Side Salad: WD-40 is More Iconic Than Lisa Rinna
June 25, 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 have come to really hate the word “iconic” and how casually it’s thrown around these days; every last one of you is using it wrong. Here’s a small list of things I have been told are iconic over the past year: Lisa Rinna, the Quaker Oats mascot, Fruit Loops, Pizza Hut’s red tumblers, DHL, Hidden Valley Ranch, Perdue, and whatever reality star Ziwe is currently interviewing this second (though to be fair, I would like to think that she’s at least winking at us when she says it). If everything is iconic, then nothing is iconic, but especially Quaker Oats and the cast members of the Real Housewives franchise (no disrespect to the Great American Bravo franchise).
That said, here is an example of something that I genuinely think is iconic. Of course, I can see you rolling your eyes as you read this whilst clutching your green Brat pearls, but like, say, Coca-Cola, it does not need to change (though it is OK if the brand world around it changes). It is all well and good to disagree with me here (and on WD 40 of all things lol), but there is something to be said for a brand that has remained mostly unchanged since the 60s.
Trailers are almost always lies, but this is the exact opposite tone of Klara and the Sun, and it makes me feel like I read an entirely different book.
I would mess around with Algae Cooking Club’s Smoked Tomato Oil.
I see these concerns, and producers and manufacturers are right to have questions about how to navigate them. That said, this is exactly why EPR must be done on the federal level. If recycling is a mish-mash of different approaches and NO ONE has the same kind of curbside services county to county, well, you’re going to have a chaotic end result and even more lobbying from plastic manufacturers crying wolf, what with all the trash they keep selling you. Only 7 states currently have an EPR law on the books, and New York couldn’t get a bill passed because of industry opposition (and, as a reminder, they are very definitely gloating about it).
Obviously, Prime Day(s) is in full swing, so I’ll just drop this Hallie Bateman comic here.
Related, but I like it when people can go to the bathroom.
Levis didn’t actually win anything, and the resulting “cover-your-logo” World Cup frenzy was straight-up hacky.
This is what happens when you give no-bid contracts to cats who look like Batman villains/campaign donors.
Hear me out: Scrap the 2024 Mountain Dew redesign and go with the nickel cans instead.
Welp, that’s a wrap on glop and jizz letters, everyone!
Buh-bye now.
-Bill
Never heard of Lisa Rinna. On the other hand, know plenty about WD-40. So point proven