We’ve all done it – made an impulsive purchase in the most random of situations. We are innocently minding our own business while meandering through a store, when our peripheral vision is abruptly caught up by something out-of-place in the usual monotony of this habitual haunt. We stop dead in our tracks and we stare a bit. Then without thinking it through, we take the attractive abnormality to the check-out, remove our wallets from the safety of a pocket or purse, and beg for the person behind the cash register to spare us some dignity by letting us make this purchase as quickly as possible. With the item bagged and a receipt in hand, we scurry off to study in-depth what we’ve just purchased. Unique logos, striking text, bright colors, unusual shapes and textures – these are visual fixations that we can’t resist taking home with us, even if that product doesn’t really fulfill a need we have. We are addicted within a few seconds to the packaging of a product we may know very little about. The allure is all in the design. (more…)

Probably one of my favorite sites this month. Covers.fwis.com is a site that is “dedicated to the appreciation of book cover design.” Covers includes some pretty interesting interviews with cover designers and features an extensive image collection of their work. The current issue features an interview with Vintage Books VP and Art director, John Gall.

The Saint Etienne 5th Biennial International Design Festival 2006 hosted by designboom, is an international non profit design show that showcases design talent from around the world. Designers from Israel, Germany, Japan, and Spain gave the public an opportunity to view and purchase some of their interesting creations. Check out some of the quirky designs like the tiny magnet jewelry, or the tetras jacks that support hot crock pots. Perusing through the snap shots you may produce a quizzical “hmm…” However, the festival is a fantastic array of international avant-garde art and design. www.designboom.com

Web developers Jake Nickell and and Jacob Dehart have created an online t-shirt competition that has boomed into a bustling competitive arena for both designers and amateur designers alike. The fight to the top consists of users joining the Threadless.com community to rank the top design, winning the designer some small notoritey and his/her design printed on t-shirts. It’s a great and fun site to check out with interesting design works… and while you’re there, might as well get some of that holiday shopping out of the way. www.threadless.com

Nothing says “happy holidays” like satellite images of buildings.

Send a Geo Greeting

You see these logos all the time…try this test and discern the correct brand.

Guess the logo

A in-depth retrospective complete with the history and evolution of the Mac - complete with posters!

Visit the site

Have a few minutes to kill or just simply bored? Check out this Flash-based sketching site, (one of the best we’ve seen.) Doodle your own masterpiece or browse the tour de force of hundreds of wanna-be artistes.

Go Sketch!

Etsy.com has produced an interesting and entertaining method of shopping - by color. May be somewhat of a novelty but could prove to be an early component model of the future of ecommerce.

Visit the site

A fantastic collection of unique and very affordable art prints for sale (most direct from the artists’ themselves). The site’s editors update the content regularly and yes, they do take submissions.

Visit WeHeartPrints