"Kawaii" means cute in Japanese, which inspired the aesthetic of illustrator Meghan Murphy's cute creations that are starring in a brand new book from HOW called Kawaii Not. The "not" is what's important as it hints at the snarky personality she gives to anthropomorphic cupcakes, rainbows, cell phones and more.



What makes the book even more fun is that it's spiral bound with a built-in display stand to show off the colorfully off-color drawings.



Plus, each page is perforated so you can pull out individual strips to give to friends or post in your cubicle.


And, as if that wasn't enough, the book includes two pages of stickers in the back.



Want to see more? You can download a PDF preview here.

Posted by Megan

Prepare yourself: The next couple of weeks are jam-packed with design-related events and deadlines. Here's a list of what to mark on your calendar soon:

March 27: School of Visual Arts is presenting a design criticism reading night, where speakers will “look at design through the murky lens of evil”

March 27–29: AIGA San Diego Y Conference will be taking place and explore sustainable design

March 27–29: UCDA Design Summit (in Denver) looks at issues facing creatives, both in and out of educational institutions

March 28: Early Bird deadline to save $80 and register for the HOW Design Conference this year in Boston. (The Conference runs from May 18 to 21.) 

March 28: Graphex Awards Gala takes place in Vancouver to recognize outstanding Canadian design, hosted by Ze Frank

Through March 31: MoMA’s “50 Years of Helvetica” exhibition presents posters, signage and other graphic materials that showcase the use of Helvetica

March 31: Deadline to enter the Strathmore Letterhead Contest

April 1: Deadline for STEP magazine’s call for entries for Best of Web designs

April 1: X-Rite’s “Color Control Freak” seminar will travel to Chicago and Atlanta 

April 3: The Art Directors Club has invited past Young Guns winners to participate in “The Undiscovered Letter,” where they will create the 27th letter of the Latin alphabet. Come see the finalists at the “Disclosure” show’s kick off.

April 3–5: AIGA Jacksonville re:CHARGE 08 is dedicated to getting attendees inspired and recharged about design. Speakers include Debbie Millman, Ann Willoughby, Christopher Simmons and Stefan Bucher.

April 3–5: DSVC Student Show & Conference takes place in Dallas, specifically for students and includes a job fair, so students can show their stuff to hiring studios.

April 5-6: The 4th Annual Modern Phoenix Expo and Home Tour, through the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, features lectures on mid-century modern home design as well as self-guided walking tours through the area’s modernist tract homes and churches

Design firm Hatch just sent a super fun Easter self-promo in the form of an egg-coloring kit. The kit includes a white crayon for creating resists, dye tablets, stickers and cardboard egg holders. The box itself is perforated with egg-sized holes to use as a drying rack. We haven't seen any other Easter promos, so this one stands out even more. Hatch also created a website where you can upload decorated eggs to be voted on.

Posted by Megan

Seen any great websites lately? Every month we highlight 10 top websites of interest to designers. You can nominate a website you created or one that you think is cool. Just fill out the brief form here.

Posted by Megan

If you've been considering how to give back to your community or the world through design, check out the Sappi Ideas That Matter grant. The paper company awards more than a million dollars every year to designers with great ideas and they're accepting entries for the North American awards now through May 31.

Posted by Megan

Brightest Young Things is a website covering everything cool in Washington, D.C. So, naturally, friend of HOW John Foster recently contributed a fun interview with illustrator Jessie LeDoux about a recent show he staged in the nation's capitol.

Posted by Megan

I was busy filling my brain at SXSW this weekend, so I missed the launch party for 100 Days of Monsters. Of course, Stefan blogged the whole thing and it looks like it was a blast. What could be better than getting your picture taken with a giant monster?

4 days of SXSW 2008 + 1 ICHC panel + 3 days in the Texas hill country + 1 visit to an Alpaca farm + a new digital camera + the first day back in the office =

Posted by Megan

We'd like to know how the design community connects with the various aspects of the HOW brand, so we can develop new ideas to help you be more creative and more successful. Please take our short survey and you'll be entered to win a free subscription to HOW (if you already subscribe, we'll extend your subscription for one year).

The 15-question survey should only take about 5 to 7 minutes to complete. Please be assured that your responses will be treated in absolute confidence and used only in combination with those of other readers. For official sweepstakes rules, visit www.howdesign.com/SurveySweepstakesRules.

Thanks for taking the survey and giving your input!

Ah, swissmiss, you're finding all kinds of fun things for us today. Like this Flickr pool of song charts.

