Perhaps you are lacking direction in your design career, perhaps you are searching for a gift for the creative director in your life who has everything, or perhaps you’re an over-zealous finance person who could do without paying that huge creative director salary every month and are looking for a cheaper alternative. Whatever your situation, these stamps from Heather Phillips are for you!

Why not buy the whole set? After dispensing some of this advice amongst your woefully inadequate colleagues, your promotion to CD is sure to be in the post.

Of course kids, don’t forget that creative direction is dangerous and should only be attempted by a skilled and experienced adult. Do not attempt to creatively direct at home or unsupervised.

Found via Angus Whines, who in turn found it via Ben Terrett, and at that point I had to find out where to buy one.

This week’s fix comes from Victor Hertz, who has created these honest logos, which balance just the perfect amount of cynicism and levity for a Friday…

…see more in his Flickr set. Found via theinspiration.

Nice idea. Working in branding, I’m constantly reading the mythical ‘brand essence’ of various large corporations, which is always a statement which we are constantly reminded is never to be actually broadcast outside the building. I wonder how this exercise might go if you rendered various brand essence statements in the company’s logotype? Would the two match up or contrast horribly?

In case you ever wondered how it’s done, here’s how the big boys put together an integrated brand experience.

If you’re curious about how websites work, you’ve ever selected ‘view source’ to see the guts of the HTML, or you have wondered about the ominous ‘back-end’, then wonder no longer. Back of a webpage reveals the inner workings of your favourite websites and gives new meaning to pressing the browser’s ‘back’ button.

The photographic paper detail on the Flickr one is genius. Send you own submissions to backofawebpage@gmail.com Found via davidthedesigner – Made me smile too…

As it is now after noon, I can reveal this to be an April Fool.

Shame.

I’m currently finishing an identity for a law firm, so this website struck a chord.

Typography for Lawyers is a 13 primer by Matthew Butterick, a frustrated lawyer with a design background, in an attempt to show his colleagues the true typographic path. During my current project, I have indeed learned that typography is particularly important for lawyers, and also particularly hard to get right across a large business. Lawyers and designers are kind of the opposite sorts of people.

I found this via The Disciples of Design who reckon it might even be a good student resource…

…I haven’t got the guts to send it to my client though, the 200 pages of guidelines I’ve written will have to do…