Design matters

And this inflatable toy is proof.

From Ugly Doggy.

MAD about design

Pentagram has done so much great design work—and makes so much of it look so simple and easy—one can forget how difficult and rare great design is.

I love the stuff they’ve done for the brand new Museum of Arts and Design, located in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. I've been seeing it around town and I find it very eye-catching.

Here’s a series of sketches done by Pentagram's Michael Beirut as well as some produced pieces.




Read the story behind the work and see tons and tons of examples (a pretty astonishing amount of work) here.

Learn more about MAD at their website.

And if you’re into this stuff, I recommend Michael Beirut’s Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. (Interestingly, the book weighs more than you’d think, a detail that adds a certain something to the experience. These guys think of everything.)

Show some luv with Insound 20

Jason Munn is an artist who creates a ton of awesome posters for a lot of the bands I like (and you can too). His site, the Small Stakes, has a gallery of his work and doubles as an online store.

Yesterday the awesome blog It’s Hard To Find A Friend alerted readers that Munn has teamed up with online music retailer Insound to bring us Insound 20. It’s a collection of 20 exclusive Munn designs made available as T-shirts, hoodies and posters, and they’re very cool.

Bonus feel-good detail: Insound and Munn added a 21st design with poster proceeds benefiting 826NYC.

The other items just benefit you, I guess.

Oh, and the artist list is great, including Grizzly Bear, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Spoon, The National, The Thermals, Beirut, Built To Spill, The Hold Steady and others.

Ben, there’s even a New Pornographers design.

And if you use the coupon code "insoundtwenty10" you'll receive 10 percent off your order. Shhhh.

Four capital letters

We’ve gone music-crazy over here at Super Floss for the last few posts, and today continues that trend. Kind of.

This is actually a post about the awesome retro graphic treatments explored (or re-explored) in Justice’s video for “DVNO.”

Especially love the closing reference to the old Stephen J. Cannell productions closing credits.

Watch it here now.

Top 25 band logos

The fine folks over at Spinner Magazine have compiled their list of the top 25 band logos of all time.

Rock and design? Sign me up!

It’s a pretty good list, with an interesting choice at #1, but I was surprised to see Judas Priest didn’t make the cut. (Yes, that’s a pun and no, I’m not sorry.)

Not to mention Motorhead.

This is not the post I promised earlier, but it’ll have to do in the meantime.