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 am not fully wading into the Kelly Clarkson x Art of Play morass. Juicy, juicy story, sure, but it mostly makes me long for the days when we didn’t use social media as a soapbox to register every single complaint we’ve ever had, and we just played telephone with our friends. Anywho, working retail is hard!
No, you can’t have the $15,000 bird, but what if I told you inflatable chopsticks exist?
Chris Farley voice: Remember when Ted Leo did a medley of “Maps” and “Since U Been Gone?” That was awesome.
Immensely pleasing bottle alert.
New eating disorder just dropped.
I would quibble with the central premise of this piece. Brand mascots have always been popular, but they cite research showing that brand characters routinely outperform celebrity spokespeople.
Except for maybe Buck the Sheep...
Art lifers are the best, and this is a wonderful interview with Nirosta Steel.
Everyone is stoked for banana water, and I can’t necessarily blame them when Banam looks pretty swell.
Literacy rates are in the toilet, so if you want to get kids gassed up on regular reading, you could do a lot worse than giving them beautiful book covers.
Respect your local puzzle nerds.
-Bill