Clever scantron email from Jack Spade. 

Harry Beck’s London Transport Map, 1933. 

Shame that most brands don’t have this in their blood. 

Stella’s “She’s a thing of beauty” campaign got me thinking about the tendency for companies to feminize inanimate objects. You see this with cars, where they’re given feministic traits to appeal to men and how in culture you assign your car a female name and then ‘handle’ it as if it were really that gender. Same rule applies to guitars, planes, boats, etc. This feminization of objects perhaps originates from ships and the sea who have historically been referred to as female (and this is seen cross-culturally). For marketers, the temptation would be to simply make the observation that objects become women in order to be sought after; and the degree to which that is prevalent depends on gender relationships in the specific culture and society. But beyond giving the objects allure, this could be a result of the unconscious connection of the object’s capacity to carry and the female womb. 

Feel Me, a project by Marco Triverio, an interaction designer at IDEO address the gap between synchronous and asynchronous communication through technology. 

Feel Me is a sweet connection and a playful link with the person on the other side, opening a channel for a nonverbal and interactive connection. 

(Source: vimeo.com)

Just saw this POM banner this morning. POM is fighting back against the latest FTC ruling which declared the brand was guilty of deceptive advertising for their many health claims. Instead of sweeping it under the rug, POM is turning the debate into a positive one - and highlighting the overall health benefits uncovered during the trial. Pomtruth.com is their digital counter offense. 

From OpenCulture: Roman Polanski’s new film A Therapy turned Prada ad. Or the other way around? 

(Source: openculture.com)

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” 

-Frank Lloyd Wright

The Forty Story

The story of a boy born on the day Pentagram opened and how his life has been tracked (and kerned) by forty years of Pentagram design. 

(Source: vimeo.com)

(Source: andrewbreitel, via deepseashadows)