A whopper of a deck from the amazing Jeff Croft. This is an excellent — really, I mean excellent — primer on how to achieve superior typography in a medium that does almost everything it can to make such a thing painfully difficult. It’s conceptual and practical at once, and somehow manages to be succinctly readable while making both kinds of points. I cannot emphasize enough how useful it would be for everybody working in this medium to spend time reading every single slide. I did, and I learned a lot. After you read it, email Jeff to say thank you.

Okay I get it that no kid wants apples when they go trick-or-treating. But Tootsie Rolls don’t belong on this list.

An entertaining collection of posters that are likely unfamiliar to most of us in the States. Some of my favorites:

What I would note, though, is that they’re mostly unique — there’s no clear, identifiably ‘Asian’ set of characteristics to them.

“Apparently the ladies are getting tired of the same old Sexy Cop, Sexy Nurse, and Sexy Stewardess costumes of yesteryear.” Hilarious proposals for new alternatives. Via Thrillist.

Pretty clever riff on the “Episode IV” title. Just edges out the Alfred E. Newman parody.

If you were in grade school in the U.S. you probably remember this surprisingly durable publication for students. Amazingly, their survey of students has correctly predicted the outcome of twelve of the past thirteen elections, erring only during the three-way race in 1992 that brought Bill Clinton to office.

A well-executed animated argument for how factors not appearing on the books can inflate the original estimate of the war by as many as fifty times. As an example of how information graphics, especially when cleverly designed and animated, can make a case for a particular point of view, this is a good one. As an example of how information graphics, even when cleverly designed and animated, can give the mistaken appearance of an unbiased point of view, this is also a good one.

Extensive and really wonderful collection of end titles from old movies. Among my favorites: “Strangers on a Train,” “Grand Hotel” and this unidentified film.

Exactly like the name says.

I intend to root for the Rays in the World Series, but I think it’s highly inappropriate for them — or any athletes, for that matter — to go on the stump for any political candidate, Republican, Democrat or what have you. Especially when the team is from a swing state. Tampa Bay fans of every political persuasion have the right to root for their team without the messy encumbrances of politics.

Of course I’m partial to this campaign, but these two new commercials — especially the one called “Bean Counter” — are really quite funny. As a response to Microsoft’s unimaginative “I’m a PC” rejoinders, these are not only smarter, but they play by Apple’s rules. Which is to say, they continue to play offense, while Microsoft’s campaign is clearly playing defense.

“Typetweets displays the last 100 tweets from Twitter that mentioned a typographic related term for your viewing pleasure.” It’s sort of like distilling the most esoteric from the trivial.

The latest installment in the Times’ “If Elected” series, examining how the two presidential candidates would handle the issues. This one is a truly excellent look at how choosing a President directly impacts the American technological landscape — meaning, for me and many readers, our jobs.

“For decades, the United States dominated the technological revolution sweeping the globe… Today, the dominance is eroding. In 2002, the nation’s high-technology balance of trade went south, and it never came back… There is wide agreement among economists and other experts that the capacity to innovate is central to growth, quality of life and success in the global marketplace — a point on which the candidates agree.

“‘If we don’t have an innovation agenda, if we don’t invest in science research, if we don’t provide encouragement for our kids to pursue careers in math and science, I don’t see where our country can go economically in the future,’ said John Edward Porter, a Republican former congressman who is the board chairman of Research!America, an advocacy group.”

“Every week I’ll take a popular and known website and reconstruct it by removing all words and images, replacing them with blocks.” An interesting visual exercise, but one gets the idea pretty quickly.

“It says nothing new or insightful about the president, his triumphs and calamities. (As if anyone goes to an Oliver Stone movie for a reality check.) But it does something most journalism and even documentaries can’t or won’t do: it reminds us what a long, strange trip it’s been to the Bush White House.” On a side note, it’s amusing to me that, with this movie, the Brolin family has now cornered the market for liberal actors playing Republican presidents.

For no apparent reason, I thought to myself this afternoon, “I bet there are some pretty good galleries of wrecked cars to be found on the Internet.” And there are, apparently. Here’s another one that specializes in wrecked exotic cars. Sorry folks, these ideas just come into my head sometimes.

Truly excellent archive of television commercials from every U.S. Presidential campaign since 1952, assembled by The Museum of the Moving Image. What’s particularly interesting is the prevalence of cartoon animation and jingles in the first few elections, and how they quickly gave way to more serious, documentary commercials.

Round-up of online tools for calculating how much you’ll pay in taxes under the proposed tax plans from Barack Obama and John McCain.

Modernist re-interpretations of recent films seen through the lens of branding. Quite beautiful.

