Shipping America

Nearly a year ago we reported on changes at the United States Postal Service (USPS) that involved renaming some of its services and the introduction of a freshly-designed set of boxes, envelopes, and tubes that were received with a modestly encouraging response. More interesting than the final result was that we were having a conversation about design and USPS at all. At the time, I closed my first paragraph of that post with "No credit given" for who had designed those well-intentioned boxes. New York, NY-based GrandArmy recently posted a comprehensive page with their work for USPS that shows a large breadth of work to reposition the visual retail presence and in-store experience of more than 30,000 locations. Included in the scope of work was the redesign of the packaging which, as you will see at the end of the post, had a little more flair to it than what was finally produced by another vendor. To continue the unexpected conversation about design and USPS here is a look at what is basically a complete redesign of the USPS (sans logo).

The United States Postal Service is one of America's great infrastructure achievements. In addition to being a technical marvel, it is also a storied and hallowed institution. From the Pony Express to the first letters sent by air-mail, few things are so uniquely American.

Plagued by budget woes in the modern era — the USPS sought to modernize its image, and more importantly, streamline the retail experience with clear signage, way-finding and packaging.

GrandArmy project page

USPS retail locations manage to be some of the first world's most depressing "retail" experiences. They are drab, there are long lines, the clerks are rarely in a good mood, and there is too much information posted everywhere that makes little sense. Any small change that improves that experience would be a bonus. To the rescue: Gotham and a couple of condensed styles of Knockout. Perhaps a clear answer for us designers but, as GrandArmy tells me, it wasn't an easy sell to USPS: "Typography was a big part of the discussions. We had to spend a while justifying our choices and petitioning for them to purchase the right fonts — but in the end they were reasonable. They appreciate good design and were happy we cared so much about their brand."

GrandArmy developed a total re-design of the USPS in-store experience. A robust three-bar layout system was applied to all materials, from menu-boards to hang tags to welcome signs to kiosks and so on. This system holds together a huge variety of collateral. Ancillary materials include emotive creed posters, window clings, a mobile app, and shipping box design (since modified by an external team.)

GrandArmy project page

We wanted to create a visual language that paid homage to USPS' heritage, but was a modern, clear and simple update. There are a lot of contemporary brands that try to wrap themselves in the American flag — but our case to USPS was that here is a brand that actually deserves it. So a contemporary update on Americana, with modern, clear grids and hard-working typography — that was our brief to ourselves. In the end, the system is extraordinarily simple. Red, white and blue color fields separate every piece along consistent ratios, and these ratios inform headline and body copy sizes.

From e-mail conversation with GrandArmy

---

---

---

Like the recent Domino's Pizza post about their type family, this isn't a straightforward identity redesign but its implications in how we perceive the USPS brand can be as significant as changing its logo. (Not quite, but you get my point). GrandArmy's guidelines and efforts in redesigning "boards" are about communicating in a clear, elegant, moderately exciting language. These are far and away more positive adjectives than anyone thinks of when thinking of the USPS's communication efforts. Without any overly fancy design tricks — this is basically a typographic, hierarchy exercise on steroids — GrandArmy has set up a lovely and clear system that is helpful and attractive.

---

---

---

---

---

I would love to do another follow-up post in a year and see if the boards above look as good in the actual locations as they do in these handsome photographs. My guess is "not as much" but I do think they have the potential of starting a broader transformation of the USPS in-store experience… that is, assuming there is any money for the poor organization to implement changes.

Yeah!

I should probably elaborate on the above but, no: Yeah!

---

---

---

Finally, we come to the boxes. I wanted to keep them at the end so you would see the progression and how they are the culmination of all of the more "basic" work, coming together in, well, a tight little package. Although the packaging that launched a year ago was a step up from its predecessor, the proposed and submitted designs by GrandArmy had that extra cohesiveness and (as evident in the two boxes directly above) more Pow. Yup, pow. More of it. With any luck some of the more expressive traits of these boxes will find their way to the real boxes. Probably not. But it's definitely encouraging to see the USPS even engaging a design firm and working to establish a contemporary presence.

To conclude: Yeah!

In the biggest round of funding into any Indian startup, shopping website Flipkart today said it has received $1 billion in funding from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC, along with existing investors Accel Partners, DST Global, ICONIQ Capital, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Sofina. The investment was co-led by existing investors Tiger Global Management and Naspers.

This is one of the largest investments raised in a single round globally. Taxi rental startup Uber raised $1.2 billion earlier this year. Facebook had raised $1 billion in 2011. The valuation at which the investment has come though differs greatly. Uber was valued at $18.2 billion and Flipkart was reportedly valued at a more modest $5 billion, similar to the valuation of Pinterest and half the valuation of companies like Airbnb, Xiaomi and Dropbox.

