Side Salad: A Dash of Bias
June 9, 2026
Good morning from Dieline’s editor-in-chief, Bill McCool. Here’s your daily side serving of design news, short musings, brand stuff, and forgotten ephemera.
I don’t know if the robot butler thing is gonna really take off with the well-to-do, especially if they keep kicking children.
Ah, yes, who amongst us doesn’t cherish “translating automotive DNA into scent?”
Crayola and CamelBak made crayon-shaped water bottles.
Base Design brought together 100 designers to create Marou chocolate wrappers that benefit Saigon Children’s Charity.
I love it when we get press releases from the Flexible Packaging Association (FPA), announcing that the “unreasonable New York packaging EPR bill” has “fail[ed] again.” That some grade-A petty hater shit for a trade association that serves as a mouthpiece for a bunch of manufacturers producing packaging that isn’t widely curbside recyclable and, at best, store drop-off.
So, now music venue calendars are getting the Coachella poster treatment, too? These posters for Baby’s All Right are all right, I guess, but whatever happened to dates, when doors open, and, heaven forbid, ticket prices? I suppose it might inspire folks to dig a little deeper with an AI-powered Google search, but this makes me miss Trocadero flyers from the 90s (sorry that you didn’t get to see Jawbreaker for $6, kids).
It takes some real balls to do an anti-plastic campaign like this.
Good post from illustrator Sebastian König about relying less on Instagram to show off your work. That time would be better spent on other things, he says, like drawing. At this point, I think we all understand that the algorithm is broken; it’s pretty much reels and ragebait getting the shine on Instagram. I saw a Subway Take a little while ago about how we need to figure out how to finally get off Meta-related products, and it’s increasingly clear that this is necessary work.
Aside from the whole death of journalism thing, this interview offers a pretty good primer on how not to manage people.