Despite Microsoft’ recent attempting to improve fix their products and their product design through mimicking Apple’s retail stores as well as superficial interpretations of Apple’s operating system style, there’s just something soulless about everything Microsoft does.
Somehow they manage to make whitespace feel like dead space. It’s the same feeling I get when I walk into a Walmart:




All 3 of these screenshots just blend together. There’s nothing unique about any of them. No heirarchy, no details. Nothing.
This clip of Steve Jobs must be at least 20 years old, but it’s just as relevant:

The only problem with Microsoft is that they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste …I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way …In the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product. And you say, ‘Why is that important?’ …Proportionally spaced type comes from typesetting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea. If it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products.

Armin over at Brand New has a review of the Pfizer rebranding.
Great points should always be repeated, and repeated, like this one:

…you don’t push a $48 billion company to adopt a new logo just because designing new logos is fun. Instead, this is one of the most underrated challenges in the identity industry: to revitalize a company through a new identity strategy that doesn’t rely on a shiny new thing front and center.

On a different note, I’d like to call attention to the influencer/influenced aspect of this rebrand. The Pfizer rebrand is no doubt fresh and looks great. I’m a big fan of the dots and dot-infused typeface, but it calls to mind GE’s innovation rebranding effort earlier this decade.
GE’s rebranding in 2004 was done by Wolff Olins and included a new palette of bright colors and a new corporate typeface, Inspira. Inspira was modern, soft, rounded and approachable. Corporations are always trying to convince people that they’re anything but cold machines who’s only purpose it to increase profits.

Influencer – GE 2004 rebrand:

Influenced – Pfizer 2009 rebrand:

The point of this comparison is not to diminish Pfizer’s rebranding efforts, but to point out that we’re all on a continuum, we’re not in a vacuum.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

• Albert Einstein

The word ‘blog’ carries a stigma with it for some people. It’s a cutesy word, sounds a bit childish. It’s one reason I call Daily Exhaust my online journal. Online journal is just as accurate as blog (if not more) and it carries more professionalism to it (The next step down from ‘blog’ would have been ‘diary’, and I would have sounded like a 13-year-old girl writing about My Little Pony).
But never underestimate the power of the blog. Blogs are capable of so much. And by ‘so much’, I’m talking about success and money. While most blogs consist of nothing more than a log of thoughts, quotes, images, videos and anecdotes, some venture into the territory of obsessions and thesis projects.
Case in point – Footnotes of Mad Men. The premise of the blog is very simple: to explain all the historical references shown and talked about in the AMC series Mad Men.
The creator of the series, Matthew Weiner (of Sopranos fame), is obsessed with details. We the viewers are the ones who ultimately benefit from this obsession. We get a show that sparkles – from words, to clothing down to the size of the fruit on the table (for more on Weiner, check out Vanity Fair’s profile on him).
And so, from a creator obsessed with details, we get a blogger obsessed with documenting those details and a readerbase obsessed with learning about those details.
Quality begets quality.
It’s no surprise then, that Footnotes creator Natasha Vargas-Cooper revealed news in September that Harper Collins will be adapting her blog into a book.
Think beyond your labels.

Sorry folks, there’s plenty of exhaust that needs to leave Chamber, I’ve just been slammed with work these days.
Stay tuned.

From the Basement is a beautifully minimal site with amazing performance videos.
I’m a sucker for the chick rockers (and any Jack White project for that matter), and this video of The Dead Weather is awesome.
via Design You Trust

From the BMW blog (via PSFK):

BMW is presenting its Concept BMW Application Store at the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA). It is the world’s first carmaker to demonstrate the fundamental possibility of downloading and storing individual applications either from the car at any time on the move or from your PC at home. It means that, as with a mobile phone, the car can be adapted to the needs and interests of its occupants for the first time, thus benefiting from almost limitless personalisation.

It is the logical evolution of mobile computing (mobile meaning movement and mobile meaning communication), but don’t think the iPhone couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be part of this ecosystem.
Instead of a laptop with iTunes + iPhone, it’s car with app store + iphone.

via the impossible cool

influencer (photo credit ricrodrigues.com):

Apple Store, grand opening 15 May 2001
influenced:

Microsoft Store, grand opening 22 October, 2009

Fast Company, September 2009

Magazines don’t sell with ho-hum-average cover stories, but be careful what you write about, because sometimes those headlines end up looking ridiculous.

John Gruber points out that Apple could buy Dell (operative word here is could, not would) and Om Malik notes that they’re more valuable than Google.

One of the earliest references to the phrase “riding shotgun” in print occurred in the 1905 book The Sunset Trail, by Alfred Henry Lewis[1] The expression was used to refer to riding as an armed guard in the front of a stagecoach, next to the driver (this would usually have been on the left, as stage drivers traditionally sat on the right, near the brake).

via Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers

influencer:

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL
influenced:

2010 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG

I was going to comment on this sad attempt at shit-talking, but a comment from the Gizmodo post sums it up:

This is like that time I made fun of Leonardo DiCaprio for dating some really skanky supermodels.