The Very Best in Toilet Design

Bathrooms are starting to get some serious design attention. There is a lot of room to impress and surprise - it is one huge untapped opportunity. Seriously!

Cigarette Ads from the 1930s

How times have changed..

Whodunnit?

Remember the fabulous DoTheTest advert I posted earlier in the year?

Well below is the latest in the series, created by super-talented ad agency, WCRS.



Did you have your wits about you? I'm afraid I didn't... I am a good driver though, honest!

Spell it out

Nice typography for display purposes that you can buy buy buy

Use Photoshop Online for Free

Sumo Paint is a cloud based version of Photoshop that's totally free.

It's fantastic to now be able to use Photoshop when you're on the go on other locations or other machines (just as long as you have access to the Internet). You can open imagery from your computer, or from a URL. Neat! Try it out here

5 Extraordinarily Peculiar eBay Purchases

Take a look at some of the most peculiar items that have been bought and sold via the world's largest digital garage sale:

1. Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich:

Diane Duyser, from Florida sold her grilled cheese sandwich that appeared to have the face of the Virgin Mary upon it. The item was purchased by the online casino, Golden Palace, for $28,000.


2. 18 Year old British Girl's Virginity

In order to pay off her college tuition, Cary's Copestakes put her virginity up for auction on eBay without her parents knowledge. The bid started at $10,000 and was taken up by a business man. However, he merely gave her the money in pity of her situation and did not take her up on the service she offered.

3. Ex-wife's Wedding Dress

A man found his ex-wife's wedding dress in the attic and before he could burn it, his sister suggested he sell it on eBay. Along with a description of the dress, he delivered a hilarious rant about his ex-wife and even modeled the dress himself. He claims all he wanted was enough money to buy tickets for a Mariners game and a case of beer. His wish came true when a young lady purchased the dress for $3,850! For the full story, check out No Marriage.

4. Doritos Cheese Pope Hat

In Salem, Massachusetts, the Chadwick family opened up a bag of Doritos to discover a chip that perfectly resembled the Pope's Mitre or in other word's, the pope's "really tall hat". The same online casino that purchased the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese bought this cheesy artifact for $1209!

5. The Meaning of Life

That's right, for $3.26 it's all yours. The answers to everything you could ever ask. But if you live outside of the U.S., that's just too bad because the seller would only ship within the U.S. The exact nature of this item was not given and the only picture was the rainbow.

Discomgoogolation - a nation of Broadband addicts

Discomgoogolation describes how someone feels when they cannot gain access to the internet.

Apparently nearly half of Britons - 44% - are discomgoogolation sufferers, according to a survey, with over a quarter - 27% - admitting to rising stress levels when they are unable to go online.

Around three quarters of poll respondents also asserted that they "could not live without" their broadband connections, while one in five said that they spent more time on the web than they did with their families on a weekly basis.

"The proliferation of broadband has meant for the first time in history we've entered a culture of 'instant answers,'" said psychologist Dr David Lewis, who identified discomgoogolation by measuring heart rates and brainwave activity.

"A galaxy of information is just a mouse click away and we have become addicted to the web," added Lewis. "When unable to get online, discomgoogolation takes over.

Sleeveface

Definition: one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion.

It's turning into a bit of a phenomenon. .

See 2,315 more examples here .

How Photoshop would look in real life

This is really cute. Click on the image to enlarge and see all the lovely little details. Thanks to Art Snob Solutions .

Cinnamon Creative in current issue of Design Week

Design Week reports the story of Cinnamon Creative's exciting new brand identity for Saf, the organic clothing company. Karen Cinnamon has developed the new packaging, graphics, logos and website (www.safclothing.com) for Saf, which is moving from the wholesale market into retail, and is officially launching on 14 November.

All imagery for the campaign has been sourced from Flickr photographers and soon, when Saf World launches, there will be the chance to upload your own photography for future campaigns.

Read the full article here.

Redneck politics (views on Obama, the "AY-Rab")

In honour of election day in the USA today, a very scary Hillybilly view of politics:

Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Past 40 Years

Click here for the full list of 40. Any to add?

Baaaaaaaaaaad Photoshop

For really exciting penetration have your man thrust his arm directly through your torso and kind of blend into your back.

Original is here-ish. Thanks to Photoshop Disasters for this example of shoddy Photoshopping.

Tell your boss: social networking sites are "good for businesses"

Good news for workers addicted to Facebook - a British think-tank says bosses should not stop their staff using social networking sites because they could actually benefit their firms.

See the Reuters article for full details.

8 Reasons Why Designers Should Blog

Maintaining an active design blog has been one of the best professional decisions I ever made. I feel that every designer could greatly benefit from running blog and below is a list of reasons why. Please feel free to comment and add to the list.

