GETTING CLEAN

In one of the most peculiar brand loyalty stories ever told, New York Magazine reports that Tide laundry detergent–no lie–has become valuable currency in street drug transactions.  It sells ”for either $5 cash or $10 worth of weed or crack cocaine.”

 

PEARED DOWN

Album cover art rarely comes this spare, and, even more rarely, features still life photography. But Dwight Yoakam’s oddly-titled recent release, Three Pears, features a cover that manages to be at once literal and poetic.

 

BALLOON MAN

There are 10 photographic prints in Scott King’s A Balloon for Britain series, but I’d be perfectly happy with just one.

WISTFUL THINKING

Oh, yes, I’ll second this holiday wish from Berg Studio.

YOUNG GUNS

As the debate on guns and children rages on in households and on the opinion pages of newspapers, Edel Rodriguez has no doubt been mining old crime novel covers for this Washington Post illustration.

CLEAN COAL

If Steve Jobs had gone into the air purification business, he may have come up the Chikuno Cube, an air purifier made from something called “activated bamboo charcoal powder and clay minerals.”

READERSHIP

 

A self-initiated publication by the Netherlands-based design practice Atelier Carvalho Bernau, Dear Reader is “a collection of obsessions, oblique references and footnotes of design processes.”

ABOUT FACE

A case for hanging on to your house phone would be Jasper Morrison’s design for the Swiss brand Punkt, which is comprised of a cradle that holds the phone in face-up position, allowing for dialing without picking up the phone. Oh, and yes, it’s beautiful.

PRESS RELEASE

Bah. I wish I’d found these hand printed letterpress cards a bit sooner.

INITIAL APPEARANCE

The Swedish designer and blogger Sandra Juto has an exceptionally beautiful blog, and has adopted this typographic module of her initials as a personal logo.