A study funded by The Online Publishers Association tries to parse some consumer behavior patterns on tablets. Some of the findings: 61 percent of tablet owners have purchased some kind of content online; electronic magazines and books outsell electronic news content by more than twice as much; there is as yet little consensus about whether digital content should be sold on its own or bundled with other offline content, such as print subscription.

The survey also asked those tablet users who have actually purchased a digital newspaper or magazine subscription whether they preferred to get that content delivered via mobile-optimized Web sites or via apps. As it turns out, most prefer the mobile Web. This is the best bit, though:

“That result is remarkable, contradicting conventional wisdom that distributing native apps through app stores is the best way to get consumers to purchase content.”

What’s remarkable is that the OPA still considers it “conventional wisdom” for publications to distribute their content via apps, and not via the Web. I don’t want to say “I told you so,” but I did — eighteen months ago.

Here is the OPA study itself, and here is a summary of it at Poynter.

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This is a very good post from the co-founder of Andreesen Horowitz, one of the most influential venture capital firms going at the moment. He describes in detail what it feels like to be at the helm of a startup that is not going as expected. It’s very visceral, and will be familiar to many, many entrepreneurs. Admittedly, it’s not altogether original — this kind of subject matter is a staple of just about every startup-centric blog — but the phenomenon he describes can be so challenging that it’s worthwhile to see the same ideas resurface periodically. And, yes, a lot of what Horowitz writes here is familiar to me from the past year or so of running Mixel. I plan on writing more about this soon, but in the meantime you can read the entirety of Horowitz’s post here.

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Cartoonist Adam Koford seems to enjoy the new Twitter logo as much as the old one. Starting in 2009, he’s been blithely reinterpreting the famous bird mark by fitting various pop culture characters from Fred Flintstone to Che Guevara into its silhouette.

That’s just ten of them; there are about sixty more on his Flickr account, and nearly all of them are genius.

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From a 1984 issue of Domus Magazine, an interview with seminal industrial designer Dieter Rams. A few of his sketches are included. Keep in mind though that it’s Domus Magazine, so some of the questions will sound exactly like “Can you describe in a nutshell your latest utopia?” Read it here.

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This is a wonderful, quietly gorgeous video from illustrator Xaver Xylophon (not sure if that’s his real name or not, but if it is, props to his parents). It wordlessly follows a day in the life of a Bangalore auto rickshaw operator. The work looks like it was done digitally but it nevertheless communicates considerable warmth.

You can watch the video here and find out more about Xylophon here.

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The Olympic Games are nearly upon us again, and in what has become an accompanying tradition, that means it’s time to lament the current installment’s graphic design. The look of this year’s games is, well, it’s terrible, but every recent Olympiad must contend with what is widely considered the high watermark of design for the franchise: Otl Aicher’s seminal work for the 1972 games in Munich.

For those too appalled by the 2012 graphical identity, starting at the end of this month you can drive ninety minutes outside of London to Canterbury, Kent, where the University for the Creative Arts is hosting an exhibition and symposium on the design legacy of Munich ’72 The project draws on the personal collection of Ian McLaren, who was a senior designer for that Olympiad, and the companion Web site Munich72.org previews much of the material. For completists, be sure to also check out the unaffiliated site Otl Aicher and the 1972 Munich Olympics.

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