Gallery of amazing designs from a former corporate leader in commissioning extraordinary work from seminal designers. Also see gallery two and gallery three. Via Sam Potts.

An end-game primer on how to get your hands on, shoot with and develop the distinctive, century-defining photographic film before it’s completely discontinued. And by the way, if you’re at least mildly interested in photography and not yet subscribed to Photojojo, you’re missing out.

Not necessarily essential, but nevertheless amusing and actually quite convincing argument about the centrality of architecture in the Ivan Reitman classic (and its sequel). “The Ghostbusters’ quest is not for recognition, but simply for the right to exist, to be weird, to have different theories and succeed. Standing in their way are several forces of the ‘establishment’ — from Dean Yeager, to Walter Peck of the Environmental Protection Agency, to the Mayor — who repeatedly try to shut the Ghostbusters down. This battle against the establishment, so central to the Ghostbusters’ story, is reflected throughout the film by architectural setting.”

From yesterday, a scathing condemnation of the recent turn of events in the continually controversial development project in downtown Brooklyn.

“The recent news that the developer Forest City Ratner had scrapped Frank Gehry’s design for a Nets [basketball] arena in central Brooklyn is not just a blow to the art of architecture. It is a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city… A new design by the firm Ellerbe Becket [is a] colossal, spiritless box, it would fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis. Its low-budget, no-frills design embodies the crass, bottom-line mentality that puts personal profit above the public good. If it is ever built, it will create a black hole in the heart of a vital neighborhood.”

Audio slideshow from designers Prem Krishnamurthy and Rob Giampietro explains the ideas behind the design of this sort of new magazine focusing on Jewish life. They’ve done a very nice job, but Tablet’s inadvertent similarities with various other online magazines, for instance The New Yorker, underscore how difficult it can be to create a distinctive online presentation for published content.

The One Club asks a few questions of one of my longtime design heroes, Kit Hinrichs. He doesn’t seem to get as much press as some of his partners at Pentagram, but I still regard his book “Typewise” as essential (sadly it’s out of print).

The studio “based their imagery partly on Bauhaus principles and on colour theorist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack’s 1920s experiments with various apparatus that could generate moving projections of coloured light. His processes were later explained in his booklet, Farben Licht-Spiele.”

A typically thoughtful look at the promise in Jeff Veen’s forthcoming font-embedding technology which will allow Web publishers to license and embed typefaces on HTML pages. Davidson, a co-creator of the type replacement method sIFR, says, “It’s important to examine the following characteristics, in order of importance: compatibility, functionality, legality, ease of use, and hackiness,” and he proceeds to do just that, very effectively. The comments on this post are interesting too and worth a read (at least the first dozen or so were).

While we’re idly speculating in advance of having actual hands on experience with Typekit, I may as well weigh in with some speculation of my own: if in fact the Typekit business model allows relatively cheap licensing costs, that is of course ideal for everyone — independent Web designers would have access to a fully rich array of typographic options, and type foundries would both stave off illegal uses and open up new markets for their products. Unfortunately the type business has never really been a consumer business, and it’s quite possible that licensing won’t be particularly affordable for individuals — and yet Typekit could still succeed. There are enough big companies willing to pay a few hundred or a even a few thousand dollars to render their messages in their own typographic voice to make this work. However, fingers crossed that everyone involved sees the upside in affordability.

A developer at Zoho ponders why Microsoft’s products are so poorly received, while even Google’s concepts and pre-announcements are so enthusiastically received. “Microsoft just has so much bad karma in this industry that I cannot imagine a company like us trusting them on much of anything. Take Silverlight: Microsoft pledged that they will always support Silverlight on Mac and Linux, and on browsers other than IE. Do you really, really believe their promise?”

In this lengthy and somewhat incredible conversation, Geoff Manaugh talks with gaming critic and author of the personal narrative and philosophical reflection “This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities” about points of commonality and departure between architecture and video games. Along the way, they explore fascinating territory, including ideas about how creativity in both fields — and by extension, design in general — is influenced by competition or the lack thereof, and the disconnect between the buildings architects design and the architectural environments the same architects might enjoy in video game worlds. Actually, there is so much good stuff in this interview that it would take me all day to excerpt and comment on everything I found enlightening or revealing. Highly recommended, and worth reading through to the end.