Photographer Richard Nicholson’s portfolio of London’s remaining professional darkrooms. With the lights on, of course.

An assessment of the organization’s status during from executive director Ric Grefé: “AIGA… needs to meet members’ expectations in a leaner form, with reduced staff and financial resources, working smarter where we cannot work harder. This is not to say that AIGA is in danger — we have a solid financial foundation, with reserves of more than US$1 million and the number of designers who continue to maintain their memberships exceeds 21,000. Yet we expect sponsorship to be more difficult to attract, and that attendance at conferences and participation in the competitions may weaken.”

The prolific Antonio Carusone of AisleOne published an interview with me on his resource for all things grid-related, The Grid System. No comments enabled directly on the article but you can add remarks in the forum or back here on this post.

The artist Gordon Young collaborated with famed designers Why Not Associates on these wonderful typographic tree structures for this new library in Crawley, United Kingdom.

“The striking, cracked trees, fourteen in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text.”

Tropicana’s recent reversal on their new, poorly received packaging for their orange juice products — on Monday they announced that they would be reverting to the old look for these products within a month — makes their rebranding effort an easy target for snarky blog posts. There are so many lessons to be learned — or at least ideas to be discussed arising from this debacle.

Particularly, I think, in the realm of whether the design and branding industry can really be trusted when a client endeavors to redesign a product. Did Tropicana really need that redesign? Was it really good strategy? In hindsight, the answer is almost certainly no, but hindsight of course is a too convenient perch. True, the botched execution ignited a minor consumer uproar, but it’s probably not fair to say that turn of events definitively proves that it was a bad idea in and of itself.

Still, let’s say that in the course of their research for the project, the responsible branding agency, Arnell, unearthed evidence that indicated that no, a redesign was not what Tropicana needed. Given that scenario, would Arnell have turned down the assignment, or advised Tropicana to undertake a much more modest redesign? Do they have that kind of integrity?

A tip for how to get the just-released beta working on your machine without displacing the current version.

Our information graphics team does a lot of terrific interactive charts at NYTimes.com, but this one is particularly effective: a simple and somewhat bone-chilling look at how housing prices have fallen in twenty major American cities since 2000.

“Did you really want someone’s first experience with your work to make them hate you? That installer, the process of getting bits to where they should be is the very first interaction someone one has with your actual code, and yet, too many of you out there give it less thought than clean socks!” An IT professional offers eleven ‘commandments’ of good practice for software installation. Somewhat profanely delivered, but unimpeachably right.

“The PepsiCo Americas Beverages division of PepsiCo is bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to a flagship product, Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. Redesigned packaging that was introduced in early January is being discontinued, executives plan to announce on Monday, and the previous version will be brought back in the next month.”

What a disaster, though I think the reversal is clearly needed since the new packaging is virtually useless for shoppers. The root of this problem — and this is for a much longer blog post for another day — has less to do with PepsiCo than with the design and branding industry in general, I think. Not every client who thinks they need a redesign really needs a redesign.

Macworld editorial director Jason Snell on his experiences running Mac OS X on a US$350 MSI Wind netbook: “But the Wind is most definitely a system that isn’t intended for heavy use. It could be an appealing second (or third, or fourth) computer in a household, the kind of computer you keep under the couch so that you can pull it out and look up some actor’s name on IMDb. It’s the computer you buy for your kids with little fear of what they’ll do to it. If all you’re doing is reading email, surfing the Web, and maybe writing some basic documents, you’ll probably never notice. But if you try to do more, you’ll probably regret it.”

In keeping with a personal tradition, I’ll once again be sparing myself hours of excruciating boredom by not watching tonight’s 81st Academy Awards on television. If you know me, then you know that I’m an unabashed enthusiast for the movies. But I do everything that I can to keep the Oscars at a distance. I don’t just avoid watching them, though. I also try to avoid paying attention to them as best I can.

