Building on the success of last year's holiday campaign, Toy New York and EVB, are bringing back the online phenomenon, ElfYourself.com, for OfficeMax's holiday effort.  Last year, the site generated more than 11 million elves and kept users glued to the site for the equivalent of over 600 years. I visited the site to turn myself into an Elf, which was both fun and a bit disturbing. The dance moves are great, though.

Posted by Megan

Designer Josh Jakus's Wine Pocket is constructed of industrial wool felt collected from factory excess. It's both eco-friendly and stylish and now it's on sale at DWR for $29 with free shipping.

Posted by Megan

PaperSpecs is sponsoring a free webinar, Sustainability-Hands On, with guest speaker Brian Dougherty of Celery Design Collaborative. The event, which takes place on December 13, will provide practical information about spec'ing sustainable paper and other ideas to decrease the environmental impact of your designs.

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by The Creative Group

Breaking new creative ground can be a challenging proposition for designers. In a recent survey by our company, eight out of 10 in-house designers said it's difficult to convince senior management to accept ideas that deviate from the prevailing corporate style. And more than a quarter of respondents cited their company's unwillingness to take risks as the most frequent obstacle to creativity.

On the bright side, many in-house designers feel they can exercise more creativity than they did five years ago. However, it remains difficult to break certain barriers. Following are seven strategies for overcoming challenges and enhancing creative freedom.

Posted by Megan

Ventura, a recent relase from TypeTrust, is a legible script with a nice set of alternate characters. The single-weight face sells for $26.

Posted by Megan

From our favorite OFFICE supply store in Portland comes news of an upcoming exhibit and a few cool new products:

They're featuring 10 nationally recognized female letterpress artists in a show called (natch) LET HER PRESS, which opens November 29 and runs through January 19. Creative gals from Hammerpress, YeeHaw, Egg Press (all of whom have been featured in HOW) and others are participating; each artist has produced 5 prints, which will be for sale during the show.

During opening weekend (November 29 to December 1), OFFICE is offering discounts on letterpress cards and papergoods in its shop. Also new to the store: These cute (almost sexy, in a schoolgirl-fantasy sort of way) Japanese book bags.