This past weekend I have the delightful experience of going to Orange Beautiful’s new studio/shop in Chicago (located on Damen Ave, right off the Brown line). I’ve been following Emily (the wonder mind behind Orange Beautiful) via The Scoop for several months now, and couldn’t wait to see her shop with my own eyes. I felt like a kid in a candy store…except with paper goods! Emily creates simple, yet beautiful little pieces…that have a little quirkiness to them that I adore. She letterpresses by hand in the studio and has some wonderful bound journals/photo albums. She has a selection of other designer/artist’s pieces to please the eye as well. It was a struggle to decide what to purchase!

If you’re in the Chicago area, I highly recommend checking out the shop. And if you’re not in the area, don’t worry! Orange Beautiful sells online too!

Thanks again to Emily for letting me poke around through your shop and studio, and for the sneak peak at limited prints! Also to fellow TDP-er Ricky, for trucking through the ridiculous heat so I could visit the shop :)

For those of you who haven’t had their taste of summer vacation yet take this moment to travel from New York to San Francisco with this viral video from Levis. The catchy tune you are hearing is titled “Home” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros coming from their 2009 album “Up From Below” (a personal favorite of mine). Also check out the route they traveled.

If you’re looking for a gift for me, I’ll take one of these sweet Chicago L-Shirts.

If you know Chicago, you know the ‘L’. And now you can wear it.

The current CTA ‘L’ signage is a modification of the original 1969 design, known as the “Kennedy-Dan Ryan” signage, set in Helvetica and color-coded to match the eight corresponding CTA ‘L’ lines.

Chicago pride is induced by the kinship we feel with our neighborhoods and the transit lines that connect them. That sense of pride, coupled with our affection for typography and design, have inspired us to create this series of transit t-shirts (also known as L-Shirts).

Currently, the only stops available for sale are the four Chicago Avenue stops along the Red, Blue, Brown and Purple lines. We hope to have more available in the future.

I’m a blue-liner, so blue please. Buy shirts at www.chicagolshirts.com.

Enter Flipboard. This iPad app takes care of that jarring experience and creates a digital magazine style output of your Twitter feed. No matter what type of content is shared via a tweet, Flipboard displays it appropriately. It is also possible to pull your Facebook account into Flipboard. At the writing of this post, their servers were having issues so I could not test the Facebook part. In addition to your own Twitter feed, Flipboard also has some nice built-in sets of feeds (design, style, tech, etc.)

The overall interface is great. Great typography, very intuitive. The price – FREE!
This is the sort of app that makes having an iPad justifiable.

It is also important to note that Teehan+Lax out of Toronto have a similar idea in the works too. It’s called TweetMag. Knowing Teehan+Lax, this app will be great and will give Flipboard a run for its money.

iTunes Link

Join the School of Visual Communication Design in a celebration of the life and creative spirit of Eric May in an exhibition of his work from Type High Press. August 4–21, 2010

Location:
The show is to be held at the Downtown Gallery located at: 141 East Main Street in the heart of Kent, Ohio. Gallery hours are Wednesday – Friday 12-5 PM and Saturday 10-4 PM

Downtown Gallery
141 East Main Street
Kent, Ohio 44240

Reception:
A reception, open to the public, will be held at Saturday, August 14, 2010, 6pm-9pm

For more information on the show visit theericmayproject.com or vcd.kent.edu

“The house aims to undermine the seeming limitations of a triangular section by augmenting and revealing the extreme proportion in the vertical direction”

The interior of the cabin utilizes exposed storage and open shelving to fill the odd shape of the space and to square the rooms off. No details were spared on this cabin in the woods. See more photos of the Allendale and project renderings at wojr.org

If there was ever a Lite-Brite for adults this is it. Beck’s, DJ Cheeba and Outside Line studios collaborate to create an interactive music and light experience. As Cheeba pulls the pump a sample and custom flash application are triggered to change the sound and display. Where can I get one of these?

Via cpluv

Unless you live under a rock in the deepest part of the ocean with no internet connection, you’re probably atleast semi-aware of the Old Spice online phenomenon that happened this week, which we tweeted about several times.

It all started with a few clever commercials that were very well received online over the past few months. The Old Spice Guy (Isaiah Mustafa) is a hyper-masculine character along the lines of the many legends of Chuck Norris, who claims that using Old Spice body wash will make your man smell like he looks like him.

This week, Old Spice (and ad firm Wieden+Kennedy) took this already successful campaign and brought it to the people. Old Spice guy began answering questions from Facebook, Twitter & the rest of the internet with short 20-60 second videos wearing just a towel in his bathroom. He made videos for some of the top blogs online, some top celebrities, and many everyday folks.

In all, by my count, they produced 183 videos over the course of two days, posting them in real time. Many of the responses were posted less than an hour after the users’ questions. With this many videos, it’d be easy to be repetitive and get tired, but the writing and delivery as so well executed you can spend hours of your day watching these.

We’ve selected five of our favorites. Continue reading to see them, including a back & forth between Alyssa Milano which included him actually sending her flowers and one true-life marriage proposal (She said yes).

@Gizmodo

See them all at youtube.com/OldSpice.

THIS BLOG IS NOW DIAMONDS.

To celebrate the release of The Plus Series, the next generation of the classic Pantone Matching System, Base worked with director Greg Mitnick and producer/Cool Hunting editor Ami Kealoha to give a rare look into the behind-the-scenes of the design world’s color standard.

I think the video above is the best animated infographic I’ve ever seen.

It’s for the upcoming documentary Waiting for Superman, by the makers of An Inconvenient Truth. Waiting for Superman is a documentary about a United States public education system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth. The U.S. regularly finishes in the bottom chunk of developed nations’ education polls. The nation that vowed to leave no child behind is doing just that.

