These are my del.icio.us links for July 31st from 08:00 to 08:00:

• Grids are good – Khoi Vin and Mark Boulton on practical grid use online. Two great designers and communicators explaining some basics. Good stuff. (PDF link)
• The End – I really like Scott Wenner’s series of The End paintings/collages, but can’t quite shake the fact that Ed Ruscha did the exact same thing better quite a few years ago.
• Premiere issues – Jeremy Leslie at MagCulture pointed me towards this growing archive of magazine launch issues. All kinds of magazines, any genre at all, but the very first issue of each. Lovely.
• How a page gets created – Time-lapse screenshots of Matt Wiley working and reworking the design of a four-page article in the Royal Academy magazine. As Jeremy Leslie at MagCulture says; an instantly recognisable process to any magazine designer.
• Interesting 2008 – The Guardian are graciously hosting some video content from Interesting 2008.
• Baja BBQ Firepack – Brilliant, inspiring product design. Single-use barbecue charcoal, packaged in a recycled pulp container that acts as firelighter and includes a 'chimney' hole to encourage fast, hot burning before it disappears.
• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Clay Shirky gets to the crux of our current social state over at WorldChanging. Fudamental change in society frees up people’s time, which they fill with nonsense at first: Gin in 1700s England, TV in our recent history.
• Design books for sale – Just in case anyone reading is interested, I recently put a bunch books from my design-related bookshelves up for sale on Amazon Marketplace. Link in the title.
• Commands – Witty typographic screenprints for Apple geeks, using common shortcut commands within well-worn phrases.
• Sign of the Economy/Economy of the Sign – The new Weiden + Kennedy offices in London sport some beautifully economical toilet sign icons.
• Monocle: design notes – The verbose but supremely smart Dan Hill has left Monocle after their first year. These are his notes on the design and structure of Monocle’s online presence. Great stuff.
• Interesting 2008? – It looks like Russell Davies is planning to do it again. 2007’s gathering of interesting people was fantastic.
• The Charms of Wikipedia – Nicholson Baker is a brilliant writer. Here at The New York Review of Books his review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual becomes a fascinating essay on Wikipedia itself. Good start-of-the-week reading.
• Garfield minus Garfield – Reimaginings of Garfield comic strips have been done (very well) before, but this take is particularly good. Remove the cat and you’re left with Jon Arbuckle in the throes of an existential crisis.
• The Optimist's Almanac – Two good ideas here: Resurrecting ye olde format of an almanac as a daily blog, and Richard Wilson’s central conceit of posting one bad thing from history on this day, then following it with something far more cheerful.

These are my del.icio.us links for July 29th from 23:14 to 23:14:

• Grids are good – Khoi Vin and Mark Boulton on practical grid use online. Two great designers and communicators explaining some basics. Good stuff. (PDF link)

These are my del.icio.us links for July 29th from 16:25 to 16:25:

• The End – I really like Scott Wenner’s series of The End paintings/collages, but can’t quite shake the fact that Ed Ruscha did the exact same thing better quite a few years ago.

These are my del.icio.us links for July 25th from 23:11 to 23:11:

• Premiere issues – Jeremy Leslie at MagCulture pointed me towards this growing archive of magazine launch issues. All kinds of magazines, any genre at all, but the very first issue of each. Lovely.

These are my del.icio.us links for October 15th through July 8th:

