The design industry could stand to appreciate more than just its American, Western European and Japanese roots. John Manschot brings us a little closer to the Indian sub-continent in his book,  “The Art of Bollywood Blockbusters.” The Web site includes some so-so scans that barely do justice to the plethora of exquisitely illustrated posters and videocovers from the world’s largest film industry. Last year I got my hands on a copy of “Thai Graphic Design” by Anake Nawigamune, which is also big, bold and beautiful — impossible to find domestically, but now you have an excuse to visit Thailand.

At last! It’s now possible to have your own little droid sidekick, ever at the ready with navigational acumen, mechanical resourcefulness and all-around spunk and charm. On the other hand, it looks like this 15” R2-D2 toy is mostly good at shuttling a can of beer to you across the living room, judging from the marketing photos.

If you’re looking to compare the relative heights of the world’s skyscrapers, then pay a visit to the impressively detailed resource The Skyscraper Page. It’s meticulously organized by geography and cross-referenced by architect, building type and other key facts — and also beautifully illustrated. Just take a look at the diagrams for New York and Bangkok.

Former President Clinton had some unkind words on Friday about the Bush administration’s shoddy handling of corporate malfeasance and the Middle East. Bravo.One other thing I’ve been thinking about: people are saying that Shrub’s administration is like his father’s in that it’s strong on foreign policy and weak on domestic affairs. What?! Strong on foreign policy?! I’d say they’ve been obstinately unilateral, un-educated, tone deaf and destructive.

More comics stuff, and a bit of history too. Who knows how long this will be up, but this site has scans of every page of the very first issue of Action Comics from 1938, which also featured the very first appearance of Superman.

Two notable entertainments at The New Yorker: First, from this week’s ‘Talk of the Town,’ Herb Allen’s “Brooklyn Tobacco Party,” a recounting of a citizens’ group trying to fight society’s anti-smoking trends, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read in a magazine.On a more serious note, an article in last week’s issue called “The Talent Myth” debunks the belief of American businesses that star employees should be prioritized at all costs — and how Enron was a notable practitioner of this fallacy. More than another instance of bashing everyone’s favorite corporate kicking boys, author Malcolm Gladwell takes a closer look at what motivates groups of people within business organizations, and offers the alternative of emphasizing soundly-realized operational frameworks.

The days when the design of software icons revolved around whatever aesthetics that designers could squeeze out of a single pixel are rapidly receding. The icons to be found in Mac OS X, and to a lesser extent in Windows XP, are like little digital paintings, and it takes a different kind of savvy to design them. Pixeljerk is a great practitioner of this new craft, and he had a terrific tutorial up there but it’s now gone. There’s also some decent help at Robouk Designs.

New Subtraction cover posted today: “In Box.” It’s a quick Flash movie I put together. The text was culled from the subject lines from all the spam I received today. Yes, all that junk mail in one day.

Before & After puts out some decent design tutorials, though they are geared more towards the Fortune 500 set than the design proletariat. Still, there’s something to learn from their ligatures primer, which demonstrates the ways in which linking letterforms can create unique corporate marks.

This heat has me thrown for a loop. All I want to do is chill out with a glass of lemonade and a stack of DVDs, which is my excuse for not posting for the past few days. Anyhow, here’s some more design stuff: Styleboost has relaunched and their cover image is really great. Reservocation has a new issue out; their layouts are still quite decent, though, like lots of other amateur journalists, they could stand to brush up on their interviewing technique. And finally, design-clique It-boys WeWorkForThem have launched their souvenir division, YouWorkForThem.com, where you can buy tees, fonts and EPS art.

Flash drives me crazy sometimes. For a project we’re working on at Behavior, we need to use a clean, pixelated font, like Verdana, behind a mask, but for some reason Flash loves to anti-alias — and thus blur — any typefaces that deign to appear within a mask. Ugh.

Sesame Street intends to add an HIV-positive puppet character to its South African broadcast, in an attempt to help spread understanding in this AIDS-ravaged country. Like a pack of ignorant, reactionary panderers, five Republicans from the House Commerce Committee have threatened to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the face of this small-scale humanitarian gesture — I guess because it offends their narrow-minded and stereotypical view of AIDS relief of any kind as an endorsement of homosexuality. These people are fanatical right-wingers and are effectively working to undermine basic human compassion. Though the Republicans have apparently been placated, it’s discouraging the way that their brand of reckless idiocy can gain attention — and that the world doesn’t bristle with disgust at it. Those who are offended should write polite but strongly-worded letters of protest to your Congressperson or directly to Committe Chairman Rep. W.J. Tauzin (R-LA).

For five days I’ve been struggling with some look and feel comps for a new Web site that Behavior is working on. This is one of the toughest assignments I’ve had in a while — it’s taken me six full-fledged comps to get to a state where I have three that I like. Sometimes, I guess, it’s necessary to work through a lot of bad work before getting to a satisfactory design.

Wow, Rep. James Traficant is a total loon. I caught his freak-show testimony before the House ethics committee on C-SPAN today — an insane combination of bizarre weeping willow hairstyle, defiantly tacky skinny tie and televangelist’s oratory. It reminded me of some kind of governmental hijinks from the 19th century, a bizarre tale of hucksterism and megalomania you’d only read about in The New Yorker. Only a thousand times funnier.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about comic books, in a way that I haven’t since I was fifteen. This kind of started when I bought “The Comics Journal Library: Jack Kirby,” a compendium of interviews with and essays about the legendary Jack Kirby, who is often referred to as the most influential artist to ever work in comic books. The book is LP-sized and loaded with terrific samples of Kirby’s singular, hyper-dynamic brand of art, but it’s also wonderfully rich in its essays and musings on Kirby’s place in history. You would expect no less from the laudably literary minds at The Comics Journal.

Congratulations to Gicheol Lee of StudioTIMO. He won today in the Experimental category of the Flash Film Festival at Flashforward 2002 for his amazing Typorganism project.

Soundload is a nice idea for managing MP3s, but is notable mostly for its sharp visual design, courtesy of Jason Kristofer at PRINNT Productions.

I’m a big fan of the comic book artist Mike Mignola, who brings a noirish sense of design to his Jack Kirby-esque compositions. His Hellboy series is destined for the silver screen sometime next year — with the help of Guillermo Del Toro — and I can’t wait.

It’s hot enough to fry an egg in New York, and therefore hot enough to fry a dog’s brain. It’s so hot it’s got to be unhealthy.Anyway, I’m staying indoors, staying cool, and reading crap like the hilarious adventure of Buddy Weiserman and the Gold Treasure of Sierra Leone. The name Buddy Weiserman, a riff on ‘Budweiser,’ is a prankster’s invention, and this site details Buddy’s hilarious email exchanges with a so-called prince that claims to have a stash of gold to unload at below-market prices. It’s a classic Nigerian 419 crime, and you may have received spam along these lines yourself, which makes it funnier to see someone turn the tables on the con artists. [Human error screwed up this post, which was supposed to have appeared on Wed 03 Jul, so I’m appending it here.]

On a whim, I went to see Margaret Cho’s new concert film, “Notorious C.H.O.” on Wednesday evening. It’s frequently hilarious and I admire the nose-to-the-grindstone way she has rebuilt her post-“All-American Girl” career. I didn’t realize until arriving at the theater that it was opening night, or that Cho would be there in person, or that she was going to be actually standing at the theater door, greeting moviegoers and taking each person’s ticket. It was a cute gesture.