DESIGN CHATTER
Tamagotchis Make a Magical Comeback
May 05, 2023
We’re going to age ourselves here with our excitement, but hold the presses! Tamagotchis are BACK! With their original heyday in the 90s and early 2000s, Bandai Namco took a look at all this nostalgia that’s so hot right now, and has decided to bring them back, with an extra special addition: Harry Potter creatures as the pets! It’s ok if you haven’t made it to any Care of Magical Creatures lessons, the Tamagotchi comes with everything you need to keep your fantastic critter happy…if you take care of it,
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Go to the Movies and Help Your Eyesight
May 03, 2023
It’s a movie trailer! Wait, it’s an ad! No, it’s a PSA! VisionWorks and Leo Burnett have one of the most original campaigns we’ve seen in awhile: fake movie trailers that can help you assess if your eyes need, well, an assessment. The “trailers” are played in movie theaters disguised as foreign-language films with subtitles artfully designed to be exactly the size that should be perfect for people with 20/20 vision. The trailer closes with a message “if you have trouble reading this,
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Nordstrom Rack Undertakes a Brand Re(tro)fresh
Apr 28, 2023
Sometimes a brand refresh can really just be taking a step back and returning to your roots. Nordstrom Rack is the most recent brand to undertake the retro rebrand trend (remember our article on Thorlo a couple of weeks ago?). However, theirs is a step further: the “new” logo they’ve adopted is an actual old logo from the 70s! With modernizing touches in the logo and color palettes, and very modern photography paired with them, this bold revisioning is a hit in our book.
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This Graffitti Doesn’t Need Washing Off!
Apr 26, 2023
Ok, this is one of the coolest things we’ve seen all week! It was probably only a matter of time, but street art has now gone full augmented reality. Instead of rattle cans and dodging police, street artists are taking to their laptops and making colorful, vibrant, and moving street art in AR. Check out some work by pioneering artists in this medium, and get ready to have your mind blown
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Mobile Phones Through the Years
Apr 21, 2023
Mobile phones have become so much more than that: they hold all of the internet in our pockets, plus so much more. They’re our cameras, our notepads, and our books and calculators. But somewhere along the way to becoming everything, they lost a little bit of their character. Most phone models these days are pretty similar: buttonless, glass-fronted rectangles. The Mobile Phone Museum is a project that recognized this and is attempting to document every model of mobile phone that has ever existed.
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Archive of Fictional Brands
Apr 19, 2023
Just because a brand isn’t “real” doesn’t mean it requires any less thought! Check out the Fictional Brands Archive…it’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s a sortable, alphabetical list (not yet comprehensive) of brands featured in popular works of fiction, whether those take the form of video games, movies, or tv shows. It may seem like a quirky collection of logos on the surface, but the Research section is where this site really shines. A brief Design 101 overview goes into the depth of how brands and stories are interrelated and inextricably linked,
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