Well-designed, cross-platform utility for synchronizing folder contents between multiple computers. Currently in public beta.

Not to be missed opportunity to see this well-respected digital artist in a very intimate venue.

A promisingly impressive demonstration of a new feature in the forthcoming update to the behemoth image-editing program. Via Virginia.

Back story on her experience writing about the positive side of design awards for Eye Magazine. “Designers? Awards? Positive outcome? Everyone knows it’s much cooler to complain about how awards are rigged/racist/sexist/a rip-off/judged while drunk/just plain wrong.”

“Because he is losing right now, McCain is on a more urgent mission to turn around his campaign. Because he is under attack, Obama feels the need to show he won’t let his rival push him around. The effect is the same, which is to degrade the political dialogue at a moment when the nation faces some of the most difficult challenges in a generation or more.” This qualifies as a ‘must read.’

Among the findings: “The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is US$1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is US$6,000 with US$75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.”

An amusing ad campaign from Ikea. “One day a tortoise raced a hare. He won.”

An imaginary pairing reminiscent of the immortal Superman/Muhammad Ali match-up from three decades ago. This will run as a short, eight-page story in a future issue of Amazing Spider-Man.

Results from the American Society of Magazine Editors “Cover of the Year” competition. Also see all of the entries here. It’s strange; I find editorial design to be a continual source of design inspiration, but these covers don’t excite me in the least bit.

“Aimed to launch on the the BlackBerry Storm’s version 4.7 operating system, the BlackBerry Application Center will allow the user to find, browse and install/upgrade third-party BlackBerry apps hosted by carriers.” Setting aside the fact that it’s aesthetically and typographically anemic compared to Apple’s, I wonder why RIM waited so long to do something like this. Can it really be that the idea didn’t occur to them until after the App Store launched? That they are really only executing in reaction to Apple’s moves instead of trying to get out ahead of the game? If so, a change in approach would seem to be warranted.

Tomorrow night at the Katie Murphy Amphitheater at F.I.T., I will be appearing with my friend Ian Adelman (of NYMag.com) and several other panelists to talk about the way forward for print publications in the digital age.

“Brown’s high-profile move to the Web from glossy print… [is] meant as a smart one-stop news shop, an effort to break new ground in news aggregation by mixing lots of outbound links with heavy doses of curation and original content.”Iit’s probably too early to tell whether it makes for a compelling user experience, but I’m not bowled over aesthetically, at least.

“A collection of world maps, where territories are resized on each map according to the subject of interest. There are now nearly 600 maps.” The maps are sometimes confusingly labeled or keyed, but there are plenty of engrossing visualizations, including population in year one, geographic areas with poor sanitation, and where global refugees are going.

In advance of Frank Miller’s adaptation of this significant but little known comics character, these twelve examples are intended “to show once and for all why Miller can’t hope to bring [creator Will Eisner’s] genius to life.” Personally, I’m more optimistic about this film, but these pages do demonstrate Eisner’s visionary and ambitious facility with the comics medium — and make a compelling case for how inherently difficult it would be to translate that genius to the cinema.

Note that many of these splash pages rely on a masterful sense of typographic whimsy; in my opinion, they can hold their own against most of the finest examples in the wider canon of great graphic design. The comics medium in general owes much to Eisner, not least for the fact that he was probably the first and most faithful believer in the long-term potential of comics as a mature art form. So if nothing else, I hope Frank Miller’s film draws more attention to the man’s under-served legacy.

“My country has had crisis that has caused need for large transfer of funds of 700 billion of your dollars (US). If you would assist me in this transfer it would be most profitable to you.” A pretty hilarious and accurate (right down to the all caps) send-up of the familiar Nigerian email scam.

Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff on removing eyesores from the city’s skylines. “True, the city is close to broke. But even with Wall Street types contemplating the end and construction of new luxury towers grinding to a halt, why give in to despair? Instead of crying over what can’t be built, why not refocus our energies on knocking down the structures that not only fail to bring us joy, but actually bring us down?”

The estimable Merlin Mann has been writing lately about a surprisingly under-explored topic: how to blog better. This particular post takes a look at what story arcs in “The Wire” can teach bloggers about themes in blog writing. Also includes, at the bottom, a terrific presentation deck outlining these ideas. But really, he had me at “The Wire.”

“Thirty designers create thirty posters and give you their thirty reasons to vote for Barack Obama.” I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from getting involved in the electoral process, but there seems to me to be something shortsighted and quixotic about choosing posters as a tool for change. Sadly, it also represents the limit of most designers’ imaginations. See also the on-the-ground, anecdotal evidence that a related graphic design tool, the political lawn sign, is irrelevant to winning votes.