1. Increased exposure
Cinnamon Creative gets far more exposure as a result of this blog than it would from any other method (outside of spending a sizable amount on advertising). There’s obviously no shortage of designers and design firms out there and the blog is an excellent way of driving traffic to my main portfolio site.

2. The learning experience
Writing new blog posts constantly builds your knowledge and abilities as a designer, and if you are researching or experiencing this stuff anyway (which is often the case), it takes hardly any extra time at all to package it into a blog and share your knowledge or create a discussion.

3. Networking
Whether you design for a firm or whether you freelance from home, networking with other designers, SEOs, marketers, and potential clients comes easily through a blog. It's a forum for a natural exchange of ideas.

4. Helps clients to find you
A blog can bring potential clients to you in a number of ways. They could come to your site through search engines, through social media, or through a link to one of your posts. They could even be one of your subscribers that follow you on a regular basis. Publishing a popular blog will bring plenty of new people to your site that can potentially turn into new business.

5. Improved content on your site for search engines
As I just mentioned, potential clients may find your site through search engines. With a blog you will have far more pages indexed than you would otherwise, and it is likely to be fresh content that covers a variety of design-related topics and draws search traffic for a much greater number of keywords and phrases.

6. Demonstrate your knowledge
When prospective clients visit your blog they will be able to see that you are an insightful, intelligent designer - it creates the impression (whether true or false!) that you actually know what you're talking about. While a portfolio can demonstrate your creative and technical design abilities, a blog will allow you to put that knowledge into writing and go a step further towards showing clients that you are the one for the job.

7. Potential promotion when needed
Once you have built up a decent number of subscribers you will have the ability to promote your work to an interested audience. If you are having a quiet period, you could publish a blog post that announces a short-term discounted price to your blog readers, for example. Rather than spending considerable time and money to find a new project you may be able to get quick results by simply reaching out to those who subscribe.

8. Variety of work
One of the nice things about blogging is that it can break up the working day / week. Whilst we creatives obviously enjoy designing, sometimes it's nice to mix in a bit of writing too.

What’s your experience? Please share your thoughts and add to the conversation.

Do we heart this logo?

It doesn't really make that much sense but it's a cute and very apt spin on the legendary I heart NY logo by Milton Glaser.

Nice logo design

Designed by Morvil Design Group, this logo is for Talk, a marketing, advertising and PR firm.

The name stemmed from the idea that they get people talking about their clients’ businesses.

If, at first glance, you don't see the logo icon as quote marks, you may see it a mask, a martini glass, or maybe even a mouth, but whatever you see, it's great fun,and a clever logo.

See more clever logo designs here.

Drop-dead design

Take a look at the stunning work of French graphic designer, Fabien Barral. There is a real sensitivity to his work.

Adobe Illustrator CS4 review

Top line new features include multiple Artboards (essentially multi-page documents) and transparency in gradients.
Click here for a complete Illustrator CS4 review.

Adobe InDesign CS4 review

Every release of InDesign has brought new and improved features, but none have brought more than Adobe’s latest offering of its flagship page layout application. New features include a new graphical user interface, rotatation of page views, smart layout features, Flash export, and more. Read on for a complete review.

TouchType makes iPhone email better with landscape mode

For whatever reason, Apple decided not to allow “landscape mode” on iPhone email. If you want to turn the phone when the web browser is open and get the larger keyboard that makes two thumb typing realistic, no problem. But the email app is portrait only.

Now a new iPhone application called TouchType fixes the problem. When you open the application you get a landscape mode keypad. type an email, press the send button and it goes through the Mail application for dispatch

The application costs £0.59 / $.99 from iTunes (iTunes link here)

Worst music video ever?

Thanks to Justin for this truly inspired music video.

Great vector resource

A really classy stock library of vector images - perfect for graphic designers. Many of them are free to download.

Bookmark it now: www.iheartvector.com

Great web design

I think the design of this website is spot-on. It is for Tibits - a new vegetarian restaurant, bar and food-to-go venue that opened in London this week.

It is the first British outpost of this Swiss chain which explains the excellent site design. It is by famed Swiss design agency, Feinheit (which incidentally means 'elegancy' in German).

Wedge-proof underwear

A designer at Saddletrout Studios has invented some really weird and wacky mechanisms like these wedge-proof pants.

"This simple, yet effective, device prevents "wedging" of undergarments. It is effective for all types of "wedging", from natural "ride-up" to sudden bully-induced trauma wedging.

Fully adjustable and machine washable, wedge-proof underwear lets you stroll confidently, even when there are large groups of dim-witted, attention seeking bullies lurking about.

Surely the TV Dragons won't be able to resist sinking their cash into these.

