Came across this absolutely stunning bottle design on the dieline a couple of days ago:

No idea whether the vodka is any good, but what a great design for a super premium vodka that really breaks through.

It always amazes me how good industrial design can really enhance consumer products–both aesthetically and functionally. A few weeks ago, a friend was visiting from out of town. He had been interning at Apple computer over the past couple of quarters and had all sorts of stories to tell about how ID drives literally everything at the company. Everything. It wasn’t much of a surprise (it is Apple), but I wish other companies had the same mindset.

For too many manufacturers ID seems like an afterthought, and its really a shame. Their lack of attention to it makes for products that are too similar to competitors’, look dated, or have poor usability. It seems when retail sales are down, they’re too quick to blame everything but their product design. Again it’s a real shame.

In any case though, I managed to finish out the rest of the site’s templates today. Now all of the Archive and Search Pages should be displaying properly.

Check out this video by three graphic designers. It shows how they recreated the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan for another project. Seriously awesome. Found over at brandflakes.