As someone who is enamored by a well-made business card, I loved these cassette tape varieties.  Th0ugh it looks as though the creator took actual cassette tapes and put some information on it.  I think I would much prefer to have my business card be designed to look like a cassette tape.  Especially if I were running a music blog, or something to that effect.  [via]

Whoa! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve checked in with Boing Boing (not sure why) but they have a very snazzy redesign that I’m totally jealous of.  Kudos to Boing Boing.  Oddly enough it’s very reminiscent of Kottke’s most recent redesign.  Font-wise, etc.

This is the flag of the Benin Empire, a pre-colonial African state located in what is now modern Nigeria.  The empire lasted from 1440 until 1897. [via]

A London couple have found the ultimate space-saving solution for a city-dwelling book lover: a staircase bookshelf.  The shelves/stairs were created by UK-based Levitate Architects.  This is pretty amazing and a good way to utilize storage.  It also makes the stairway, which are generally architecture and design afterthoughts, into something useful and interesting.  [via]

Eyeball created PBS’s new branding and it looks fantastic.  I love the simplicity of the slogan “Be More” and how evocative the color scheme is.  Well done.  As part of the campaign, which will roll out on September 27 during Ken Burn’s new documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, Eyeball designed 630 different on-air, online, and print elements to push the new branding into the public’s consciousness.

You can check out other images and videos of the rebranding campaign at Eyeball’s site.

I got some change back from the store a few days ago and didn’t realize immediately that I was given four James Knox Polk dollar coins.  Turns out that the US Mint is determined to push some sort of dollar coin onto Americans. 

I was pumped Polk got his own coin — afterall, he is one of my top five favorite US presidents (what, no one else keeps a running list like that?) – unfortunately the US Mint turned him into creepy egg-face Vader at the end of Jedi. 

And if that wasn’t insult enough, the other presidents in the series are some of the worst Presidents to ever get their pimp on in the Oval Office. 

First, it makes no sense to honor Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, or Monroe with a dollar coin since they’ve already been mintified in some capacity.  Secondly, it makes no sense to honor Martin Van Buren (well he did help build the trans-continental railroad), John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, or William Henry Harrison because the general public have no idea who they are or what they accomplished.  Because they were horrible presidents. 

But James K. Polk?  I can get down with him.

I’ve always been a Converse person.  We haven’t always been exclusive and in recent years I’ve strayed from them simply because they inexplicably dropped the One-Star from production, only to bring it back as a less-than-Target-exclusive.

As much as I love Chuck’s, I prefered the durability and higher quality canvas of the One-Star.  Except you can’t really find them and let’s be honest: Chuck’s aren’t worth the $40 since they just fall apart with heavy wear.

But with the new additions to their 2010 lineup, it looks like Converse might have won me back.  Among the highlights are Converse’s Jack Purcell in two-tone canvas offerings, the Fast Break II, Star Player 1977, and a set of Chuck Taylor Slims, popular within the John Varvatos line.

Damn, I love those Star Players.  Definitely going to have to get a pair or two. [via here and here]

Man I want one of these.  They would be great for hot chocolate and a cookie or coffee and a english muffin in the morning.  Buy it from UK company Mocha. [via]

“This summer, it’s back. It’s big — big enough to be legible in photographs. And it’s everywhere: on his shoes, on his belt tab, on his duffel, on his jackets, on the plastic bags his new rackets come in. Forget all the subtle functions a monogram used to perform — discreetly personalizing a gentleman’s wardrobe, helping the servants sort the shirts. What three years ago seemed a plausible, if affected, personal flourish on the part of an athlete whose style of dress and style of play had positioned him as the Fred Astaire of tennis — light on his feet, with a penchant for tuxedo black for night matches and a Rolex commercial in which he shows off his serve in a two-button suit — had somehow escalated into a master-of-all-he-surveys exercise in personal branding.”  Roger Federer’s monogram reads like an interesting intersection of marketing, personal branding, fashion, design, sportsmanship and history.  And yes, the US Open is descending on Flushing Meadows this week.

Forest Hills Garden, a planned community in Queens, N.Y., lost favor in America as the ideal suburban community to Levittown.  That much is evident driving through any American suburb, with its big box stories and unnessary driving distances. 

But it’s worth looking back at the 142-acre Forest Hills Garden, 100-years-old in 2009, a prototype of the British Garden movement, as inspiration in designing “walkable, transit-oriented” communities that are architecturally diverse and integrate a variety of housing structures and business zones in a single planned space.   In my mind, any development should be a mix of high-end and affordable residencies inter-mingled. 

The current suburban model has to be rethought for sustaining American life and the Forest Hills Garden model is but one possibility. 

Check out more photos of Forest Hills Garden on its Flikr set.

Artist Neill Cameron’s A-Z of Awesomeness, a series which gained noteriety this summer for including such, well, awesome alliterations like “Indiana Jones Inching away from an Inebriated Iron Man” and “Wolverine Wishing Wonder Woman Weren’t So Wasted” and “Xena eXperiencing Professor X’s eXtravagant Xenophobia.” 

Now the whole thing is available on one poster, which Neill will also sign and do a custom sketch on per your instructions. It can be ordered here for the low price of £7.50 (GBP), with a postage and packing charge of £2.50, wherever you are. 

There’s only 250 prints, so… get on this pronto.  You, or the geek in your life, will be thankful to no end.  [via]

There’s art and then there’s functional art.  Me?  I prefer the latter.  I prefer my art to be embedded into my day, to be seamless with the functionality of my day to day routine. How about combining a time piece with a pretty vase?

“This Sèvres Vase Clock by Georgios Maridakis actually works with any vase. You can place any you like on the stand and then adjust the hammer. Every hour the hammer will knock on the vase, the sound will depend on the vase of course. The combination of a hammer and porcelain is quite nice,” says Pieter over at Today and Tomorrow.

I like it.  Not sure when it was switched over, but it’s very clean, easy to navigate.  Many newspaper sites would be wise to hede this aesthetic.