This strikes me as being simply brilliant: chalkboard napking rings. At MoMA. Via swissmiss.

Perhaps we shouldn't admit this, but there are times when we'll view a design project that's come into HOW HQ and think, "Hm. This person really shouldn't be using Photoshop. Like, really, really, REALLY shouldn't be using Photoshop." You've all seen them: the scary photo retouching, the weird tangets between combined elements, the godawful compositions. Now there's a place to share and celebrate these testaments to the adage, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should:" Photoshop Disasters.

It's sort of like The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations, which we writers find similarly amusing-slash-horrifying.

via Core77.com

That awesome Stefan Bucher, he's just all over the place sketching monsters and talking about his terrific new book, 100 Days of Monsters. Go here to learn more about the book and all the buzz about it; go here to learn about Stefan's session at the upcoming HOW Design Conference, "Arriving at Creativity."

This week, he's on The Reflex Blue Show, hosted by Nate Voss and Donovan Beery. They've posted a short documentary about Stefan's monster creations, plus a podcast of their interview with him. Plus, Stefan created a new monster just for the occasion, with is being auctioned this week (all proceeds go to the American Red Cross).

ARG? Huh? Until yesterday, I didn't know that ARG means Alternate Reality Game, but now I do and I'm ready to play. ARGs are games that mix the real and virtual worlds together to create a rich experience. ARG expert Jane McGonigal explained how happiness is the new capital and that game designers are in a great position to deliver happiness-generating experiences to their audiences. I'd argue that lots of designers are in the position to deliver such experiences. Jane cited some findings from the new field of happiness studies to explain what really makes people happy:

1. Satisfying work to do
2. A sense of being good at something
3. Time spent with people we like
4. A change to be part of something bigger

While it's obvious how these things can be delivered by games, they could also be delivered by a well-designed retail experience, for example. Do your design projects make their intended audiences happy? Maybe they should.

Posted by Megan

While I enjoyed many of the sessions, the most valuable one was presented by Adaptive Path, a San Francisco-based user experience firm, about managing creatives. It was so good, I'm going to look into bringing them to a future HOW Conference. Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson interviewed creative managers from other industries to discover how they manage their teams. They talked to chefs, stage-managers, conductors and more and distilled the lessons into 10 tips.

What was really interesting was how many of the tips are employed by the HOW staff itself. I'll share a couple:

Tip #2 Rotate Creative Leadership

There's a lot to be said for empowering every member of a team by allowing them to take charge of a project. At HOW, we take turns planning the issues and writing the editor's letter. The planning process is still a collaboration, but one of us leads the way. It's proven very effective in giving us all a sense of ownership of the magazine.

Tip #3 Know Your Roles

Even though we have a rather flat hierarchy, we also each have specific areas of responsibility. That allows us to trust and rely on one another. We never have to worry that something will slip through the cracks.

Tip #8 Leadership is a Service

Whether she knows it not, this is exactly how Bryn manages the HOW staff. She engages the team as a facilitator rather than as a dictator. She gives us the space to do our best work, but is always there to support us when we need help. (Thanks, Bryn.)

Posted by Megan

The Monday afternoon keynote blew me away. Frank Warren of PostSecret fame shared the story of how a small art project turned into a big website and a whole series of books.



Frank quoted Picasso saying, "There's an artist born in all of us." That's a theme that's run through the conference. Everyone has something to say and now, because of the internet, they have the means to say it. So if there's something you need to say, consider writing it on a postcard and sending out into the world. "Sometimes when we think we're keeping a secret, it's keeping us."

Posted by Megan

On the Notes on Design blog, writer Chris Costello wrote a recent post praising the work of in-house designers, and the design competitions that recognize it. Chris notes that competitions like HOW's place corporate work in context and help those creative teams bolster their profile within their companies. He writes:

I am very thankful that these types of competitions are growing in popularity because they give in-house designers a chance to compete in their own arena. Winners are rewarded with a sense of legitimacy and well-deserved respect from their coworkers and the design community as a whole. The ability to quantify the success of a design can be obscured in some of the broader competitions that tend to focus primarily on cutting-edge visuals or clever advertising concepts. In-house design competitions also help acknowledge the utilitarian nature of the work submitted.

Chris writes that he wishes HOW's February issue included more winners from our In-HOWse Design Awards -- stay tuned for a bigger crop in next year's annual. If you want to see a few winners from this year, check out the online gallery. And see the In-HOWse Design Awards Best of Show winner here.