Still, it’s been hard not to notice that Christopher Nolan’s epic popcorn blockbuster “The Dark Knight” was somewhat flagrantly stiff-armed in this year’s nominating process. True, the movie received eight nominations — including best art direction and cinematography, and an almost surefire nod to Heath Ledger for best supporting actor — but it was also snubbed for best picture and best director. Here’s a movie that not only broke box office records and earned plaudits from audiences all over the globe, but it was also praised by no shortage of serious critics as a significant elevation of the admittedly limited super-hero genre. In every way that matters for popular entertainment, it was one of the most important — and best — films of 2008. To fail to acknowledge “The Dark Knight” or its director accordingly is, to me, just more evidence that the Academy Awards is a credible measure of nothing other than timid fickleness.

In an Op-Ed article from today’s newspaper, the principals of the well-regarded design studio No. 17 lament that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still fails to recognize a critical contribution from the design community. “There’s an Oscar for pretty much every aspect of filmmaking, except one: the title sequences… Titles have become wonderful bridges from reality into the cinematic world and back out again. At their very best, they are themselves innovative, emotional experiences, microcosms of their movies.” I wholeheartedly agree, but that would be a technical Oscar, if I ever heard of one.

According to a report from iPhone metrics company Pinch Media, “of the users who download free applications from the App Store, only twenty percent use the app the next day, and far fewer do as the days pass. For paid applications, the return rate is only slightly better: thirty percent of people use the application the day after they buy it. The drop-off rate for paid applications is about as steep as for free applications after the first day.” If accurate, this research could upend a lot of the thinking around the viability of mobile applications. Based on my own experience at least, it seems plausible.

A serious blow to the well-liked media software: “Two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from Boxee. We tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on Boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it.” A blog post at Hulu offers an earnest if not particularly detailed acknowledgment that this is an unfortunate situation for users of both Hulu and Boxee; no real explanation is given, other than Hulu’s content providers asked for the removal. To be honest, I doubt if I will have any use for Boxee unless this situation is remedied somehow.

Four newspapers from Europe and one from Mexico take prizes in this prestigious, thirtieth annual creative competition. Some of the sample layouts from the winners (seen most easily in the embedded slideshow at the bottom of this page) are gorgeous; most are highly illustrative, and many are so visually ornate that they’re almost indistinguishable from magazine design. For me, they make for such interesting — and enjoyable — contrasts with the relatively austere aesthetic of The New York Times.

In other news, this year’s best designed horse-and-buggies should be announced soon. Kidding! Oof, I’m in trouble.

Courtesy of the school’s Masters in Interaction Design program, an interview with the well-known creative mind behind The Feltron Annual Report. In this dialogue, he touches on the problem of the designer as an author: “In a larger sense, the Annual Reports are an outgrowth of a search for content to use as a source for design. As long as I’ve been a designer, I’ve searched for ways to design personal content.”

On 11 Mar, Felton will be appearing on a blockbuster bill of fellow speakers — Jen Bekman, Rebekah Hodgson and Jason Kottke are the others — at one of the program’s well-attended Dot Dot Dot lectures in New York. If you’re looking to go back to school or to deepen your expertise in interaction design and you’re not already considering this program, you should be.

The design writer William Bostwick offers and explains five points for designers who need to express themselves in written form: “Write about yourself, write a story, write real words, don’t write too much.” Excellent article recommended for any designer serious about his or her career.

No two ways about it, I’m pretty excited about “Watchmen.” The original comic book mini-series has held a pretty special place in my heart since I first bought it, issue by issue, upon its initial publication two decades ago. It was the best, most complex and most satisfying graphic storytelling that I’ve ever read, and also the comic book that ruined all other comic books for me, so high did it set the bar for super-hero fiction. If there’s been anything quite as good since, I haven’t come across it.

Less pontificatingly, I have one reservation about this movie — and in fact all masked super-hero movies: with all of the technology and effects wizardry at the disposal of the film industry, is there really no better solution for making these characters’ masks look convincing than that gaudy black make-up spread around the eyes that they always use? Please, someone put some ingenuity into that.

