ReubenMiller

Letterhead Fonts Gets a Serious Makeover

After

Before

Letterhead Fonts is one of my favorite font foundries. I've discovered gems ranging from old-style reproduction sign lettering to energized, modern brush scripts perfect for food packaging design. Their fonts are unique in their generous inclusion of alternates and bonus swashes and embellishments. The quality is always excellent and they're so much fun to work with.

A couple days ago when I was looking for fonts for my latest packaging design project, I checked out Letterhead's website. When the website came up on my screen I was totally taken aback by the astonishingly lavish new look (see before and after above). I had to compliment Chuck Davis (the man behind Letterhead Fonts) on the new look and he was kind enough to share some great behind-the-scenes info.

Firstly, the credit for the design goes to supertalent, Dave Smith. Dave completely hand-illustrated and rendered the header and footer for the web pages.

Continue for behind-the-scenes sketches and hand work, and more of the story behind this extraordinary website design.

Theory 11 - Propaganda Playing Cards

Propaganda series paying cards by Theory 11 are uniquely engineered to military precision with unsurpassed quality. They're an industrial spin on modern playing card design with a best-in-class feel and finish. We tried them out  and they are super-smooth! The finish on these cards is unlike what you might be used to - they glide one atop the other making them almost slippery, but excellent in the hands of a pro.

These cards were literally designed for magic tricks, so they are the ultimate quality and should stand up to some pretty heavy use. (See video below.)

ReubenMiller's Got a Brand-Spanking New Look!

I'm sure you've noticed by now that we've got a fresh new look for the blog. After a lot of coding, tweaking and generally making a mess of CSS, I've managed to get it to look half-decent (let me know what you think of it!) It still remains a work-in-progress. The goal of this redesign was to make it easier to get around and add some more color. After all, you know we're suckers for color!

Last but not least, our large header incorporates the work of a featured artist. We'll be featuring different artists in that space and rotating them over time to keep things interesting. This isn't a sponsored spot, but rather a testament to our support of great artists. Our first feature is of the brilliant and witty Simon Oxley, one of our all-time favorites.

Enjoy!

Pepsi Belly

Made me laugh.

(via SSC)

Resealable Soda Can with Ads

I discovered this really interesting packaging concept that allows for a soda can to be resealed called Soda-Seal. The concept was invented by Johan de Broyer of Ukraine and co-inventor, Robert Davis of Davis Advertising. Robert is credited with design and development of patent drawings, 3-D models and video animations of the concept in action.  

Watch video animations here and here. The latest video is here.

(video screen shots above and link references are courtesy of Davis Advertising, Inc.)

Alexa's Top 90 Design Weblogs

Want to know the top design blogs according to Alexa? Well, we've compiled all 90 of them. I have no clue how they come up with these rankings, but hey, these are great sites to check out and bookmark! (ReubenMiller ranks 24 - not bad.)

Cock Fight

   

This is a music video created by Roel Wouters. The idea behind the artwork and a series of posters was to  "capture rage in a systematic way". The video shows two cocks, covered in ink/paint fighting on a sheet of paper. Their steps, falls and brushes on the paper create a very intriguing result.

Beautiful? Yes. Ethical? You decide.

(via Thinking for a Living)

22 Year Tradition: Aspen Boutique's Fantastical Holiday Cards

2008 card, front

2008 card, back

Aspen Boutique (formerly Aspen Traders) has a long-standing tradition of mailing fanciful holiday cards to their customers. They have been doing it since 1987. The cards are designed by Gardner Design of Wichita Kansas, run by Bill Gardner of LogoLounge fame. Bill was kind enough to share the entire collection of cards with us, and gave us some background about their unique, long-standing relationship with Aspen Boutique.

REUBENMILLER: Can you tell us a bit about Aspen Boutique?

Bill Gardner: Aspen Boutique started twenty three years ago as Aspen Traders. It has always been a womens apparel store with originally a slant towards natural fiber materials and a great deal of international and semi ethnic influence. They have always had a remarkable collection of jewelry again with a global influence and eventually the store moved into also carrying select home ware and body products that fit the mix. James and Monica Smits, the owners, had lived in Colorado and had a wonderful natural style that you might see in that area of the country. Now take everything that I've said and remember that this is generally a higher end store.

(continue to see the rest of the cards and interview...)

Inflatable Light Fixtures

Chilean designer, Rodrigo Alonso's Modulair light fixtures elevate the humble blow-up beach ball to high design status. The fixtures are also unique because you can clip four different modules together for a customized design.

More images follow.

(via designspotter)

SPARK Animation '08 Poster

SPARK Animation '08 was a fabulous 5-day animation festival that included work by a world-class lineup of directors, animators and film-makers.The event took place in Vancouver back in September.

This years festival posters and t-shirts were art directed and designed by Gerard Whelan of Brandcentral of Dublin, Ireland. The delightful illustrations and characters were created by the inimitable Simon Oxley.
 

Great close-up images of each letter follow.