Not to stand too long on our soapbox here, but if you ever need one quick read that will help demonstrate a) wasteful government bureaucracy, b) the confusing lack of the masses' ability to reason, and c) how important good, quality design is to something so seemingly simple, then go no further than a story such as this in USA Today about the government's trouble with election ballot design. After pumping billions upon billions of dollars on improving the standards in the design of these important pieces of democracy, NYU has just released a study saying not much has really improved and people are still incredibly confused as to how to vote for Person A or Person B. We apologize, as such things are difficult and frustrating to read so early in the morning, but sometimes we just have to do it. Here's a bit about where the study found things went wrong:

Despite all the spending since then, mostly on new electronic voting systems, not enough attention has been paid to ballot design, the new study warns. "There has not been a documented instance where a computer has fouled up the vote by itself," agrees Kimball Brace of the consulting firm Election Data Services.

The study's conclusion, endorsed by many federal and state election overseers, is leading counties and election system manufacturers to improve ballot designs by the November election.

So, they went out, years ago to try and find better ways to design these things and then we learn that the design of said things is still a problem? And the solution is to spend more time and money...trying to fix the design? That sounds somehow familiar.

Following up on a story we covered from a little while ago, and one we've loved checking in on from time to time, it looks like the road has come to an end in the Mattel v. MGA Entertainment case. Just before the weekend, the jury in the case returned and gave their ruling that Carter Bryant did in fact design Bratz, the series of popular dolls, while working on Mattel's dime, which was contrary to what he and his new employer, MGA, were claiming. So what does that all mean? Well, with sales of the dolls in the billions of dollars, it looks like MGA will no longer be able to keep all the cash, but instead have to pay high licensing fees and lose all their exclusive rights to the product's design. Oh, and there's a second phase of the trial which will show what sort of damages they'll have to pay Mattel for all these years of what's now been deemed, essentially, copyright theft. Ouch. We can't imagine that coming into work today was much fun at MGA, for Carter Bryant or anyone else.

Alphaville Design has gotten themselves into a brawl with the furniture manufacturer and retailer, Knoll, over who owns the rights to Mies van der Rohe's entire Barcelona line of furniture designs. First, Knoll sued Alphaville's customers after they were found to be selling Bacelona merchandise, a suit that was fought in court and eventually dismissed. Now the company is hitting back at Knoll, trying to get any and all ideas of exclusive patents Knoll thinks they have on van der Rohe's designs removed. Here's their plans from Alphaville's president, David Lee:

"We are delighted that the New York courts dismissed Knoll's lawsuit against one of my customers after we joined in their defense. Our case will clarify the law and show that Knoll cannot keep others from using these 1920's designs that have been made by a myriad of manufacturers for over 40 years. We seek a full cancellation of Knoll's trademark registrations with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office."

While in our earlier post, we talked about Lisa Armstrong's article about every product needing a designer's name behind it, according to a recent survey, this trend will not be long for this world. The Economist Intelligence Unit, which has an extremely menacing, scary-sounding name (even though it's just a part of The Economist, the only-slightly-scary magazine), has just released said report, wherein they interviewed a whole slew of executives about how products would be designed and where the ideas would come from and a whole third of them said they figured, by 2013, most the good ideas they'd jump on wouldn't be from internal employees, but from customers and regular people (who, we're assuming, they'd pay a bunch of money to buy the idea from -- so sort of like today, only they'd be buying stuff from people, not just snapping up internet startups). Primarily we find it pretty interesting that this is about product design, given the difficulties behind building models and plastic molds. But hey, it's a report on guessing about the future, so checking off a box to say "I believe this could be possible" doesn't really have to be such a big, heart wrenching decision. Still pretty interesting to think about though.

There's nothing we can really say about the new iPhone that hasn't been written about a billion times already, so we won't even bother pointing out reviews or how the App Store will transform the world into some sort of shiny utopia. But we did find this piece interesting over at Cell Blog, about Apple making the decision to change the color temperature on the new device, dropping it down from floating between 6800 and 7300 kelvins as opposed to 8300 on the old one, resulting in a warmer, more natural look. It's super geeky, we wholly admit, but it strays a bit from the usual swarm of iPhone coverage, which we found refreshing and not nearly as exhausting.