No plans for an IPO

While everyone was expecting Flipkart to make a mention of an international listing coming soon, founder Sachin Bansal dismissed the idea. “We are not thinking of an IPO at all. Earlier we were estimating that we might go for an IPO in two to five years, but now we are looking at that as a long term option,” he said. An IPO needn’t be an immediate priority for a well-funded startup that is still figuring things out, one analyst said. “Flipkart is still working on its business model. Once they go in for an IPO, any changes they need to make to their model will require a lot more work and convincing a lot more investors about decisions. They don’t need an IPO right now,” Ankur Bisen, senior vice president of the retail division at Technopak, said. The company is growing at 60% year on year and needs to invest in developing infrastructure and technology, Bisen added.

Focus on mobile, wearables

Flipkart says that a priority for the company now is to develop their mobile commerce platform further as 50% of their transactions happen on mobile devices. The company is also looking to focus on the wearable technologies market. “The next phase after mobile commerce is going to be shopping on wearables,” Bansal said. The company is hiring to step up its R&D work in the space and said that it is hiring 1,000 engineers and Indian tech talent from internet companies in the Silicon Valley. The company will actively look to make acquisitions, he said.

The second largest single round of funding was also by Flipkart in India, when it raised $210 million earlier this year. The company had raised $760 million in the seven years since its launch.

This article is a part of Quartz India. For more, follow this link.

Dads rule. They take you to the ball game!

Baseball with dad is tops.

Dads can catch a foul ball! Dads rock.

Aw, man! HUG THAT DAD, SON!

Dads are the best. Dads give you the baseball!

Heck he only caught it so you could have it anyway.

All together now: Let's hear it for dad!

(via MLB)

http://i.imgur.com/p1Ws65l.png

Original Source

cosplayingwhileblack:

X

Character: Merida

Series: Brave

hodad

Original Source

https://twitter.com/DesignUXUI/status/490179377099845632/photo/1

Original Source

(Quick note, with more extensive notes below, I'm trying to carefully read the relevant laws, here, not pass a judgment on any of the Obama administration's policies.  You want to talk broken promises, war crimes, Constitutional violations, or generally stupid moves, I'm in.  None of those, however, relate to impeachment, which is a specific process designed to resolve specific problems.)

Not to offend anybody, but it's probably because nobody calling for the man's impeachment has ever bothered to read the Constitution.  Article II, Section 4 provides the criteria.

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

The closest you can get to treason is violating the Oath of Office in not defending the Constitution (specifically, the Bill of Rights) from its domestic enemies and covering up war crimes by not prosecuting the Bush administration.  I've yet to see even an accusation of bribery.

High crimes and misdemeanors, maybe?  Wikipedia suggests, "perjury of oath, abuse of authority, bribery, intimidation, misuse of assets, failure to supervise, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming, and refusal to obey a lawful order."  (Edit:  It's a term that was in use by English Parliament, amounting to blatant corruption, and the phrase replaced "corruption" during the drafting, along with "maladministration," which is what many people are trying to argue.)

Let's see...

• Perjury?  Has not been called to testify.
• Abuse of authority?  Arguably on issues like Libya, but not clearly.
• Bribery?  Again, never heard anything.
• Intimidation?  That must be why his opponents whine about how weak he makes us look.
• Misuse of assets?  Nothing unauthorized that I've heard about.  (Edit:  Money allocated to agencies gets to the agencies, which is different from bad stewardship.)
  
• Failure to supervise?  Maybe with the NSA, but the people who would bring charges would have to face them soon after.
• Dereliction of duty?  Again, not that I've heard.  Disagreeing with his policies doesn't mean he's not doing his job.  Again, maybe not prosecuting Bush officials, but that's a nuclear option if ever I saw one.
  
• Conduct unbecoming?  Well, I mean, he danced on "Ellen."  Is that sufficient?
• Refusal to obey?  That probably doesn't apply at this time.
  

In other words, there doesn't appear to be an impeachable offense and you can't impeach a President for supporting things you don't like.  If the latter were the case, we'd have impeached every President since Washington.

Update:

This post has gotten a lot of attention (and some hilariously inept insults, including the ever-popular "your stupid," which I assume is donating a stupid to my fund), so let me clarify the somewhat-valid objections:

• I'm not an Obama supporter.  I don't support any major-party politician, because they've perverted our system of government by limiting who we're allowed to elect.  The man reminds me of children who find out that "ass" can also mean a donkey and use that to defend their rudeness.
  
