Design guru, Jeffrey Zeldman, has another piece up, rallying against HTML e-mails with recent post, "E-mail Is Not a Platform for Design." While we don't necessarily agree one hundred percent with him, because we've seen where, if used intelligently (and sparingly), you can go beyond a dull text-only message and create something more lasting, but he makes some very strong points and, like with many of his posts, the real meat and potatoes starts up in the comments, with people hashing out all the pros and cons. To us, the opinion we take from the whole thing is that there is so much awful out there, in terms of e-mail designed using HTML, that it's a nightmarish, uphill battle to make it work, because you're not only dealing with a finicky format, but that initial, negative perception as well. But we'll leave your brain alone to decide for itself.

We stumbledupon.com this web site, started by expert calligrapher, Michael Sull, who has mastered the nearly lost art of Spencerian script, which was developed after 1840, flourished throughout the U.S. almost to the turn of the 20th century, and then virtually disappeared, replaced by the Palmer Method. There's been a renewed interest in this particular type of calligraphy, mainly for its Victorian flair and romantic look. If you're so inclined, Sull offers special workshops on the topic in the fall.

Ron Hogan of our sister blog, Galleycat, recently picked up on what we hope isn't a new trend in international publishing. A Hong Kong publisher has compiled years worth of blogger Darren Di Lieto's interviews with illustrators and hundreds of works by the interview subjects into a book--without the permission of the illustrators and without crediting Di Lieto or the blog (the illustration news portal The Little Chimp Society) as the source of the material. To make matters worse, the book includes a CD of all of the images in the book (with filenames that are identical to those on the LCS site), suggesting that they're without copyright and free to use.

Di Lieto learned of the plagiarized volume from Jonathan Edwards, one of the illustrators whose work is included in the book, and wrote about the horrific incident on his personal blog. "I'm currently in the process of contacting the included illustrators, to let them know they've been ripped-off," writes Di Lieto, who is working to track down the publishers, a company with the ironic moniker of "Great Creativity Organization." "I've been in contact with the [Association of Illustrators] to get legal advice, but I think at the end of the day I or the illustrators who have had their copy stolen will not be able to do much about this situation without major backing or support."

It seems like just yesterday we were musing on the increasingly inseparable worlds of art and design (oh wait, it was just yesterday), so how appropriate that today 13-year-old website Artnet launches its Design Marketplace, which features modern and contemporary furniture and decorative arts from over 150 galleries in 75 countries. Among them is Galerie Michel Giraud of Paris, which offers up the above "zoomorphic vase" created in 1950 by Georges Jouve (although we could swear we saw it in a Jonathan Adler store).

In addition to over 3,000 works for sale at design galleries worldwide (searchable by designer, object type, style/period, price, and location), Artnet's Design Marketplace includes works on offer at upcoming auctions, including this bronze sculpture (pictured at right) by Harry Bertoia that will go on the block at Phillips de Pury's April 24 design auction in London. Created in the 1960s, the work raises an interesting question: did Bertoia invent the Rubik's Cube?

Earlier this week, Radar's website reported that former New Yorker editor and recent Diana chronicler Tina Brown is teaming up with embattled IAC glacier resident Barry Diller to launch a Huffington Post-style "news aggregator website" of her very own. (Brown assured Radar that hers will be "a new take on an aggregator website.") New York magazine's website, nymag.com, picked up the news on Wednesday afternoon, and then Brown wasted no time in picking up nymag.com's design director, Ian Adelman, who will serve as creative director of Brown's new web venture. Notes Keith Kelly in today's New York Post:

Aside from bringing nymag.com into the big leagues over the past two years, [Adelman] was the founding art and design director of the Microsoft-funded Slate in 1996.

At Slate, he designed and art directed the prototype and launch versions of the online magazine that was headed by Michael Kinsley.

April the first has come and gone and once again, we've seen dozens upon dozens of April Fool's jokes everywhere from online to campaign speeches. But while we anxiously await, hoping to see if Andy Baio posts a recap on Waxy, like in years past, of what happened on the web yesterday, we run into Anil Dash, who isn't so hot on the web's celebration of the stupid little holiday with his post "Your April Fool's Day Joke Continues to Suck." His basic idea is: they're never very funny, these online pranks, so why even bother? And we understand that he gets a lot of flack every year for saying this, so we won't waste a ton of time responding to it, other than asking a few of our own questions: Who cares if they aren't funny to you? Why bother calling it out? Why not just let people have some fun for a day? Unless, like several of the comments on Dash's blog suggest, that this is either just an annual publicity stunt or, even more insidious, a super-double-reverse, ultra-meta, sneaky April Fool's joke bonanza explosion, where the joke is that you don't get that it's an April Fool's joke. If that's the case, it makes our heads hurt.

