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Rounding out two excessively political days here at UnBeige, we found a piece by Michael Shaw of the Huffington Post about the prevalence of faceless Bush administration images. Later, we also remembered Laura Field's "Bush Erased."

We're not really going anywhere with this, but it seems that the combination of politics and design gets people fired up. And that's the kind of passion about this industry that we want to see--Bush or no Bush.

Late last month, Louis Rosenfeld, launched his brand new publishing company, aptly titled Rosenfeld Media. The company will be printing books on design, focused primarily on design for the web and giving the end user the best, easiest experience possible. But instead of super long, wordy, dull books, Rosenfeld plans to publish smaller, easier to digest pieces that get you right into the thick of the thing you want to learn about. What's more, the company is also very open to submissions and wants to retain a kind of open source relationship with its publishing, meaning that you can help go in and make revisions to published pieces. Pretty promising deal, it sounds like. But they've also got a terrific site going with some interesting topics. It's still super new, of course, so you aren't going to find an encyclopedia of knowledge posted yet, but just take a page from what's currently available, it's possibly a site to keep checking in on, besides just when you need some kind of fancy new learnin' book. Here's a couple of bullet points from "What Makes for a Good Design Book?"

1) Short chapters that can be read in one sitting. Some have suggested that chapters as short as four pages are ideal. Thomas Friedman and Kurt Vonnegut were cited as authors who can write short without writing choppy.

2) Readers asked for books with "layered" orientation and navigation tools. These would help you learn what the book is about and what it contains depending on how much time you have, much like travel books often feature 1-day, 3-day, and 1-week takes on "what to visit".

3) Anecdotes and brief case studies are good; ones that describe mistakes are even better, even if not directly related to the topic at hand. The impending kayak accident that opens Bruce Tate's Bitter Java was mentioned as an example.

We've always been card-carrying, flag-waving Texas Monthly fans (which is, in our esteem, currently a better magazine than New York, though that bias could stem from our hometown's proximity to the Mason-Dixon line) but we've been immersing ourselves in past issues lately for reasons that will become apparent on the mothership tomorrow. In fact, we're so smitten with the look of the current issue that we decided to do some research into the redesign TM unveiled about a year ago.

Behold the 28-year-old creative director: Scott Dadich joined the art team back in 2000 (Yes, at age 23; yes, we're jealous.) and as he's risen in the ranks, the magazine's just gotten purtier and purtier. TM, of course, has a long history of being incredibly good-looking (former AD DJ Stout is now a partner at Pentagram), but in Dadich's hands, the book has really become something to behold.

The redesign brought more color, a playful use of parentheticals, L-shaped brackets in the gutters of edit pages to distinguish from ads, and a cool typeface, Sentinel, that was custom-made to be "distinctly Texas." What that means, we're not sure, but we believe it when we look at the display type that crimps where the lines of a letter meet. Just look at this "t" and try not to think of the notches in a longhorn, the curve of a saddle or spurs, and other stereotypical Tex-cessories!

Oh, and the photography's also pretty top-notch, too. Here's Dadich to PDN a few years back:

"The work the photographers were turning in was not that good," says Dadich of his first year on the job. "I had several heated conversations with photographers who shot for the magazine for a long time. I put the photographers on notice that predictable and safe wasn't going to be good enough… I'm looking for pictures that don't default to a shooting standard of mythic Texas. We needed to go 180 degrees."

"I have a specific goal and agenda for every piece. The photos tell a parallel story that goes to the emotional core. They build a mood, an alternate take. I want the readers to turn their head a little bit and ask, 'What's going on here?'"

Check and check. If you don't stop to gawk at the queasy grotesquerie that accompanies this month's article on chicken-fried everything, well, then, you're made of heartier stock than we are.

Our eyes hurt. We just looked at hundreds of newspaper front pages from across the globe at the Newseum site. The front pages are updated daily and there are 44 countries represented (although the bulk of the newspapers are American). We're fans of The Guardian, which has one of the sexiest, most modern newspaper designs today:

While most of the newspapers shared a similar style, this Brazilian paper stuck out from the rest with its large photos and minimal text:

We stumbled across a collection of NYC subway maps and thought it was interesting that the MTA has produced close to 50 variations of the same subway map design since 1998. Perhaps they're either too busy trying to get robots to drive the L train, or they're too broke because they're lying about their budget, but either way, we've been stuck with the same dreary map since 1998. Perhaps the MTA should do something about it?

They're much more dreary when you view them all together. We're sadists, so check them out in big and/or bigger sizes:

ooooh, that's huge
get that fucking thing away from me!

The past few MTA designs have been pretty dull and tended to look like those subway maps tourists would actually buy in Times Square. We did like a couple of designs, especially this 1958 map and Massimo Vignelli's elegant redesign from 1972:

Here's Vignelli's 1972 map compared to the current MTA map:

*Sorry, I've always wanted to use that Ralph Wiggum reference.

That Vogue should make us feel sartorially inferior is a given. But now we've been shamed on our own turf! The fashion bible's online presence, Style.com, today introduces us to things we really ought to know more about: really cool 'zines. (Though this is, perhaps, why Style.com has an Ellie and we do not.)

