And through the friscalating dusk light comes Cameron McEfee. Cameron was also annoyed with the guide system in Photoshop, but he decided to do something about it and built GuideGuide. GuideGuide is a Photoshop extension that makes it easy to add “pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines” with just a few clicks of the mouse. I’m been using GuideGuide to design all morning and it’s placed guides right on the money. It’s so nice to not have to guess anymore!

Here’s the Smashing Magazine article that pointed me to it.

Thanks, Cameron and Smashing Magazine!

Graphic designer, Julien Mercier, created a typeface that combines both serif and san serif font details to create a really interesting and elegant approach to typography. It’s called Otsuki-Sama and you can check it out here.

Well, now you don’t need to worry about designing your next holiday card! Cartolina Post is an iPhone app that allows you to take a photo, insert it into one of several postcard templates and mail it out…all from your phone. See what I mean??

Check out his post here: Choose your web fonts wisely

Comic Sans Pro Typeface Family Makes its Debut

We all know that Comic Sans has gotten a lot of flack for being one of the worst, most overused typefaces in computer based graphic design history. I wonder why the blog post doesn’t touch on how bad of a name Comic Sans has gotten over the years?

This was my favorite part: “Hats off to Monotype Imaging for enlivening Comic Sans and getting it back to its roots as a comic book lettering face. Now everyone can write with more panache – and look even more like a pro using swashes, small caps and other typographic embellishments,” said Connare.

25 Abandoned Yugoslavia Monuments that look like they’re from the Future

To quote Daniel, “What?! Why haven’t we ever seen these before?! We should make a movie and feature every single one of these monuments in every frame.”

Anyway, you can find the full article here at PCMag.com. You can also read this article that was posted yesterday about Google’s latest doodle (also found on PC Mag).

Remember this? That’s right, it’s the 2012 London Olympics logo. The logo was designed by Wolff Olins to the tune of £400,000. Wolff Olins is a world wide leader in brand development and management. They’ve been a large part of the reason brands like (RED), Target and General Motors (to name a few) are so successful.

Yet, with all of their successes and incredible talent, they still created a logo that was received quite negatively by the general public when it was introduced in 2007.

Well, now the Iranians are angry about it too. Ali Akbar Dareini of the Associated Press reports, “Iran objects to the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, contending it is racist because it resembles the word ‘Zion’ and warning of a possible boycott of the games. The secretary general of Iran’s National Olympic Committee said Iran sent a letter to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. The letter claims the 2012 logo spells out ‘Zion,’ a biblical term widely recognized to refer to the city of Jerusalem.” You can find the rest of the article here.

This just goes to show that graphic designers carry a lot of responsibility in their work. And just for funsies, here are the new mascots.

Today Starbucks announced that they had a new logo “evolution” to unveil to the world. You can read about it on their site here or read this CNN Money article here.

‪It almost seems like Starbucks is making the whole logo change into a bigger deal than it is…sort of: “The new logo expresses what Starbucks represents to our partners and customers.”‬ People get real weird about “their Starbucks” so I understand Starbucks trying to handle this situation carefully. Frankly, Starbucks has been losing ground (so to speak) in the coffee dispensary industry and whenever a company starts to lose serious market share they go straight to the “brand refresh” for better or for worse (ahem…GAP).

My thoughts? I think the new logo is fine. They did the right thing in keeping the circle, the green and the siren. Some people have problems with removing the words, but didn’t Target do the same thing? My only issue is that Starbucks tries so hard to be this local neighborhood coffee shop with a DIY, paper-cut aesthetic, but this new logo seems more sleek/sexy/corporate than the previous iteration.

Brand New’s article on it.

ISO 50′s reaction and a list of user submitted logo designs (David Airey’s is my favorite. Haha.)

Gap’s response on their Facebook page.

Thanks to Joel for making me aware!