Out of the box – book from adrian333 on Vimeo.

One could argue that “No Manual” needed is the pinnacle of product design but if you’re going to make a “manual” you could do far worse than this. So much nicer to help people experience your product in order to learn rather than just telling them how it works. Just lovely. (ht @adamwohl)

How did it take civilization this long to come up with something that makes SO MUCH SENSE? Sadly, you can’t go out and buy one yet but hopefully someday soon you will be able to.

Speaking of economy, it unfortunately looks like you can’t buy these yet, but now that the idea is out there someone will be marketing them soon. Nothing that’s invented ever dies. Especially not when it’s this cute and immediately useful.

Read more here.

My friend Abhishek shared this photo of a smartly-designed lock & key system. What makes the lock special isn’t the result of groundbreaking technology but rather a desire to make it easier for those using it to be successful.

What kind of subtle changes could you make to your product/website/application/service/business that would discretely help your customers succeed, thereby feeling better about themselves, and in turn, your brand?

I love these whimsical decals from the folks at The Smart Vinyl Laboratory geared at instilling good habits in people. Be sure to check all of them out. How rad would they be for a child’s room?

Bonus: Dr. Jay Parkinson has a thoughtful follow-up on exploring how the principles behind these “Beautiful Reminders” could be applied to the Health Care Industry.

Both of these are a few weeks old but I still wanted to call them out because I like them so much, for different reasons.

Chiquita Bananas: A Beautiful Brand Refresh
What I love about this was that they took branding that was already iconic and took it in a new, playful, and ultimately really memorable, direction.

Chiquita will always remind me sharing an office with Dennis, who’d eat a banana a day and cover his laptop with the Chiquita stickers from said bananas. Clearly he’s not alone in that endeavor and Chiquita is showcasing that behavior on the new site in support of this new campaign.

Just look at these things. They’re so f*cking cute I want to collect them all and nom the crap out of them.

Think rebranding bananas isn’t exciting? Here’s a great quote on finding that angle to build on when helping brands rebuild their identities:

Many times as designers we are tasked to help brands build or rebuild their identities. We may initially think that a clean slate is required to achieve a better identity, and in some cases that can be true if the existing brand identity has little to no value. But in most cases, there is always something that can be built on, discovered, or championed with any brand. It really just requires spending as much time as you can with the product, immersing yourself in it. Like method designing, you just have to live it and the work will flow through you.

The Heinz ketchup packet : A User-centered product redesign
Heinz’s effort is impressive because it improved both form and function, making the brand feel newer visually as well as functionally, addressing their major use cases, referred to as the “dippers” and the “squeezers.”

This is a redesign that just makes so much sense you wonder how it took so long to get here. Technology wasn’t holding it back. It was a matter of really looking at the problem from a user’s point of view and then making a change. Bravo.

+ The Art Director responsible for the Chiquita redesign process did a great interview about the process.

+ Read more about the Heinz redesign here.

The team at Panic have rigged up this amazing (and beautiful) real-time display of the data immediately relevant to their team. Projects that fall in the cross section of dataviz and productivity really interest me. It reminds me a bit of the dashboard that Crispin Porter + Bogusky set up to visualize the health and status of their ongoing projects.

Here’s some info from the team at Panic:

What’s on the board?

The idea quickly grew beyond “Project Status”, and has become a hub of all sorts of internal Panic information. What you’re actually looking at is an internal-only webpage that updates frequently using AJAX which shows:

• E-Mail Queue — number of messages / number of days.
• Project Status — sorry for the heavy censorship — you know how it is!
• Important Countdowns
• Revenue — comparing yesterday to the day before, not so insightful (yet).
• Live Tri-Met Bus Arrivals — when it’s time to go home!

The Panic Calendar

• Employee Twitter Messages
• Any @Panic Twitter Messages — i.e., be nice! They go on our screen!

I highly recommend you head on over to their blog and read all about it.

The next time you need a third hand to hold your coffee cup while you dig around in your bag for something, just stick it to a streetlight with this ingenious hack.

via lifehacker.com

I really love how simple and elegant this hack is though I wonder how deep the need really is. Either way, very nicely executed.

Check out more projects like this here.

Thanks to @chadsnuts for the tip.

Candy Chang is back with another beautiful project demystifying legalese for a particular group of people, in this case, street vendors in New York City. She’s created a visually stunning booklet that attempts to clearly communicate policies the that will ultimately determine how vendors can make their living in the city.

It makes me so happy to see design continue to infiltrate the city at a municipal level. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll even have some super awesome manhole covers like they do in Japan. Dare to dream, right?

Here’s some more background on the project:

Six pairs of sunglasses, five hand bags, and countless hot dogs, biryani, falafel, and dumplings: these are but a few of the things Candy has consumed thanks to New York City’s 10,000+ street vendors. It wasn’t until recently, however, that she realized how much drama they have to endure to make an honest living. As part of Making Policy Public, Candy collaborated with The Street Vendor Project and the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) to research, compile, and design this guide to street vending in New York City. Many vendors are being fined $1000 for little things like parking their cart too far away from the curb, not “conspicuously” wearing their vending license, and other rules buried in the City’s regulation book full of intimidating jargon that would make even the most patient person cry. This guide helps clarify the rules through diagrams and minimal text in English, Bengali, Arabic, Chinese and Spanish, so NYC’s diverse vendors can understand their rights, avoid fines, and earn an honest living.

You can check out more info and plenty of more pictures here

PS: If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the marvelous work she did for NYC Tenants’ Rights.

I love how Flixster for the iPhone (iTunes link) lets you add current release movies to your queue right from their showtime browsing interface because that’s exactly when we’re making a judgement on whether a movie is worth going to see in the theater or not.

It’s a subtle integration of Netflix’s API that reflects a great understanding of the frame of mind their users are in when they’re engaging with their product.