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.
Blah blah blah fiber is the new protein blah blah blah. Missed this one last week, but Oatly now has a new fiber line, and that packaging is ROUGH. Incidentally, can’t wait for 2027’s hottest food trend, aka listening to your doctor and dismissing macro callouts on packaging in favor of a healthy, balanced diet. People need to get reacquainted with the Michael Pollan manifesto of “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
I am a sap, and this Rao’s campaign from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, “Limited Time only,” got my ass.
At least Skims offered refunds after the Advent Calendar debacle.
In completely unsurprising news, Skydance said they will bundle Paramount+ and HBO MAX, which is huge news for fans of HBO’s branding saga. The combo streamer is set to launch in early 2027, and given their rising costs, it will probably not be easy on the wallet. Sorry!
Anywho, the best time to buy a Blu-ray or DVD player is now. This is absolutely my hill to die on, but what I love about the New York Times article I linked here is that it gets at a very awful modern pain point. Passwords, QR codes, and, at least for my family, the cycling through of emails for free trials: “I like that our DVD player is neither smart nor intelligent. You put in the disc, and the movie appears. Instead of searching for Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” — and finding it on Prime, only to learn that I have to pay to rent it, and even that would require reinstating my lapsed Prime account, which would require reckoning with my many feelings about Amazon — I can put on the Criterion Collection DVD of “Rushmore” I acquired two decades ago and spend my mental energy on Bill Murray rather than Jeff Bezos. (Speaking of the Criterion Collection, you know why all the celebrities who visit the Criterion Closet look so happy? It’s because they’re surrounded by DVDs!).”
Welp, I have now lived long enough to see a Supreme x Elliott Smith capsule collection. There has always been an unsettling ick factor to dead musician merch. On the one hand, I want a 15-year-old kid to love Elliott Smith as much as I did, but on the other hand, slapping the cover of his self-titled album onto a hoodie and charging someone $100+ for the privilege of owning it feels gross to me (says the guy wearing a pair of John Prine socks).
Yes, I would like a picture book about wealth inequality. Good interview here with Mono Chalabi on her new book, Ten Lives.
Would love for someone, anyone, to tell me who designed the packaging for Jetty, in-house or otherwise (this is despite us asking the brand multiple times).
Entenmann’s has some thoughts on the Nvidia spy scandal.
Been out haunting the neighborhood and everybody can see I’m no good.
Bill
That Rao's ad tho... 😭