We've been collecting news items for the past week to share with you here. Without further ado ...

• Legion Paper is offering free shipping on sample orders of $30 or more; get your swatches of various fine-art papers including some lovely Japanese products.

• Somehow we missed that Creative Manager Pro rebranded last month to Workamajig; nonetheless, the company announced a forthcoming upgrade of its project-management software with new drag-and-drop capabilities and project-management charts (also included are updates for Apple's Leopard OS.)

• Parsons is exhibiting winners from I.D. Magazine's Annual Design Review; the show opens July 10 and runs through September 28. At the school's Sheila Johnson Design Center in NYC.

• If you haven't seen them, the U.S. Postal Service released its Eames commemorative stamps recently. Which you can use on Eames paper.


• CTI Paper released a new swatchbook for its Glama Natural line of FSC-certified translucent papers.

• SMART Papers has added to its flagship brand with Kromekote Recycled, an FSC-certified, 30% postconsumer waste, cast-coated paper in two weights and four sizes.

• Adobe announced last week an updated version 3.3 of its Creative Suite collections; most notably, the company is now bundling Fireworks CS3 with its Design Premium edition, in a response to customer demand. Adobe also issued Acrobat 9 Pro.

• FontShop added to its library of fonts from Adobe and Linotype in June, with such lovelies as Robert Slimbach's Garamond Premier Pro and the script face Brioso from Adobe (below), and Akira Kobayashi's Cosmiqua and the TDC Award-winning Palatino Sans (bottom) from Linotype. Lots of other great new faces at FontShop.
Brioso

Palatino

The brand new HOW book Zombie Haiku just got a great review on Ain't It Cool News.

Zombie this, zombie that. Everything and anything has had a zombie version of it as of late. But none fit together better than zombies and poetry. Haiku poetry that is. Known as a meditative form of linking words to find meaning and peace in a 5-7-5 word per line structure, the art of Haiku has been cannibalized by Ryan Mecum in his original graphic novel ZOMBIE HAIKU and the result is simply one of the best zombie reads of the year.

Why did HOW publish a book of Zombie haiku, you might be asking yourself? Because the book is visually stunning and mind-blowingly creative.

Posted by Megan

No one on the HOW Forum seems to the like the new Walmart logo. Neither does anyone at Speak Up's Brand New blog.

"How boring. Can something be so bland and so nauseating at the same time? It's exactly the type of generic mark I'd expect a giant, morally challenged mega-company to use to try to soften their image."

Posted by Megan

Senior Designer
Benefit Cosmetics

Benefit Cosmetics, the fastest growing luxury cosmetic brand in the U.S., is looking for a fabulous designer to become part of our design team. We're searching for someone with a killer portfolio and passion for beauty. Hand-drawn typography and illustration skills are a plus. Fresh ideas, refined typographic skills, attention to detail, excellent organization, and a positive, flexible attitude are musts.

Posted by Megan

Yes, I'm a geek and I can't wait to see Hellboy II, but I was even more excited that the movie site offers a sneak peek inside director Guillermo del Toro's sketchbook. You can see the genesis of several characters and locations.

Posted by Megan

Interesting story on NYTimes.com this morning about a redesign for the familiar plastic milk jug. The new package, which is rectangular, with a handle and a not-quite spout, apparently takes some getting used to (customers say it doesn't pour well). But the benefits are impressive: The dairy that developed the package says it has cut labor by half; and the bottle is more efficient for shipping (jugs can be stacked on top of one another, instead of shipped in those ubiquitous plastic milk crates). Sam's Club, which is selling the newly packaged milk, can store 224 gallons in its coolers, instead of 80. That efficiency means that milk is 10 to 20 cents per gallon cheaper to consumers. Now, if Horizon Organic would start using the new jugs, we at HOW would be happy.

Choosing my favorite among HOW's four design conference is sort of like choosing a favorite among your four children: I love them all in different ways. But if I had HAD to pick a very favorite, I'd pick our Mind Your Own Business Conference, the business event just for design-firm principals.

Why? Partly because it's intimate and less overwhelming than the big HOW Conference. But mostly because IT WORKS. It makes a difference. Like for the firm we profiled in the magazine that saw a huge growth in profitability and a huge decline in the number of hours the principals worked—specifically after they implemented what they'd learned at MYOB.

We've just launched the site for this year's MYOB Conference, September 27-29 in one of my favorite cities: Austin. (Seriously, check out this sweet resort.) This year's program includes a bunch of new stuff, like sessions targeted for large or small firms, peer-to-peer learning sessions and an optional working day on Sunday where principals can work on their own, team up with a speaker or get hands-on training on time-management and billing tools.

Learn about what's new, and sign up early to score a discount.

The New York Times recently published a story in its technology section about designing your own fonts. It offers a couple of resources that could be helpful to both professionals and amateurs. What's interesting is that it's ranked the number 1 story in the technology section this morning.

Before the personal computer, most people were oblivious to fonts. Some may have recognized Courier and Elite on the I.B.M. Selectric typewriter ball. Then word processing programs offered a hundred or more fonts, from Arial to Wingdings. More were offered in software packages and on the Internet. Now, many people can recognize fonts by name. Indeed, a documentary about typography and one of the most familiar typefaces, “Helvetica,” played to sellout crowds at film festivals.

Posted by Megan