I’m completely captivated by this photographer’s preternaturally beautiful portraits of empty parking structures, not least because they’re in sync with the geometric photographic style that I favor.

Animation historian Jerry Beck unearths several examples — some little seen — of early animated appearances of the Superman character, both sanctioned and satirical.

Embarrassed I missed this on Saturday, but here it is: the incumbent dean of design on his early career as a graphic designer. “If you worked in a design studio in 1980, you were surrounded by colored paper, rubber cement, X-Acto knives and cans of aerosol spray glue. Our work, whether an annual report or a poster, was done by hand.”

Daniel Lewandowski: “This site is meant to honor and pay utmost respect to the life and work of Mr. Rand. When I first began this project, I discovered that there were no “single-source” references to Mr. Rand or his works anywhere on the internet. Thus sparked the idea to build this tribute/archive site.”

“Designers — and Web designers in particular — create some of the most complex, intricately layered Photoshop compositions possible.  How could we make the management and navigation of these files more efficient?” Blogger John Knack floats several intriguing ideas for modifying and adding to the layers feature in Photoshop, and offers a quick poll.

“One way you can stand out, especially on sites like Twitter, is to have a great avatar. A great avatar will help people remember you instantly. And you should use it everywhere, across the board. Use it on your blog if you have one (you should). Use it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, everywhere. Even if people don’t automatically remember your name or your website, they’ll remember your avatar and make an association. When they see it again later, on another network or site, they’ll be more likely to pay attention, to friend you, and maybe remove a few of those degrees of separation.”

I’m sure he’s very right. But, jeez, must we all become salesmen for our own idle musings? (Please follow me on Twitter.)

Aza Raskin is one of the smartest people I know, but sadly I have not kept up with his endeavors since before he and some of his colleagues at Humanized joined Mozilla Labs last year. In recent days, he’s popped up on my radar again because his latest product, Ubiquity, has garnered a lot of buzz on the Internets.

While I have great faith in Aza and his team’s talent, and while I’m pretty sure that the product itself is almost certainly worthwhile, I have to be honest: I have no idea what it does. As of this writing, I lack a clear understanding of its function or purpose. This is largely because, though I’ve come across references to it many times, the marketing hasn’t worked for me.

Developer Florian Junker has an incomplete but promising implementation of my BlockWriter concept for a focused writing tool. He’s looking for someone to take over the code and complete it.

Satirical generator for naming your creative business, though I’m disappointed it doesn’t include options for random numbers, too. Made by Breadline Design.

The parallel between design and the movies is one that’s commonly drawn, with not a lot of false modesty at play when the duties of an art director are likened to the work of a film director. Both are aesthetic managers, of a sort, charged with negotiating the realities of production, personnel and money in order to realize artistic visions that must resonate with an audience. However, the more I read about film, the more I wonder if there’s not a more appropriate similarity between an art director and a cinematographer.

Pursuant to my ongoing fascination with the work of cinematographer extraordinaire Gordon Willis, I recently dug up a lengthy profile that the author James Stevenson wrote about him in the October 1978 issue of The New Yorker. Given Willis’s impressive résumé, it’s strange that there are no book-length studies of his work; as a result, I read whatever I can get my hands on.

A thoroughly charming children’s book, written and illustrated by the talented husband-and-wife design boutique EightHourDay out of Minneapolis. The winningly simple narrative recounts the misbehavior of a family dog; I can completely relate. Sadly, the book has not yet been published, but EightHourDay have made the entire contents — cover to cover — available on Flickr.

Four new, free themes for NetNewsWire from the apparently sleepless — not to mention abundantly talented — AisleOne proprietor, Antonio Carusone. “Much attention has been paid to the design and typography of the styles to improve legibility and readability, and to enhance the overall reading experience.” It’s true; they’re beautiful.

The Tumblr staff have “just pushed a newly designed Theme Garden, and we’re working on approving the backlog of (several hundred!) theme submissions.” As each day passes, Tumblr can make a more and more compelling case that it’s the true blogging platform for the masses.