The animation was made by the creative-types at Buck. I’m really jealous that I didn’t make this infographic, for a film that I’d really like to do work for. Nice work gentlemen/gentleladies.

Find out more about the film, and watch the trailer at www.waitingforsuperman.com.

(via @typeis4lovers)

UnderConsideration has put together a one-day event on the development of corporate and brand identity projects by some of today’s most active and influential practitioners from around the world.

The Brand New Conference is set for Friday, Nov 5, 2010 in New York City. The one-day event will run you a reasonable $250, while the live online webcast is $60.

Speakers include:
Michael Johnson of Johnson Banks
Michael Lejeune of Metro
Michael Bierut & Paula Scher of Pentagram
Christian Helms of The Decoder Ring
Tom Dorresteijn of Studio Dumbar
Connie Birdsall of Lippincott
Jordan Crane & Karl Heiselman of Wolff Olins
Erik Spiekermann of Edenspiekermann AG

More info & register at: www.underconsideration.com/brandnewconference.

Etsy, one of the most popular online stores for handmade goods, is hiring staff! They put together a cool little video above to show what it’s like to work at Etsy.

See the current positions available here, but only after watching the video.

Holiday Matinee emailed us about a shindig they’re throwing tomorrow in San Diego.

Creating events that bring amazing people together is what we’re all about. And this next one is going to prove just that. We’re taking over Station Tavern for a creative shopping event filled with art, t-shirts, jewelry, crafts, giveaways and more. It’ll be an all-star affair led by Threadless, Sezio, LouLou Bijoux, Yeller, Josh Boston and yours truly with musical performances by Greg Gibson, Bob Nanna and Sleepwalking DJs. Cancel all your plans and come party with us. I promise it’ll be more fun. And don’t forget to RSVP and invite more awesome people here.

We’d love to go but we’re all midwesterners. Hopefully you West Coasters will pick up our slack. Looks to be a good time. RSVP here.

Modern Toss have created this Periodic Table of Swearing poster. The 42 cm x 59.4cm Giclee print is a limited edition of 100. $90. Sold Out.

Click the poster to see it full size. The poster should be available here once the new color edition is available.

Friend of TDP, designer Mig Reyes, has launched his new website. The site shows off some of his professional and personal work, along with a news section to (try to) keep up with him, and an about page that is not an afterthought like most sites.

The most exciting part though is the thoughts section where Mig will begin writing articles. Having already spoke at the HOW Conference and been interviewed by numerous people, Mig’s voice in the industry is one worth listening to. His first article is posted, and talks about the evolution of his personal site. It’s cool to see where he started years ago and the evolution to the clean, more mature site of today. It gives the rest of us hope to be awesome.

Check it out at www.migreyes.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @spigumus.

Nothing like a Lego stop motion short film. This is for you action junkies. It is shocking how many times this same genre of Lego films has been attempted. Warning: If you become faint at the sight of blood or red Playdo please watch at your own risk.

Hopefully due out in theaters this summer The Visual Language of Herbert Matter looks quite promising. If you are unfamiliar with the work of Herbert Matter shame on you. Get out your Megg’s History of Graphic Design and catch up.

THE VISUAL LANGUAGE OF HERBERT MATTER is a revealing look at the fascinating life story of the highly influential mid-century modern design master. Known as a quintessential designer’s designer, Swiss born Herbert Matter is largely credited with expanding the use of photography as a design tool and bringing the semantics of fine art into the realm of applied arts — herbertmatter.net

via: grain edit

At this years ICFF Cleveland based furniture design and manufacturing company Objeti took home the Editors Award for New Designer. View their collection and see who else took home accolades at ICFF

Horrible Adorables are creatures from the imagination of fellow Clevelander Jordan Elise. Her cruelty-free, faux taxidermy sculptures are just the right amount of cute with a dash of fairytale oddity. They are made from a styrofoam base and hand-covered in beautiful multi-colored felt pieces. They even have real taxidermy-grade eyeballs! Can’t wait to get one for myself. Check out her whole collection at her Etsy shop.

iPhone Polaroids is a great creative exercise from designer and letterpress printer, Scott McClelland. He snaps a shot or two a day with his iPhone and has been doing it since early January. I love being able to doing something creative daily and because we have iPhones, we have such an easy tool right at our fingertips! See more of his very large collection of snapshots here. Thanks for sharing your work with us, Scott!

Want a chance for people all over the country to see your work? Why not sign up for the 2011 Sketchbook Project?

A sketchbook is a place to put your heart and soul. Let it out into the wild; we’ll keep you connected. We know how precious a sketchbook is. You carry it with you everywhere, spending months working on it. It becomes a part of you. When you’re finished, share your hard work with the world. We’ll make sure you stay connected with your sketchbook as it tours the country and after we catalog it in The Brooklyn Art Library.

I don’t even know where to begin on how spectacular this project sounds (why did I not know about it before?!). 2011 will be the fifth time that Art House Co-op tackles the project and they’ve made sure to add a lot of new features (you can even track your book to see when and where it is being viewed!). As a participating artist, you will get your very own Moleskin Cahier sketchbook and a theme to use as a starting point to create your book. The books will then be put into a traveling exhibition around the country and later placed in a permanent collection at the Brooklyn Art Library.

Make sure to check out all the details on the Sketchbook Project’s site. You have until October 31, 2010 to sign up, and your finished book must be postmarked by January 15, 2011 to be included in the tour.

Thanks to my ever-curious and wonderful friend, Kara Solinsky for the heads up on this!

If you haven’t been keeping up to date with the 2010 World Cup this interactive game tracker by the people at Positive Studio positive studio will help you join in the lunchroom squabble.