Thank heavens for some familiar suspects: Tokion's old news, we've done Peter Arkle, and Found magazine is a perennial Unbeige favorite.

But then there are these undiscovered beauties:

Parfait, hand-stitched and letter-pressed by founder Emily Larned, is:

An artist's workbook of ideas: essays, creative nonfiction, pictures, & experiments. Topics include (but are by no means limited to): Paul McCartney's solo records, Norwegian knitting patterns, natural history museums, Alain Delon vs. Jean-Paul Belmondo, category mistakes, modernity in the mid-19th century, reviews of out-of-print books, Red Pandas, grammar workbook errors, and the relative scariness of dry vs. wet monsters.

It's also completely gorgeous:

You can buy Parfait from Booklyn.org (Larned is the vice president of Booklyn, a nonprofit artists' collective where you can also find cool stuff by Chuck Close and John Hodgman.)

Also check out Skate Tough You Little Girls, the pet project of a 32-year-old librarian skate punk; Slave to the Needles, which finds its niche in indie rockers who knit; and Larceny, published to coincide with Barry "Twist" McGee's installation at the Deitch Projects.

(Related tangent: Dig the Deitch Project's website, fashioned after old-school Warhol Brillo boxes.)

Thanks to Clotheshoarse for the link.

Paul Frankenstein pointed me to this poster for the Baltimore-D.C. MARC commuter train.

Now, I'm all for stark, totalitarian images that evoke repressive communist regimes and Orwellian levels of government surveillance, but really.

Actually, I'm curious about who signed off on that design.

That said, we almost did the same thing with the UnBeige logo banner. (I suggested that we use the red, black and yellow color scheme to give it a revolutionary feel, and at one point, the design included an upraised fist. Then Kenny wisely suggested that it looked a little, uh, fascist.)

My hardback of Perverse Optimist had been long lost, left behind in California because I'd loaned it to a friend and forgotten that I had, and then he reminded me (fool!) and then *he* couldn't find it. So he just sent me a new (to me) hardcover in the mail. Happy me, maybe happy you, if you can stand more Tibor quotes. Here are a few from the first few pages of the book.

Rules are good. Break them.

Good designers (and writers and artists) make trouble.

And another one that I really should tape to my bathroom mirror as a daily affirmation (except that's not so much my thing.):

Eventually you'll forget all this but there will be plenty of new ideas to choose from. And I believe that they'll be better.

The image above is from Colors 4 (Race), published in 1993. (What if... Queen Elizabeth was black?)

Shortly after I posted about the new DC Comics Logo yesterday, Michael Bierut and I traded some email about the fact that the (better) logo that DC just replaced, known as the "bullet logo", was designed by none other than Milton Glaser. I had read about it in the letter from the publisher on the DC site, but I was too lazy (well, busy really) to research the genesis of the logo.

Email from designer Jeff Stockwell this morning was the nudge I needed (Thanks, Jeff) to go do some poking around. That and a nice strong cup of coffee and that oh-so-fleeting "Today is the first day of the rest of my life!" ambition that usually deserts me about an hour into the day. Anyway, I digress. Jeff wrote:

Jen... You may want to edit your DC Comics post to include that the DC "bullet" that was replaced was designed by Milton Glaser. No wonder it was so cool and lasted for so long.

Turns out that Glaser designed the logo in 1977, which I found out on this very interesting DC Timeline, which includes bits of trivia like:

1835 (Jan) Nathaniel Hawthorne creates America's first superhero, as The Grey Champion appears in New England Magazine.

As Michael said about Glaser + the DC bullet: Who knew?

Getting my act together with regard to social correspondence is a perennial New Year's resolution for me. I think my poor form in this regard is some teenage rebellion hangover that I've never recovered from. For as long as I can remember, my mother has kept a large agenda on the dresser in her bedroom and slipped into the pages are occasional cards, bought far far far in advance, commemorating birthdays, anniversaries and graduations of friends, friends' children and family members. I am the sort of girl you'll find shuffling through the slim selection of Hallmark cards in the supermarket on the Saturday before Mother's Day. It's tragic, truly. Especially considering the high regard I have for receiving paper mail, which has only increased as more and more of my personal and businss communication is conducted via email (or IM).

Lately I've been of the mind that I simply lack the proper tools. I'm convinced that if only I had the finest pen and stationery, writing a pithy and warm note to my host or hostess after a dinner party would be as natural to me as IMing absurd links to my friends in California is. So I've been on the hunt. I could stock up on pre-printed notecards - there is a vast array of choices.

But no, right now I am preoccupied with getting engraved stationery, because hey look, I'm a classy lady. And a print geek to boot. The gold standard amongst the society folks is Mrs John L Strong. (Clearly their web presence is not a priority - the placeholder page at that URL lists the physical stores you can visit to purchase their "Fine StationAry". Hello.) Alas, such luxury comes at a price well beyond my means. So, I'm the hunt for something of that ilk, but you know, affordable.

Right now, I'm enjoying educating myself about the particulars of making such a purchase.

Till then, I am going to make do with ThankYous of the store bought variety. If you've done something nice for me lately, keep an eye on your mailbox.

(You can find the notecard pictured here at Pancake & Franks.)