These are just some of the many book cover designs for H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds over the last century. See the growing collection at The War of the Worlds Book Cover Collection.

Spotted on Core77 Design Blog.

When I saw this my immediate thought was - why are they showing a broken truss on the box?

Maybe it’s just me…

My friend Natalie Shell has mentioned these people a few times over the years: http://www.the-hub.net/.

“Social innovation” - I really like the sound of that. It appears to be a set of spaces set up around the world to enable those with socially progressive thoughts to get together and make things happen. Go positive change!

The website, however, is a disappointment. There are pretty pictures but …

A nice piece on design, seeing, opportunities and creative thinking: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/43

I thought the SingTel free wireless login page was broken today. When I try to click on the password field to enter my password, the mouse pointer turned into an arrow and I got taken to a different page.

I was just about to give up when I realised that I had previously enlarged the text display on the browser. This has actually caused the link …

Spotted these books at Kinokuniya Singapore that look like packs of cigarettes. Interesting use of the notoriety of the cigarette pack.

In this News Limited story, Philippe Starck says design is dead and his work ‘unnecessary’.

“I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact, … Everything I designed was unnecessary.”

All the egoistical self-indulgence aside, this statement does merit a certain level of self-reflection, whether you are a designer or a consumer.

What does a designer really do anyway?
How green or sustainable is …

Here’s an example of how good signage ought to be done.

The designer has considered the contexts of use: people who are driving past or looking for the bank from a distance (the logo appears on the edge of the awning for maximum distance visibility), and those on foot (the logo appears closer to normal human height under the awning).

The designer also …

Here’s another example of design done in piecemeal isolation; divorced from the wider context of its application, the environment in which it is deployed. The design in question is the street signage of a set of townhouses all of which share a single street entry. The failure of this design affects multiple households.

Front street, there is actually no visible signage. As you drive past, you …

This interactive LED coffee table looks fun! And it got me thinking about computer hardware.

There seems to be a recent increase in interesting computing-related hardware: tablet PCs, multitouch screens on phones, and Microsoft’s concept tabletop “Surface” PC.

We human creatures like to interact with our surroundings. We want to affect change, to make our …