• How a page gets created – Time-lapse screenshots of Matt Wiley working and reworking the design of a four-page article in the Royal Academy magazine. As Jeremy Leslie at MagCulture says; an instantly recognisable process to any magazine designer.
• Interesting 2008 – The Guardian are graciously hosting some video content from Interesting 2008.
• Baja BBQ Firepack – Brilliant, inspiring product design. Single-use barbecue charcoal, packaged in a recycled pulp container that acts as firelighter and includes a 'chimney' hole to encourage fast, hot burning before it disappears.
• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Clay Shirky gets to the crux of our current social state over at WorldChanging. Fudamental change in society frees up people?s time, which they fill with nonsense at first: Gin in 1700s England, TV in our recent history.
• Design books for sale – Just in case anyone reading is interested, I recently put a bunch books from my design-related bookshelves up for sale on Amazon Marketplace. Link in the title.
• Commands – Witty typographic screenprints for Apple geeks, using common shortcut commands within well-worn phrases.
• Sign of the Economy/Economy of the Sign – The new Weiden + Kennedy offices in London sport some beautifully economical toilet sign icons.
• Monocle: design notes – The verbose but supremely smart Dan Hill has left Monocle after their first year. These are his notes on the design and structure of Monocle?s online presence. Great stuff.
• Interesting 2008? – It looks like Russell Davies is planning to do it again. 2007?s gathering of interesting people was fantastic.
• The Charms of Wikipedia – Nicholson Baker is a brilliant writer. Here at The New York Review of Books his review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual becomes a fascinating essay on Wikipedia itself. Good start-of-the-week reading.
• Garfield minus Garfield – Reimaginings of Garfield comic strips have been done (very well) before, but this take is particularly good. Remove the cat and you?re left with Jon Arbuckle in the throes of an existential crisis.
• The Optimist's Almanac – Two good ideas here: Resurrecting ye olde format of an almanac as a daily blog, and Richard Wilson?s central conceit of posting one bad thing from history on this day, then following it with something far more cheerful.
• The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn – Steve Packard at Depleted Cranium writing what initially looks like a list of arguments for debunking the theories of environmental campaigners, but actually reveals itself to be a collection of positive common sense advice.
• Decotora – PingMag reporting on a photo book by Masaru Tatsuki: Decotora are customised trucks, heavily decorated by their owner-drivers with stereotypical Japanese obsessiveness and attention to detail.
• Superheroes in Real Life – An entertaining article by Ward Rubrecht for the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages on people who consider themselves ?real life superheroes?, fantastic costumes and all.
• Dairy Today magazine – Looks like a fantastic redesign by Pentagram?s Austin office. It?s a shame they don?t show us some interior spreads, but the covers are beautiful. Wonder how they persuaded the client to raise the photography budget so high?
• Napkin vs. towel – Michael Migurski very eloquently explaining the difference between technology-driven ?green? design and genuinely sustainable thinking in the design of a product and its life-cycle.
• Everything will be ok. – No, really. It will.
• The Economist Style Guide – How to write proper. An invaluable resource.
• Rankin?s Eyescapes – As fashion/portrait photographers go, Rankin is one of the more interesting, despite his reputation. These intimate portraits of eyes alone though, are absolutely stunning. I can only imagine how powerful these must be as large-scale prints. Gorgeous.
• The real value of music – Thom Yorke being interviewed for Wired magazine by David Byrne on business models for music, in the wake of Radiohead?s In Rainbows. This kind of conversation works a lot better than a traditional interview.
• News flows, consciousness streams – Moveable Type, a beautiful piece of installation art (or maybe it is exhibition design?) in the lobby of the new New York Times building.
• Taiwanese recyclable symbol – The established western recyclable symbol is a beautiful thing, but this Taiwanese version is equally good. A very clever piece of symbol design.
• Spam One-liners – Linzi Hunter has been hand-lettering spam email subject headings as little pieces of art. They?re warm, funny and beautiful.
• Product Mythology – Aaron Oppenheimer at Product Behaviour makes a strong, clear case for defining product mythologies at the concept stage. Handy reference when writing proposals around here.
• Is blogging per se a dying art? – Adam Greenfield questioning whether long-form blogging is dying out thanks to the ease of the short-form (see Twitter, etc) and unexpectedly kicking off a lengthy and fascinating discussion in the comments.
• Terence McKenna – Must remember to locate and read some of McKenna?s work on Novelty Theory. The gist is that our universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty, and that one day extropy will wipe out entropy.
• Cyberoptix TieLab – Bethany Shorb and Cyberoptix produce beautiful hand-screened ties with a slight alernative edge to them. Walking a fine tightrope between being cool and being classy, her obvious attention to detail is what makes them work.
• Volleyball Is an Awesome Sport and Your Mother and I Are Getting a Divorce. – Excellent short fiction at McSweeney?s by Peter Bognanni. There?s been a lot of excellent short fiction at McSweeney?s lately.
• Applied Green – The Applied Green conference has been making Russell Davies think. When Russell thinks, he tends to think aloud. And it tends to be interesting.