Why things suck! - Wired Magazine

Wired magazine lists a number of common and yet extremely annoying everyday items Why things suck
Printer cartridges, batteries, photocopiers, car alarms...

Finding the right ink cartridge for your printer can be harder than finding true love...

hehehe

Define graphic design ...graphically!

In a similar vein to the spam art/poems, this "What is graphic design?" poster competition has some really cool, interesting and humorous entries: see http://tiny.cc/posters

Turn spam into art

I LOVE this idea of converting spam into cute, quirky designs.

Who would have thought anything positive, beautiful and humourous could come out of spam?!! It's almost poetry!

See Linzie Hunter's Flickr page

Beautiful design of practical objects

...that's not to say that they're cheap!

Smashing Magazine got together a list of 25 objects (laptop cases, speaker systems among others) currently on the market, which combine beauty, style, elegance, in some cases a sense of fun.

Their mysterious product appeal suggests they offer an unmatched user experience. Can't guarantee all that just from the photos of course, but check out the mouthwatering pics anyway.

Among my favourites: attractive oilcloth lunch bags (always a sucker for anything which can be reused and reduces waste); the extremely handy drink selector mug, (see picture) - great for remembering everyone's coffee requests in the office, - and the extremely useful flexible dual screen system (the BTC Dual Monitor 150 DS).

Enjoy!

What makes for good icon design?

A summary from Turbomilk on what does and doesn't work in icon design. Unsurprisingly, many of the general usability guidelines apply.

But Turbomilk suggests taking the following considerations into account:

Simplicity
Recognizability
Style consistency
Ease of differentiation
Cultural localization

Not forgetting, of course, the importance of working on a small scale; resizing a large, (even vectorial) image is gonna look too messy and fussy at 16 x 16 pixels!

Fairly logical stuff, but an interesting read nonetheless.

http://turbomilk.com/truestories/cookbook/criticism/10-mistakes-in-icon-design/