Purely coincidentally, I came across some more beautiful space-themed posters via The Ministry of Type.

timoni.org – A practical boarding pass redesign — Timoni Grone details the redesign of a boarding pass, factoring in the needs of the passenger and the airport staff. This is what good design entails – function, not just making things ‘look pretty’.

Posted on several design blogs already, but worth mentioning nonetheless. I love it because it conveys precisely the information it needs to and nothing more. Because it’s Paul Rand. (via Monoscope)

Lovely retro posters by Simon Page (via BB-Blog).

Gorgeous work from Hale Industrial Design (via swissmiss).

via JoshSpear.com

Studio On Fire | Design & Letterpress Printing Minneapolis

Interesting paper bottles over at The Dieline package design blog.

My friend Kristian, a talented artist and soon to become a fantastic teacher, turned 30 a couple of weeks ago. After hunting for an age trying to find a good birthday present for such a milestone, I finally discovered Domestic’s website and knew that one of their vinyl pieces would be perfect. Not too expensive, either, though the postage adds a slight pang and doesn’t appear to be particularly swift (as my order still hasn’t arrived yet).

Another gift I’d highly recommend – at least, If your intended recipient is a chocolate addict like me – is just about anything from l’Artisan du Chocolat. In particular, their liquid salted caramels are incredible; they do remind me of a certain South Park song, though!

PostSecret: an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

40% Off CR Today: best be quick, though, the offer ends 10.30am GMT tomorrow morning.

The latest addition to the gorgeous Chalkwork icon family:
Chalkworks Information Management

The Ministry of Type: the Art of Money

(via swissmiss)

Helvetica: the DVD

The DVD includes the full 80-minute feature film, plus over 90 minutes of additional interviews with Massimo Vignelli, Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann, Hermann Zapf, and more. (The director Gary Hustwit says, “we basically edited 41 short interview segments, each around two to five minutes long. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll have an idea of the format of these.”)

NTSC Region 0, 16×9 anamorphic widescreen presentation, full-color booklet, English and German language subtitles. Release date: November 6. Pre-order now, you’ll save $5 and receive early shipping (a week before street date) and two love/hate Helvetica film buttons.

There’s also a limited edition 1000-run version that includes three letterpressed mini-posters, a color C-print of a still from the film (one of ten different stills) signed by Gary, two love/hate Helvetica buttons, and a letter of actual Helvetica metal type.

I’ve ordered my copy already!

UPDATE:

DVD extra #1: Hermann Zapf on his work, Univers, Helvetica, and coffee (streaming Quicktime movie)

DVD extra #2: Helvetica DVD extra #2: Wim Crouwel on his “Proposal for a New Alphabet” (streaming Quicktime movie)

There are 38 more interviews like these on the DVD.

(via Typophile)

I’m not really a fan of CAPTCHAs as all too often they’re inaccessible to disabled users, but I must admit to being impressed by the ingenuity of reCAPTCHA. They provide plugins for most popular web software for you to use as you would normally, but the twist is that each correctly supplied word helps to digitise books by using human input to convert the scanned type; a task that people are good at but computers find difficult. Clever!

Oh my, that’s some nice signage on the New York Times building.

Bit late, but I thought I’d do a quick photo post to say how lovely the postcards are from Anne at ilike.org.uk. (Thanks also go to davidthedesigner for his help.)

Seriously, how ace is the “FUNLAND” one?

BBC News has [a good overview of the new £20 note](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6444003.stm). It has to be the [ugliest British banknote](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/business_enl_1162225010/html/1.stm) I’ve ever seen. The front isn’t bad but the rear, oh my, where to start with this monstrosity?

What the hell is going on with that illustration in the centre? The [guilloché](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilloché) behind it makes it far, far too busy, it makes my eyes hurt just to try and figure out what’s going on.

The profile portrait of Adam Smith is remarkably ugly; look at the previous 20′s portrait of Edward Elgar and scratch your head as to why they couldn’t come up with something more tasteful.

What’s going on with the stroke around the “£20″ in the top right corner, and why has someone just peppered a load of [EURion constellations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation) around it with no effort to make them fit in?

Who was responsible for the punctuation of the horrible condensed sans text that reads “The division of labour…”, and since when did it become normal to end a sentence with a colon, only to follow it up with bracketed, uncapitalised and unpunctuated text? (Is that colon pointing at the design, or what?)

And finally, is that “Twenty Pounds” and “Bank of England” set in Bodoni? Now you’re just taking the piss…

I’ll add a couple (of tongue-in-cheek digs) to his list:

* Don’t require users to log in to post comments. If they’re first time visitors and have something to say, any barriers to them saying it will mean they stay silent. And if you *do* insist on logins, [implementing OpenID](http://verselogic.net/projects/wordpress/wordpress-openid-plugin/) is as good a compromise as any.
* Following up on the “you’re vs. your” common misspellings point, don’t mix up “here and hear”. (See the copy in point 6.)