Please forgive me while I write about politics. Don’t worry, I’ll get to design by the end of the post…

So today is Super Tuesday, Americans and UK news correspondents alike are getting more and more frantic about it all (just imagine the US media taking such an interest in our own quaint elections) and the spotlight is on the two Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I don’t even know why I’m typing this, as I can imagine that anyone reading this post wouldn’t already know what they both had for breakfast this morning. Anyway, it’s a win win situation, Obama would be the first black president, Clinton would be the first female president. Both are several steps further along the evolutionary chain than George Bush…

The two are neck and neck, it’s too close to call. With almost identical policies, it’s a race being fought on personality, but perhaps the most striking difference between the two candidates is that according to the New York Times one is a Mac, and the other is a PC…

This comes from Obama’s visual style being seen as fresh and uncluttered, while Clinton shows a tendancy towards the generic way of doing things:

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I just saw this over at Wired. It’s a great explanation of the complexities of the web, and how blogs work for the slightly less technical minded such as myself. It shows just how far your words can go and just how extensive the data machine behind the web really is. It’s presented in a nice way too.

I also checked out Matthew Hurst’s own site, where there are some lovely visualisations of the ‘blogosphere’ making the intangible tangible. Well, in an intangible kind of way…

I meant to post this yesterday, but now I see I’ve been beaten to the punch by Creative Review, it’s time to press the publish button.

Thee BBC continues it’s assault on it’s own logo repertoire and has decided that BBC Three are getting a new identity. Obviously that means a new logo and idents etc, but the exciting thing is that the plan is to make the channel the first truly multi-platform digital channel for content. This means the usual TV type malarky, but also lots of exciting web tricks and new ways to interact with the service. They’ve rather predictably roped Lily Allen in to be part of it (didn’t you know that Lily Allen has to be part of anything if you expect young people to take a night off from knifing each other and participate?)

I really liked the old logo, and the Aardman style creatures, but this new move is brave so has to be a good thing. The logo is a bit unremarkable, nice enough but nothing special, let’s see how it pans out. Interestingly, BBC incumbant Lambie Nairn weren’t part of it (not yoof enough) so Red Bee Media did the honours…

…still not a patch on the great BBC2 idents from the 90s.

Oh, and CR found a great montage clip of the Aardman blobbies in action – lest we forget…

Went along to the Daniel Eatock exhibition at the Kemistry gallery yesterday lunchtime. There were lots of great things to look at and think about, such as the fantastic and well documented Pantone Pen Print made by leaving the pens to soak into the paper over time…

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A proud new identity for a building services company in London.

I just had this video sent to me and it made me smile. It’s funny ’cause it’s true, but I think the music is definitely a contributing factor to the comedy.

For the sake of fairness, I thought I should point out that Microsoft DOES make an iPod, it’s called the Zune. Here’s what the two box designs look like next to each other…

So, apart from the strange fascination with brown, it isn’t all that bad. Of course there may well be a PowerPoint-bulletpoint-lifestyle-fest going on on the reverse. It’s interesting that it isn’t as product-centric as the iPod packaging, although perhaps it’s to be expected, the Zune is hardly going to win in the product design stakes against the effortlessly iconic iPod.

One thing I have to admit that I like is the logo:

Lovely.