Over on the HOW Forum, we've started a little contest called Show Us Your Desktop, where designers can post screenshots of their Mac desktops and vote on the best ones. The designer whose desktop gets the most votes wins a free one-year HOW subscription. You can only post one image, but you can vote as much as you want; the contest ends April 18. Wanna play? Post your desktop and vote.

If you are, you should definitely check out Chronicle Books Design Fellowship program. The program offers five *paid* six-month fellowships in Chronicle's different in-house design departments: publishing, children's, marketing and products. The deadline for applications is April 25.

The Chronicle Books Design Fellowship program offers five recent graduates a six-month, paid, hands-on education. There is a Design Fellow for each of our publishing groups, and they become an active member of the in-house design team, working on a range of projects while gaining professional skills and a portfolio of printed work. In addition, the Fellows collectively compose the Chronicle Books Design Lab: a think-tank charged with brainstorming the future of Chronicle's products.

Posted by Megan

Looking for some inspired colors and combos to spice up your work? Check out Pantone's Fall 2008 Fashion Color Report for rich jewel tones that sparkle like bright fall leaves.

Posted by Megan

Having spent much of the weekend glued to NCAA basketball games, I spotted this way-cool ad for the Pontiac G8 several times, and my jaw hit the floor with every replay. It's a riff on the old computer game "Spy Hunter" -- and all the gamers are proclaiming how true to the original the ad is.

... that the Early Bird registration deadline for this year's HOW Design Conference is Friday. C'mon, peeps! Sign up this week and save 80 bucks -- that ain't chicken scratch.

</bad bird references>

Designer Stefan Bucher sent over a link to an interesting story in the Los Angeles Times about the blurring lines between art and design. The story specifically focuses on Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge, but also mentions Gary Baseman, who is the subject of an upcoming feature in HOW.

In one instance, a teetering tower of squirming hand-drawn fonts spells out the title message. Fella employs the central units of graphic design -- text and image -- to craft a self-contained pictogram that advertises nothing but its own joy. Besides sharing a fondness for hand-drawn whimsy, Fella and McFetridge match up in Worthington's view as a telling timeline that illuminates the evolution of graphic design as a purely creative outlet. "Geoff has essentially turned upside down the traditional designer-client relationship with this massive overlap," Worthington says. "He works as an illustrator and he shows at art galleries but still essentially has design at the core of his practice, whereas Ed always had to keep his experimental practice totally separate from his commercial practice. By putting Geoff and Ed together, you can see how design has shifted culturally in relationship to art and illustration."

Posted by Megan

If you're a Scion driver, that is. (My fellow blogger, Megan, should show this to her husband, who steers a Scion to his web-design job.) Advertising/marketing firm StrawberryFrog developed a website for die-hard drivers to create a coat of arms or crest for their trusty Scions. ScionSpeak.com allows users to play with graphic elements created by graffiti artist Tristan Eaton, then post their designs in an online gallery or download them to print and apply to their cars.

via NYTimes.com

Still going on through the end of this month: 30 Days–30 Pieces, an online gallery where 20 designers and artists are posting a new work each day from March 1 through March 31. Amid a nifty Flash interface, you'll find daily artworks in media ranging from photography to illustration to collage.

via the HOW Forum

Love them or hate them, Peeps are a sure sign of spring and also of creativity. For the second year in a row, The Washington Post sponsored a Peeps diorama contest. One of the five semifinalists is graphic designer Peter Byer whose entry is titled "Nightmare in Pink."

The bedposts are crayons, and the slippers and vases are made of Sculpey. The dresser and wall mountings (including a portrait of a Peep labeled "Mom") were drawn in ink on white paper, then scanned into a computer and reversed into white lines on a black background. As evidenced by the precision, Byer is, in fact, a graphic designer. But he deals mostly in print and has never worked with models or dioramas. Might we suggest a side career?

Posted by Megan