Biggest design-y story of the week was likely Adobe launching their stripped down, photo-editing web program, Photoshop Express. Granted, no one thinks it's going to change the world for anyone who uses Photoshop for professional use, but it could possibly have a big effect on casual users who want to get in and fix up their images. Although similar programs have existed for a while now, including Google's Picasa, we're thinking that just having the Photoshop brand behind this launch will likely speak a lot more loudly to your average joe, the kind who helped introduce "Photoshoped" as a regular phrase within the common vernacular. We played around with it a bit and found it perfectly pleasant, but we thought we'd take a look around the web and see what was being said about it elsewhere, from all angles:

Webware: "...it succeeds as a proof-of-concept that Flash and Flex allow you to create robust online applications that look and feel like local ones."

Comments on Metafilter: "Interesting. But yeah, I think anything with PS as the brand needs to do a bit more than this. Also, those gold colored cartoonish "albums" look horrible - who imposed THAT on the designers?"

The Motley Fool: "Consider it a marketing exercise -- Adobe is simply spreading the good word about its powerful software packages and Web interfaces, and the direct payoff will likely be very small."

Computerworld: "The good news is that it does the 20% pretty well."

Today's big automotive news is that Ford has agreed to sell Jaguar and Land Rover (the "luxury safari brands," as we like to call them) to India's Tata Motors for $2.3 billion ($600 million of which Ford will have to pay back into the Jaguar and Land Rover pension funds). But while Ford is cashing in on storied brands and BMW is messing around with glow-in-the-dark ads, Toyota is putting the identity of its Scion car in the hands of, well, anyone. Scion Speak, a new campaign by ad firm StrawberryFrog, encourages website visitors to create their own snazzy coat of arms, which can be adorned with everything from a butterfly and a cupcake to handcuffs and a spermatozoal trio. Using the handy drop-down menus, we selected a name for our crest (pictured above): "Chancellor Designer The Wack."

For maximum street cred, StrawberryFrog called in designer Tristan Eaton (perhaps best known for his covetable Kid Robot toys), who got to know the cultish Scion owners through nationwide focus groups. "Probably one of the most prominent incidents was driving in L.A. in a Scion and seeing another Scion pass us, honk the horn, and wave at us," says Eaton. "At that point, I realized OK, these guys are their own culture."

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They asked the tough questions: What is good design? If you were stranded on a desert island, what five typefaces would you want with you? And our personal favorite, could you vote for a candidate whose advertisements were dominated by Comic Sans? And so, in a year already marred by tearful goodbyes, we're sad to report that the sharp-witted fellows of the blog Be A Design Group (BADG) are closing up shop after four years of cultural criticism, controversy, stories, podcasts, and tutorials.

"Over the next couple weeks we are doing a grand finale and their
should be some interesting articles and discussions coming from our
current and past authors," BADG co-founder Bennett Holzworth tells us. The BADG site will be kept up as archive and, on an encouraging note, Holzworth hints at his plan to work with co-founder Adrian Hanft to "develop it into something new and fresh in the future." So, as BADG prepares to go out with a BAng, we congratulate the authors on years of words and images that made the web--and the world--a more thoughtfully designed place to be.

Not to mention a monthly online one. Potter-turned-lifestyle brand Jonathan Adler has done more for tchotchkes than The Antiques Roadshow, and now he's entered the blogosphere. For his freshman effort at a "Monthly Musing," the avuncular Adler ponders the "grandiosity of Neoclassical design," inspired by the dearth of grand, historicalesque gestures observed during his recent weekend HGTV marathon. He offers a candy-colored list of suggestions for infusing a bit of neo-neo-classicism into your life, ranging from Rent Caligula ("Be patient -- the first episode is a bit dreary but it quickly heats up and you'll soon be unable to leave your house until you watch the whole thing") to Greek Key is the Key to our favorite, Fornasetti ("Always, always, always").

Of course, there's also a bit of product pushing, but it's subtle and relevant. Adler expounds on the thinking behind his Grand Tour porcelain pieces. "I took classical busts and turned them into silhouettes," he writes. "Because these busts are objects rather than flat wall art or pictures, they needed dimension so I took the silhouette and sort of extruded it, which makes it look totally modern and suprising." We've got our fingers crossed that April sees Adler muse on Alexander Girard, Palm Beach style, and/or psychoactive drugs (three tastes that taste great together)!