for a while now, so I thought I'd finally try it out. It looks like the perfect solution for doing client mock-ups and it definitely beats the "old way"—finding images on Google and spending way too long with the Lasso tool. 

The images from LiveSurface are high-resolution, multi-layered, and come built-in with 3D planes.

Earlier this week, Dustin Curtis (a user interface designer) wrote an open letter to American Airlines addressing the poor user experience at its website, aa.com.

An amazing mix of 2D and 3D in a new music video for the band The Dead Pirates, created by McBess and Simon Landrein from The Mill in London.

From McBess' blog:

I present to you WOOD a music video Simon and I did for my band the Dead Pirates, it took us around 4 month of joy and tears of happiness . We had the chance to get some big help from Dr Mushroom , Mooe and Asterokid, and of course from the Mill who produced it.

A t-shirt is also available from this video on Threadless Select

This is the second entry in the “Know your type” series, where we take a look into the origins of some of the most interesting and commonly used typefaces in design today. This month, we look at the history of Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Verlag.

Inspired by the Guggenheim's Art Deco lettering

This year the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary in New York. Designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1950's, The Guggenheim is one of 20th century's most important architectural landmarks. The museum is the permanent home to a renowned collection of modern and contemporary art—but it's the lettering on the outside that we came to see.

Card Observer is a great new resource for inspiration that aims to showcase the best in business card design.

As stated on the website, "We do this for a couple of reasons: to shine the spotlight on the talented designers who create these beautiful cards, and to inspire you."

Below are a few handpicked favorites

Ije Nwokorie, Senior Strategist at Wolff Olins in the UK discusses the importance of brands in recession.

Not long after releasing their (controversial) new logo, Pepsi announces 'Pepsi Throwback'. Throwback features a retro look and is sweetened with natural sugar, as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup. 

It looks like a similar product to Pepsi Retro, released last year in the Mexican market with a similar package.

Located in Kansas City, chefBURGER is a new burger joint with some great branding by Tad Carpenter at Design Ranch.

At chefBURGER, you'll find some unique burgers with unusual toppings like fried green tomatoes, cranberry chutney, and sriracha coleslaw—which you can enjoy alongside a spiked milkshake. The logo, which features an "ever-changing burger head", was inspired by the restaurant's seemingly endless burger options.

It's no secret most designers hate Comic Sans. But now, thanks to type designer Hannes von Döhren, we have a new (free) alternative called "HVD Comic Serif". Originally released in 2007, it now comes in a OpenType "Pro" version with an eastern, central and Western European language support.

The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas has a fresh new logo created by DJ Stout of Pentagram. The identity gets its inspiration from the architecture of the museum's new building, with its recurring use of geometric shapes and rich colors, designed by architect Ricardo Legorreta. The new logo is a welcoming improvement over the existing logo, which was nicknamed the 'Nuclear Spur.'

A fun look into letterpress printing with Mikey Burton. 

via we love typography

From Pentagram comes an unusual concept to create a series of "gateways" for the city of Newark, New Jersey. The designers were asked to mark the points of arrival in Newark and to address the history and culture of the city in the urban landscape. The proposed idea places a series of symbols on the Newark streetscape that would be visible from Google Earth, as well as the ground.

Mickey Mouse is jumping on designer toy bandwagon. On a recent trip to Disney World, I came across Vinylmation, a new series of 3" vinyl "designer" toys (which stood out among the typical Disney souvenirs). The toys which appear to be inspired by Kid Robot's infamous Dunny, feature the iconic Mickey Mouse silhouette with unique designs from the artists at Disney Design Group and Imagineering.

Vinylmation was first introduced in 2008 as a series of pins, featuring a few of the same designs from the first series. The toys are now available in 5 series—Parks 1 & 2, Urban 1 & 2, and a Holiday series—each featuring 12 collectible designs in blind packages. Inside each box, you'll find a small collectors card along with the vinyl which is stamped with the artist's signature. A few additional designs are also available in 9" form, along with a blank version for DIYers. 

In contrast to yesterday's earth-friendly post about saving paper comes a music video made with tons of paper. "Everytime", the video for the London-based band Oi Va Voi, was painstakingly created by Katarzyna Kijek & Przemysław Adamski using paper shredders (and a lot of creativity). 

The process took exactly one month from the shooting day to the final render. After editing and synchronizing the initial footage in Premiere, every third frame was exported and printed to paper. Each page was shredded and shot three times, blended with adjacent frames in different configurations.

The United States Business Card Company hand-prints business cards on a variety of unique material. Since today is Earth Day, we are going to focus on one of the most unique of them all: recycled breakfast cereal boxes.

Photo from Flickr by Chris Toumanian

Richard Meneely, the man behind the USBCC, has been operating a hand letterpress since 1986 using metal type and photopolymer plates.

Sunny D (formerly Sunny Delight) has been rebranded in the UK by global brand consultancy Elmwood. 

The new Sunny D is an entirely new drink, which now contains 70% fruit juice with no artificial ingredients, preservatives, or added sugar. The new product (including the packaging) has taken three years to develop. The redesign focuses on the natural ingredients and evokes images of Californian surf culture, aiming to capture a healthy, outdoorsy feel.

