I just got an awesome surprise in the mail today from Planet Propaganda: the limited edition Dunny duo they designed with Kidrobot as a keepsake for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial. And you're in luck, you can still snap these great vinyl toys up for ten bucks each. You can see more of Planet's work and all the other great design selected for the Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt through July 29.

In what has to be one of the coolest class assignments ever, students in Savannah College of Art and Design's Working Class Studio are designing a new series of wall graphics for blik. The graphics will be available on the site this fall and blik will be posting photos and information as the project progresses.

It's a bit belated, but I just realized that Ideaspotting, one of the first projects we developed for the new HOW Book line, has been out in the world for just over a year. Written by beloved HOW Conference speaker Sam Harrison, Ideaspotting is a small book full of big ideas to get readers out of their creative ruts. Happy Birthday!

Choosing an environmentally-friendly paper is about way more than just recycled content, HOW's June issue includes a great story about understanding all the nuances of papers that are better for the earth. You can read the entire article here.

If you've got an Xacto knife, a glue stick and a spare 15 or 20 minutes, you can build yourself a fun pet for your desk. I made the red bird and the orange monkey yesterday. You could make a whole army of rainbow colored monkeys. Or not.

I've always wanted to go to the National Stationery Show and I always drool over the coverage of it. This year is no exception since my fave designer goods blog Design*Sponge has tons of yummy photos. If you love great paper goods, check out this recent post.

via NotCot

Mountain Dew today announced the launch of Green Label Art, a limited-edition series of aluminum bottles featuring designs created by a variety of artists. This series marks the first time a carbonated soft drink will be packaged in an aluminum bottle in the U.S.

From May to October, this limited series of 12 bottle designs will only be available at the special events listed on the Green Label Art site. In August, the site will have info about their availability in retailers across the country later in the year.

If you're a web designer you should definitley know about Design Meltdown, a great site that collects and arranges home pages by theme. It's an awesome place for visual inspiration. So I was super excited when I found out a site my husband designed for Pepto-Bismol got included in DM's Pink & Blue section. Way to go Ben!

Minneapolis-based Design Guys has an unexpected new indentity inspired by a paint-by-numbers picture of birds. The look carries through to their letterhead, which has a series of laser-cuts of a bird taking flight. The whole point is that their work is not typical—not what you'd expect. And who'd expect birds from a firm that used to have a retro-garage look?

I hadn't visited type designer Eduardo Recife's site in a couple of years, so I was thankful for the reminder from How About Orange. There are a bunch of great free fonts along with examples of each font in use.

As we've been wrapping up our August issue, which is all about the future of design, I've naturally had the FUTURE on my mind. So I was drawn to a story in today's Fast Company newsletter called "The Future is a Mixed Bag," all about the upsides and downsides of what's to come. It's certainly worth a read, plus the author looks like a young Bill Murray!

Josh Jeffryes just posted a lovely little essay on The Business of Design Online about becoming an employee after running your own business. Of course, it's a culture shock, but Jeffryes finds comfort in the power of the creative team.