It’s been a while since we’ve dipped into the lovely landscape of logos. Fortunately, Flavorwire was kind enough to share a few selections from Bill Gardner’s (subscribers only) annual report on logo trends. Check out their excerpt here. Where else can pixels, spores, and hexahedra coexist harmoniously?

Thanks to those of you who attended yesterday’s Smartshot webinar. A recording will be posted on the blog later today – apologies for the delay! So, apparently there’s some kind of tournament starting up tomorrow? Involving a cup? I thought we just won one of those here in Chicago. We kid, we kid. Of course, [...]

Here’s a little catnip for our creatives; after all, it is a Monday. As a follow-up to designer Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design, inksie has tapped a group of ten writers and illustrators to come up with essays and designs that bring these principles to life. The entries are appropriately concise and well [...]

It’s been a while since we passed along some design tips to you fine folks (huh, almost four months!), so we figured we’d share these 40 Outstanding Photo Manipulation Tutorials. Something tells me that pirate hamster image is going to end up on Liz Aviles’ wall. Of course, if you think you know it all [...]

You know the drill: follow Upshot on Twitter to keep up on the latest SXSW Interactive news. It’s only three days away! We’ve already mentioned that location is the watchword at this year’s SXSWi, but we’d advise you to keep your eyes out for news on QR codes as well. Longtime readers know that we’ve [...]

No need to dig any further – one glance at this package and you get the gist of Scanwood kitchen utensils. They’re wooden. They’re authentic. They’re natural. (Of course, you can also zoom in a bit and see the “Designed in Denmark. Made by nature” tagline on the side.) Scanwood’s packaging instantly drives the message [...]

Since we recently passed along a handful of helpful tips for creating fonts in Photoshop, we figured we’d round that out with another tutorial on creating vintage/retro images and posters in Photoshop. This link gathers 20 guides to vintage ads, retro concert posters, and other designs ranging from vaudeville to horror movies. Everything old is [...]

Well, sometimes. At least when it comes to Under Consideration’s Most Relevant Brand Identity Work of the Decade. In their year-by-year breakdown of the aughts, they cover the best, the worst, and the biggest logo makeovers under the banner of “most relevant.” Let the debates begin. Guess where London 2012 fits?

And you thought barcodes needed to be uniform! Check out these clever little guys, courtesy of Japanese firm d-barcode. (There’s a larger collection over at The Dieline.) Besides the fact that this breaks up the monotony of an art director’s day, there’s a benefit here for the brand as well. Remember when we mentioned the [...]

Long, long ago, we covered the Cut & Paste competition as part of our Potty Posting on “The War of Art – Creative Competitions” (and we do apologize about that color palette – it was a long time ago). Cut & Paste is still going strong, as is the idea that everyone benefits from bringing [...]