- Baxter of California packaging design
I discovered this brand on my recent trip to Los Angeles–their daily face wash was part of the Chamberlain West Hollywood’s in-room “beauty bar” (a selection of various products available for use à la carte, kind of like a cosmetic mini-bar). The minimalist yet gorgeous product containers make the pragmatist in me jump for joy, and the fact that they’ve used OCR-A and–be still my heart–ASCII art on the label makes the whole line a lovely compromise between today and yesterday (post-post-modern?). Plus, the fact that the products are actually good is a nice bonus. - New York Magazine: Design revolutionaries
New York Magazine’s annual design issue eschewed the standard (usually boring) list of “innovative products we like that happen to cost way more than they should” in favor of profiling some of the most noted design minds of our time, like Massimo & Lella Vignelli and Eva Zeisel. The list is far from perfect, however; some of the inclusions are puzzling (Martha Stewart–isn’t she more of a business innovator rather than a design innovator?) while there are some conspicuous absences (I’d argue for the inclusion of David Rockwell, for one). At least the profiles were augmented with a two-page spread of “25 More Design Revolutionaries,” though the detail given on each is tepid at best. Still, I applaud the magazine for taking a new approach to a mass-market article on design. - Installing Mac OS X 10.5 on a PC
I had no idea it was so alarmingly easy to install OS X on a PC. I don’t condone the practice at all, and am puzzled as to why someone would want to do so (oftentimes such hacks remove the ability to hear sound, for example). As one of the commenters on the article points out, “…Apple will not release a PC version [of OS X] because it can not support it… Supporting lots of hardware will shatter the ‘well known stability’ of MacOS.” - Building a business as “just” a designer
37signals answers the question, “Can I build a product business if I’m just a designer?” This is a problem I myself have had to consider; I’m blessed that I hold a full-time job as an in-house designer/creative director, but I still do freelance work. I’ve found it essential to network and build connections with talented folks like photographers, CSS/XHTML experts, Flash engineers and PHP programmers to make certain projects really fly. It really is more of a “collective” approach to work, but when you have the right people in place, it works really well.
10.26.2007
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