Karen magazine puts all focus on the ordinary. Never have everyday occurrences been more interesting. Kind of the way it should always be.

Visit their website to order a copy or just get some more of the Karen world.

Delicious and clever typographic exploration by Dan Beckemeyer of O’Fallon, Illinois. I can see t-shirts in the future! Check out the rest below. Which one is your favorite?

I came across this gorgeously detailed laser engraving the other day. Graphic designer, Eric Winslow, created a unique design to go on a skateboard deck for his son’s birthday. The engraving was expertly executed at 5280lasers in Denver, Colorado. Check out the rest of the photos below.

Kurt Barbee of 5280 quoted this engraving (including the skate deck) at around $120.

Cosmic Excerpts is a collection by Ryan Todd from Darklord. The collection is a result of many years of disco, funk, and cosmic record hunting. What makes this collection unique is the way Todd documents only a portion of the record sleeve in order to create a gestalt of new perspective for some of these bizarre designs. Todd had this to say, “I would buy a record and if it happened to have weird, sci-fi artwork then I photographed a portion of the cover for the set, avoiding any words or identifiers as best as possible. If the record turned out to be terrible, then at least I was able to take away a cool image from the experience before donating it to Goodwill. It also turned into a little bit of a game, with random people showing up to see if they could identify records based on the bit I chose to show.”

See all 253 here.

Alexander S. Budnitz of Sametz Blackstone Associates has compiled a fantastic collection of cover designs for books dating all the way back to the early twentieth century. Go ahead and judge a book by its cover. Below are some of my favorites.

See the rest here.

Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.

Curious Displays is a product proposal for a new platform for display technology. Instead of a fixed form factor screen, the display surface is instead broken up into hundreds of ½ inch display blocks. Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface.

It has been 2 years since Design and the Elastic Mind was shown at MoMa. I think that the concepts Julia confronts in her creative exploration is not only influenced by her previous degree in science and technology (UCLA), but an example of what Paola Antonelli was trying to demonstrate through her curation of that exhibition. Designers in the 21^st Century are constantly being forced to adapt to the way science is shaping our world. To me, design has always been a device for introducing real emotional qualities to the interpretation of information. Listen to Paola speak about Design and the Elastic Mind on Charlie Rose.

Curious Displays was Julia’s MFA thesis project in the Media Design program at Art Center.

Read more here.

Issue #4 of Nico magazine. Interviews w/ shoe designer Pierre Hardy & photograph Miles Aldridge particularly caught my attention.

Clever posters from Albert Exergian

(via coutequecoute with the pop)