Ok, so spamming is evil and horrible, and anyone who partakes in it should be dragged out and beaten with a baseball bat covered in flesh-eating fire ants. But today I found this in my inbox, and I have to just take a moment to show the world how brilliant (and hilarious) this piece of spam is:

Click here to see full size.

You have to hand it to this guy (or gal; don’t let it be said I am sexist about my slimy slimebags). This is by far the greatest piece of phishing spam I have ever seen. I mean, it has it all – the White House banner, the FBI address, ROBERT MUELLER. The person who made this is by far the most ambitious spammer in the field. But the piece de resistance has to be the final note at the bottom of the email, warning the recipient about email imposters!

Bravo, slimy email spammer. Though one note for next time: the FBI probably doesn’t use “gmail.”

The story: Last April, the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce begins a rebranding campaign, spearheaded by London-based design firm, FHD. One of the major pieces of this new visual identity is, of course, a logo. The new logo, a stylish and rather simple affair, is launched with much fanfare to the company and public:

The logo is well-received, and production is started to put it on all sorts of office doo-dads. A spokesman for the OGC reports, “The new identity has been extremely well received, as it presents a very clean, uncluttered and modern identity.”

An uncluttered, modern identity.

And then someone turned their head a bit:

O snap.

It turns out that the logo has a bit of a hidden “visual identity” – the kind you don’t want your mother to see.

Remarkably, the Office of Government Commerce has chosen to move forward with the logo, and issued the following statement regarding the “gripping” graphic object:

“The proposed version, which you have sent over, has been shared with staff, and is now going through final technical stages. It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters ‘OGC’ – and is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on government spend!”

(Snatched from The Register, thanks Hutch!)

We’re all familiar with those advice posters that they hang in banks or at that corny corporate job you worked in 1997. You know, the one with a boat on it, cutting through choppy seas, with some bold serif font that says something like, “DETERMINATION: Bring the Team a Sandwich,” or some nonsense like that. They’re terrible. The person that designed them should be dragged out and shot. Just thinking about them with their dumb black borders makes me want to start beating something.

However, the idea has been saved. Salvaged. Reborn like a beautiful butterfly so stunning that we can forgive and forget that time they were a big, swollen, squirmy pile of gross insect. And the ones initiating this change are none other than a bunch of university design graduates.

Each year, the graduates of University College Falmouth design advice posters for the purpose of passing on advice and inspiration to new first year students. Since 2006, an “Advice to Sink in Slowly” poster is given as a welcoming gift to every student enrolling on a BA course at UCF. The result, advice posters that you would be proud, nay, EXCITED, to hang on your wall:

Poster design by Jane Laurie

Poster design by Daryl Waller

Poster byTemujin Doran

Poster design by Farion

Poster design byDave Bain

Poster by Mark Agnew

To see all the posters, click here.

Because of the great response to the project, they’ve also set up a poster shop, so one of these beauts can adorn your wall. If you can bear to take down that kitten hanging from a rope that says “Hang in there!” Man, gets me everytime.

As a designer, I am often need to use all sorts of wacky text symbols whilst working on projects. And though I and many others have been in the biz for some time, the honest to god truth is I am yet to meet a designer that actually knows all of them off the top of their head (if you happen to be a designer that does, I tip my hat to you, in all your compulsively-anal craziness). Nary a month goes by in the shop when one of us isn’t shouting to another something along the lines of, “WHAT THE HECK IS THE SHORTCUT TO A DOUBLE-DAGGER!?!?!”

Suffice to say, for the designer that doesn’t want to memorize about 80+ key-commands, this site is a godsend:

UsingMac.com: 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols

Not only does this site give the commands to a majority of common shortcuts, but it’s also rather easy on the eyes. And as a Mac Nerd, you can imagine my delight when I discovered there was a key command to create the apple logo:

The fact that’s it’s completely and utterly useless just makes it that much better.

My friend John Hutch showed me this link to the invite to the SEED Conference. It’s simply brilliant, and by far the best example of system font design I have ever seen:

That’s not an image – it’s all coded. I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken to get this to look right, but it was worth it. It’s simply gorgeous. I want to shake the hand of the designer that made it, then promptly cut off their head and steal their powers. Link
Link to This

Motion Portrait says about their services: “MotionPortrait is the technology that automatically creates 3D face model from one single picture, which can be animated in a variety of facial expressions.”

What that translates to is “HOLY FUCKING GOD MAKE IT STOP”
Link

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go cower under my desk.
Link to This

I am such a sucker for a chunky font. Not only is this font chunky, but I love how by nixing the inner negative space it also manages to feel minimal, which is a hard combo to find in a fat font.

The lack of negative space separates the copy out enough that the forms feel like unique graphic objects, without dramatically losing their readability. I find myself continually gazing on the letterforms, wishing I had a project they were appropriate for so I could play with them. I’m sure something will come up, but in the meantime I’ll just obsess over them internally.