This Is Cooler Than My Obama Action Figure

A former coworker at The Royal Order, Scott Thomas, went on to fame as the Design Director for the Obama campaign. He's coming out with Designing Obama, a book dedicated to artwork surrounding the campaign. There are forwards by Steven Heller and Michael Beirut (design celebrities!).

The book shows the role of art and design in the official campaign and also includes unofficial pieces done by grassroots supporters. Hopefully Obama Hot Sauce (it exists) is included. And Obama-Fingers certainly are because it brilliantly melds racial stereotypes with images of the Golden Gate Bridge and the American flag.

Danke, Germany

But something tells me that the 'unofficial grassroots art' is going to be classier stuff than the Hanes tshirts with the iron-on transfer of an Obama family photo that were being sold 2-for-1 around Grant Park. There really has been some good-looking work created surrounding the campaign. I have no doubt that the book will be beautifully crafted, so I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

It's being self-published through Kickstarter (keeping with the grassroots theme). If you're interested, it's available here with a minimum pledge of $50, but the price goes up November 5. It's estimated delivery is around the first of the year.

Weekly Weird: Fail Blog

I don't know if I'd personally consider Fail Blog 'weird,' but it's in the Webby Awards 'Weird Websites' category and it's certainly entertaining. Three humorous Fail images:

Burglar fail

Car repair fail

Life Choice fail

Speaking of The Webby Awards, The Royal Order's work was nominated in Best Visual Design Aesthetic and Corporate Communications for Patagonia's Tin Shed. Vote!

Life as I know it right now

The Royal Order is in the midst of refreshing CB2.com, which currently needs a little tender love and care. Consequently, I've been knee-deep in the Crate&Barrel and CB2 product catalogs for the past couple weeks and I'm starting to know product names and prices by heart (which came in pretty handy when having to register last weekend).

CB2 has a lot of gems. Here are some of my favorites right now:

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overnight table lamp

The NPR map

halogen credenza

grid pillow

alchemy stool

McGuire Furniture

The Royal Order, in partnership with Gorilla Polymedia, just launched a new site for McGuire Furniture. I thankfully can take a big chunk of credit for this one. The image and media galleries are some of my favorite pets on the site. Shawn Hilgart put these together in Flash and made them work spendidly.

McGuire has some of the most beautiful furniture -- each piece is handcrafted by artisans. Their assets were beautiful as well, which really made our job a piece of cake.

They have this Northern California cool about their designs -- natural, eclectic. In other words, I wouldn't mind winning this Dream Kitchen if I were eligible.

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Sold: one typeface

As I was looking through the Webby Award Winners, I came across Veer's Type City, which won an award for Best Use of Typography. The music makes me feel like I'm navigating through a Tim Burton movie. It also successfully sold me a typeface.

Even better, Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles (which The Royal Order helped create) won the People's Voice Award in Corporate Communications!

Type City

LTC Fournier Le Jeune

The Footprint Chronicles

The Royal Order worked with Patagonia to create The Footprint Chronicles, which charts the environmental impact of a rotation of featured clothing from design to delivery. This is all in effort to become more sustainable as a business. Ultimately, Patagonia's clothing will be fully recyclable by 2010.

The project is nominated for a Webby Award in Corporate Communications. Vote!

This is was also mentioned on Dwell Blog and Cool Hunting.

Canadians need upmarket housewares at attainable prices, too

The Royal Order has been working with Crate & Barrel on crateandbarrel.ca to generate interest in careers at the soon-to-arrive Toronto and Calgary stores. The site has just launched and looks awesome. But I wasn't on the project, so I sadly can't take any credit.

Ann Sacks

The Royal Order does a lot of work for The Kohler Company and all their brands: McGuire, Ann Sacks, Kallista, etc. There was a reception for K/BIS (Kitchen and Bath Industry Show) at the Merchandise Mart last night. This is when they debut a lot of their new products. Busy, busy time of year for us.

I was blown away by some of Ann Sacks' new tile. Sadly, my favorite mesquite wood tile is not up online yet. But, here are Paccha concrete flooring and Iznik ceramic art tile.

Paccha concrete flooring

Perennial Mosaic

Iznik ceramic art tile