Scrabulous has been reincarnated as Lexulous

So one of my lovemarks, Scrabulous, has already been axed...

First it was removed from Facebook but I managed to overcome the situation by continuing games with my two deadliest opponents via email Scrabulous.

Then, without prior notice, a week ago the website came down and was replaced with a GoDaddy.com placeholder page, as a result of the ruling by Delhi High Court. It was ruled that the Agarwalla brothers retain the right to post their word game online, but are not allowed to use Scrabulous, Scrabble or any other “similar sounding” name.

So now we have www.lexulous.com, that is exactly like that game we won’t ever mention in the same breath.

Oh the joy!

I have to say though, I think the new site could do with a bit of a design spruce-up... it's looking a little uninspiring. I hope those brothers know where to come for some design direction!

Web designs for Marks & Spencer

Ladies and gentlemen of the world - buy some key pieces from M&S courtesy of some of my new editorial page designs for marksandspencer.com . Women - click here. Men - go for it here!

3+ = the coolest gig in town

Here's my design for the flyer for my dad's forthcoming gig in October. It's at a very cool venue - Hugo's in Queen's Park - and it should be a really entertaining night.

Tag Galaxy image search tool... out of this world?

Tag Galaxy is a tool that allows you to explore photos on Flickr. It is literally a galaxy of tags, where subjects take the form of planets. This is what I got when I searched for Union Jack

On the down side, I think the photos themselves are a little hidden, but it's an interesting navigation tool.

Woops

Perhaps the team behind this cover for a parenting magazine had just found out they were all out of a job - otherwise it's kind of hard to understand quite how the above made it off the printing press.

More amusing 'fails' - like 'rivet fail' - at failblog.org

My perfect birthday cupcakes (no hint intended)

Thanks to Ben Catchpole for this piece of ipod cupcake heaven.

Lazy web design tools

Great time-saving tools - very useful to generate quick backgrounds, tabs and reflections:

- Stripe Generator
- Tartan Maker
- Image Reflection Maker
- Tabs Generator

Lovemarks

What makes some brands inspirational, while others struggle?

The answer is Lovemarks - a term to coin brands that inspire loyalty beyond reason.

"Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately."

My Lovemarks are: New York City, everything Apple, Scrabulous, Whole Earth Peanut Butter, Google, Hawaii Conditioner, Laurent-Perrier Pink Champagne and of course Cinnamon Creative!

What are your Lovemarks?

Warmth and privacy while using your laptop

"These 'Body-Technology Interfaces,' (BTIs) in the form of hand-knitted custom wrappers for personal electronic devices, will reflect salient interaction behaviours between the participant and their chosen device."

One for the Dragon's Den?..

I don't think so.

Review: Tim Walker at the Design Museum

Above: Erin O’Connor, Jacquetta Wheeler and Lily Cole, Colchester, Essex, England, 2004, British Vogue

Ladies jumping out of books, coloured cats, a garden in a bathroom, a hanging model and the most stylish messy room. All from the imagination of Tim Walker, a fashion photographer with an amazing eye for absurd detail whose images are witty and playful yet sufficiently sophisticated for his high fashion clients.

His creations are daring, theatrical and full of a magic that has rightly earned him his place in the high ranks of fashion photography stardom, and a Vogue master lineage, at only 37 years of age.

Glam, decay, fantasy, impressive lighting - it's all there - and well worth seeing, at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, London,  SE1 2YD, until 28th September 2008.

Gates vs Jobs: The Game

Give it a go... Jobs to win!

I have a rival in the construction industry

Photographed by Mark - he saw this in Belsize Park!

Review: The bloke who does blotches and scribbles: Cy Twombly at the Tate Modern

'Cycles and Seasons' spotlights an artist who hasn't put a foot wrong in a 60-year career; he takes the casual, and makes it monumental"
Charles Darwent, The Independent, June 2008

Darwent has written an excellent review of the exhibition so I'm best to direct you there, but let me just say that I found this to be a stunning exhibition. Most attention-grabbing was Twombly's Four Seasons ("Quattro Stagioni") series created between 1993 and '94, pictured above.

...Did you also know that Twombly was in the news recently because a French woman kissed one of his paintings in a museum in Marseilles, France? She was wearing bright red lipstick, which stained the snowy white canvas. The painting was valued at over $2million, and the woman was charged with damaging the masterpiece.

Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons is at the Tate Modern, Bankside. London SE1 9TG, until September 14th.

More funny-because-they-are-true-isms

Web Without Sense is a gallery of common place website design/layout/marketing/general annoyances on the Internet. Equally, it is a bit of a sarcastic dialogue aimed to get a message across while being frank and outward. Check it out.