If you have some great ideas for new packaging and ad layouts, or you want to just create another fakey inspirational campaign, maybe now is the time to try and hitch a ride on the Unilever gravy train. In this Design Week interview, the mega-company's old employee but new chief marketing officer, Simon Clift, seems to be taking a page from General Motors' plans and is saying that design must be the first thing the company focuses on with each and every one of their products, after having been a focus low on the list for far too long, as well as having a structure that allowed for different offices to create "wildly varying versions of its branding and packaging concepts." While it seems like an uphill battle to climb, as Unilever remains a tree with a million semi-independent branches, you have to give Clift credit to trying to reign it all in and get focused.

What's with these famous architects and designers and gigantic yachts? Maybe taking a page from Philippe Starck's plans to build a massive "green" boat, Lord Foster has gotten into the game and has teamed up with a boat manufacturer to design super-yachts (or "really big yachts" if you don't like reading prefixes), the first of which will roll off the assembly line in September. But, somewhat like Starck's commitment to earth-friendly floating behemoths, Lord Foster is also doing his part and the super-yachts will be available by timeshare for an annual fee of $2 million, thus allowing the mom and pop shop owner to experience super-yachting on a regular basis. Here's a bit:

Participants can spend up to 34 nights every year on board one of the $16m yachts. Each vessel accommodates 12 guests and eight crew.

The aluminium-hull, 132ft yachts are said to provide significantly more light inside and deck space outside than rivals in the same class.

The part-time owners will be able to enjoy a glass-walled main saloon with 180-degree views. Over the eight years of the scheme, the owners can rent the super-yacht out for up to $80,000 a week in high season -- and can expect to recoup 70% of the initial investment when each of the luxury boats is sold.

Okay, after all that fussing and getting steamed up over nothing, we need something calming to go over. So we turn to music, or rather, the thing that plays the music. The Wall Street Journal has up a really great interview with David Lewis, the chief designer at Bang & Olufsen (the company who makes those sound systems you'd love to have but can't even so much as afford their smallest tweeter). It's a pretty terrific read, learning how the company creates their products, particularly with their decision to forgo hiring an in-house staff and instead using freelance designers. Lewis is great too, talking about the process between he and his staff, the massive changes in the company's management (which seems to happen every couple of years), and how they manage the pressure to keep up to date:

The whole scene has changed. Ten years ago, a 20-year-old television was still fine. Today, technology ensures that a TV that old is totally outdated. Even so, for a company B&O's size, products have to last long. B&O can't afford to make such a product and discontinue it a few months later. We wouldn't dream of doing something that wouldn't hold. This is part of the culture.

Today there's too much pressure, not just for designers. It's disappointing in a way. You can miss cool things -- afterthoughts, great little ideas -- in the design process because it goes so fast.

We must've woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something, because here's another piece of writing that has us upset. We'd heard little flitters about this here and there, in between all the initial hubbub last year, but when seeing the whole collection of complaints put together in "The iPhone Fingernail Problem," it kinda makes us want to yell at something. Basically, the story boils down to a number of people complaining that the iPhone is a) unfair to people with large fingers and, even more ridiculously b) somehow misogynistic because it's hard to use if you have really long fingernails. So, obviously, these people want Apple to go in and redesign the absurdly popular device to fit their unique needs. Really, you'll enjoy reading the whole thing a lot more if you play banjo music in the background and read each quote slowly and using your best yokel accent.

As reported in a sneak peek back in January, the Ray and Charles Eames stamps were finally released on Tuesday and are available for purchase. And once you have them back at home and in a frame on your wall, Christopher Muther over at the Boston Globe has a handy guide on what each stamp represents, along with a brief history on each object the Eames created, from the Hang-It-All from 1953 to their 1969 "ideas" film, Tops.