Michael Mann’s 1981 masterpiece “Thief” comes to The Criterion Collection in March of next year. This is good news.

I wrote a little about “Thief” two years ago when I posted some thoughts about Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Drive”. Where many hailed “Drive” as an original auteurist work, I saw it more as a superb homage to “Thief.” Both are worth viewing.

As usual, Criterion’s release looks lavish; it’s mastered from a new 4K transfer, with a 5.1 surround soundtrack; it comes with interviews and audio commentary from the director and his star; and it includes a companion booklet by critic Nick James. (Who doesn’t love a good booklet?)

It also features new cover art, designed by Fred Davis, that mercifully improves on the DVD cover issued by MGM some years ago.

The designers at Criterion justly get a lot of praise for the often extensive liberties they take in packaging their reissues, but I think the best thing that can be said about their art direction is that it is almost unfailingly appropriate. The artwork for this version of “Thief,” is wholly more true to the film, even if it uses the exact same visual assets that would have been available to MGM; it just benefits from having much, much better taste. That’s the difference-maker.

More about “Thief” on Criterion here.

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My friend Alex Cornell made this short movie speculating on what a future with drone technology might be like.

Because I know Alex as a friend and designer, it’s hard for me be objective — do I find this remarkable because I know the filmmaker, or because it’s genuinely impressive? It’s not just the camerawork and effects that I think are so good; Alex and his crew really nailed the voiceover work too. At the very least, it’s an entertaining three minutes.

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Someone clever is very proud of themselves:

“In 1957, Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann set out to create a new sans-serif typeface for the Swiss design market. Their goal: to create a highly legible and completely neutral expression of the Modernist design movement to which they belonged. This typeface was to have no intrinsic meaning, allowing the content to convey the message… It is in this spirit that Guts and Glory have created the ultimate Modernist perfume — a scent distilled down to only the purest and most essential elements to allow you, the content, to convey your message with the utmost clarity. Air. Water. You.”

Available in a numbered, limited edition of 3,000 for US$62 per bottle from Moss Pop.

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Beautiful work from this two-year old studio founded by Óscar Germade in Barcelona. I’m particularly fond of the way the work samples are photographed.

More work at Solofficial.com. Via Typewolf.

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A charming, hand-animated ode to a passing era in interface design. “As skeuomorphism fades from popularity, ‘Skew’ turns the idea on its head: we re-made some well known skeuomorphic interface designs in the materials and objects they were trying to imitate.”

Watch the video here.

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This is lovely. It’s a super-cut called “Projection: Eighty-five Years of the Projection Booth in Movies.”

“This 12-minute film created by Joseph O. Holmes features clips from forty-six different films that take place in a projection booth, from Buster Keaton’s ‘Sherlock, Jr.’ all the way up to Tarantino’s ‘Inglorious Basterds.’ The short debuted at the Redstone Theater at The Museum of the Moving Image on October 4, 2013, as part of the opening reception for Holmes’s ‘The Booth: The Final Days of Film Projection,’ an exhibition of photographs which continues through January 2014.”

You can watch “Projection” on Vimeo.

By the way, images from “The Booth” are included in Holmes’s 2013 Annual, which is available for order now.

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This “frequently-updated compendium of web app first-run experiences” could turn into a valuable resource. Its purpose is to break down the design, user experience, marketing and customer touchpoint aspects of how various successful Web products bring first-time users into the fold. The list of teardowns so far is not enormous, but each is thoughtful and revealing. My biggest complaint, though, is that these are focused on the desktop Web; teardowns of mobile native apps are much more critical, I find, and would make for a much more revealing survey.

Visit Useronboard.com.

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