Side Salad: You Odyssey These Takes
July 30, 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.
United Flags of Fashion! The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), Vogue, and Rockefeller Center came together to design their own flags for all 50 states and our 6 territories. Who doesn’t love a good alt-flag design?
You cannot stop the mini craze.
Tip of the cap. I know we’re only talking stretch films here, but when you reduce your yearly output by 30%, that’s worth crowing about. On the plastics front, I give Coca-Cola plenty of grief, but that’s a fairly meaningful reduction.
Love everything The Onion is doing with its latest acquisition. Dog Blood!
Who needs agencies! Every brand seems to be starting its own in-house department! This is a fairly interesting trend to keep tabs on, but to answer the question posed in the title, no, I don’t believe agencies should be worried in the long term. Brands will always look to external sources to “shake things up,” no matter how large their in-house team is. FOR INSTANCE, I know one major beverage brand that, for several years, loved to talk up its design team (and, yes, they are good—this is not intended to be a knock on any in-house design team) in press releases for some fairly major projects, but consistently failed to mention their creative partners who helped bring that work to life. Because, like clockwork, the agency that WASN’T credited in said press release would almost always email me within hours of us publishing a piece, asking to be credited in the copy as well. Which, to me, is a pretty lousy way to do business. Always credit. So let me reiterate: agencies shouldn’t worry about this. Brands will always need outsiders.
Incidentally, it’s NOT the one that issued a major redesign last week. In my experience, they’re actually pretty good about that sort of thing.
I guess that’s what you get for rolling around in a giant plastic bottle.
According to an FMI report, consumers are now shopping for benefit over category, which makes for a pretty hilarious reordering of supermarkets.
I know nothing about the celebrity art world, so I found it hilarious that Adrian Brody had an exhibition at a Times Square Raising Canes.
Joyce Carol Oates with a steel chair to the head of Emily Wilson!
Sick cheese redesign from Young Jerks. Great wordmark!
Another day, another brand that failed to automate some part of its SOPs by using AI. Add Starbucks to the growing list that includes Target, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut.
We leave at 9:30 on the dot. ON THE DOT.
-Bill