This postcard arrived in the mail from stock photography company Veer:

At first it just looks like a normal postcard (with some nice varnished/debossed type), but when the postcard is exposed to sunlight something special happens.

San Francisco-based band Boy In Static have just released a new music video for their song “Toy Baby Grand.” The video was created using Apple's TextEdit with nothing but freely available animated GIFs and some brightly colored type.

Last night was the most recent installment of SVA's DOT DOT DOT lecture series in New York City. The topic this month was "The Influencers" and I had the opportunity to hear from web designer Jason Santa Maria on being influenced by print design.

I started out in school as a print designer and I only came to web design afterwards. But, print design and all the stuff that I learned when I was at school had a gigantic influence on me. Especially things like traditional typography and especially editorial design, book design, newspaper design... And when I came to the web, I didn't really see any of that really happening.

Print design vs. web design

Jason showed some great examples using Wired magazine, comparing their print edition to their online edition. He pointed out how the visual design in the print edition gave the articles a tone and feeling, just from glancing at it. The web edition, being mostly a dump of text, lacked this. While these examples were from several years ago, not much has changed since then.

If you haven't seen the cover art for Merriweather Post Pavilion yet—the new album from the Baltimore-based psych-folk band, Animal Collective—you might want to grab a barf bag and check it out here. For the rest of you, I'll save you the headache (for now).

The cover features a repeating pattern of "leaves" that appear to move in waving motion. I have to admit, when I first saw the cover in iTunes, I thought I was looking at an animation. But, of course, I came to the realization that it's actually an optical illusion, which is based the works from Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka. Whoever said science has no place in rock 'n' roll?

Akiyoshi Kitaoka (born 1961) is a Professor of Psychology in Kyoto, Japan. After receiving his PhD in 1991, he specialized in visual perception and visual illusions of geometrical shape, brightness, color, in motion illusions and other visual phenomena. He became renowned through his "Rotating snakes" illusion in 2003. 

So, how does it work?

I drink a lot of tea. At any given time, my cupboard is overflowing with nearly a dozen kinds of herbal teas. One of my favorite brands by far is Yogi Tea, I enjoy their unique blends almost as much as I (used to) enjoy the unique packaging. The packaging had a clean and simple (yet, exotic) look featuring henna designs by Anita Bohrer, it definitely stood out from the typical "Tetley" varieties.

Yogi Tea's roots began in 1969 when Yogi Bhajan, an Indian spiritual teacher, began teaching yoga in America. After each yoga class, he served a special spice tea to his students, which they affectionately named “Yogi Tea.”  Yogi Tea is part of Golden Temple of Oregon, LLC, which also manufactures Peace Cereal, Sweet Home Farm, and Golden Temple bulk granola. 

Objectified, Gary Hustwit's followup documentary to Helvetica, hosted a special screening last night in NYC. It almost goes without saying that fans of Helvetica will enjoy Gary's new film. And for those of us, Gary announced last night he is currently working on his third design-related documentary (and then hopes to move onto other subjects).

Objectified, which will open May 5th, is a feature-length documentary about our relationship with manufactured objects and the people who design them. Overall, the film was very engaging, providing a rare glimpse into the industrial design world. The film interviewed a handful of well known designers from around the world, gaining insight about their ideas on design and even going (briefly) into their individual design process. One of the most interesting (and provocative) topics from the film was the ongoing struggle between new product design vs. the need for sustainability. During the post-film Q&A, Gary was asked if he is going to distribute the film in sustainable way, to which he & Karim Rashid jokingly came up with the idea of The Biodegradable DVD: a cornstarch bubble with a URL to download the movie.

Gridmaker by Paul Holliday is a simple (but extremely brilliant) online tool to create customizeable grids. After creating your perfect grid, download a .png file to Photoshop or use it as a background image in your CSS as you spend hours trying to get everything to line up properly in IE6. Download the Photoshop plugin while you're at it!

This is the first post in the “Know your type” series, where we will take a look into the origins of some of the most commonly used typefaces in design today. The first typeface to get the treatment is DIN.

Born from the German railway system

The history of the realist sans-serif known today as DIN goes back to 1905. At the time, the Prussian railway created a set of lettering with the purpose of unifying the descriptions on their freight cars. Following a merger of all German state railways in 1920, the master drawings of the Prussian railway became the reference for most railway lettering. Based on the master drawings, the D. Stempel AG foundry released the earliest version of a DIN face in 1923.

Independant type foundry Fontfabric has released a three-dimensional, cubic-style typeface called Cube font. The colorful font is available via Fontfabric's website (for free) in EPS format.

Download

Searching for Sonny is reportedly the very first feature film to be shot entirely on a digital SLR camera (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II). Judging from the sneak peek trailer (below, or download HD version) you'd never know either. This opens exciting new doors for a whole new generation of indie filmmakers.

UPDATE: 3 new trailers have been posted (April 16, 2009)

idsgn is a new design blog. We look forward to bringing you features on branding, packaging, typography, technology, and everyday things. We welcome submissions, please see the link at the bottom of the page.

Now, let's start this blog off with a dance...