• I believe in the Rule of Law, however.  The Constitution is clear on what's permissible and what is an impeachable offense.
• Delaying implementation of a law is the prerogative and duty of the executive branch, given that it's tasked entirely with how to implement laws.  The Take Care/Faithful Execution clause bans the alteration or dismissal of a law, but delays have always been acceptable in Constitutional law.
• Furthermore, if the legislature is allowed to dictate how laws are executed, then the Separation of Powers is eroded just as badly as if the executive alters legislation.
• Bush-era war crimes would include the 2007 Baghdad airstrikes (the "Collateral Murder" incident, as Wikileaks called it) and "enhanced interrogation techniques," at minimum, involve actions specifically banned by the third and fourth Geneva Conventions, to which the United States is a party.
  

And for the people objecting to Wikipedia citations, find contradicting definitions in more credible sources.  It's a tiny mind that dismisses information based on its source, and Wikipedia at least comes with a free paper trail.

Why am I "defending Obama"?  Because the law favors him in this context.  The only way to successfully impeach him would be to throw out the Constitution in favor of extremist ideology, and I've had enough of that crap from the government.  It's not cute when they pass gun control laws, force people to buy insurance, or monitor people based on their religion, and it's not cute here, either.

Think of impeachment like the death penalty:  There are only certain contexts in which you're allowed to ask for it.  If someone robs your house a thousand times, they're still not eligible for the death penalty, no matter how annoyed it makes you.  If you keep your activities to a state with no death penalty, you could be a serial killer and nobody can threaten you with the death penalty.  It's only certain jurisdictions and certain offenses that trigger the possibility.  It's the same situation here.

Original Source

There have been a handful of Robins over the years, but thus far, none of them has been a bear. As this animation by Cale Atkinson proves, that's a rather large and hairy oversight.

Read more...

The Amish shun modern technology and regard beards for adult men and uncut hair for married women as sacred. In Bergholz, where the Millers live, they are Old Order, which means no electricity or telephone lines into the house. Unless, like Raymond Miller, 29, you are on probation and must make daily phone calls to a probation officer and wear an electronic ankle monitor while harvesting hay.

Uh oh, you can buy those Sega shirts from Japan ⊟

@zerochan spotted the Geek Life Sega shirts I posted before – the amazing silhouette and all-over designs – as well as these new ones, for sale on Amiami. A bit of a problem for someone who might feel compelled to spend $50+ on some Opa-Opa or Altered Beast stuff.

Problem or opportunity, I guess, depending on your finances/impulse control.

SUPPORT TINY CARTRIDGE Join Club Tiny!

hawkinspeter (831501) writes Amazon has given the green light to produce the Hugo award-winning "The Man in the High Castle". This is after the four-hour mini-series was rejected by Syfy and afterwards by the BBC. Philip K Dick's novel takes place in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the Second World War. It's one of his most successful works, probably due to him actually spending the time to do some editing on it (most of his fiction was produced rapidly in order to get some money). Ridley Scott has previously adapted PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as the film Blade Runner, so it will be interesting to see how close he keeps to the source material this time. This news has been picked up by a few sites: International Business Times; The Register and Deadline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

redletterdave (2493036) writes "Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr., 24, allegedly scammed Apple not once, but 42 times, cheating the company out of more than $300,000 — and his scam was breathtakingly simple. According to a Secret Service criminal complaint, Parrish allegedly visited Apple Stores and tried to buy products with four different debit cards, which were all closed by his respective financial institutions. When his debit card was inevitably declined by the Apple Store, he would protest and offer to call his bank — except, he wasn't really calling his bank. So he would allegedly offer the Apple Store employees a fake authorization code with a certain number of digits, which is normally provided by credit card issuers to create a record of the credit or debit override. But that's the problem with this system: as long as the number of digits is correct, the override code itself doesn't matter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robot Turtles, set to release next month, is a board game that’s designed to bring coding literacy to preschool age children.

from Wired:

This wonderfully clever, light-hearted creation is already a sensation in the world of online crowdfunding. Former Google and Microsoft employee Dan Shapiro raised over $631,000 on Kickstarter to build the game last year, and by Christmas, he’d shipped copies to his over 13,700 backers. But now, Robot Turtles is being mass produced by a game company called ThinkFun, and its arrival at Target marks a new milestone for what’s known as the “code literacy movement,” an effort to bring programming skills to, well, just about everyone.

In more ways than one, the new board game serves as a metaphor for the long and steady evolution of computer programming from the most complex and specialized of endeavors to something that practically anyone can grasp. It’s not just that Robot Turtles is a new incarnation of Logo, a turtle-centric programming language that aimed coding concepts at children as early as the 1960s. It’s that ThinkFun, the company behind the game’s push into Target and beyond, can trace its roots through the family of the most important coder in the history of programming—and all the way back to the dawn of the modern computing age

Read more.

---

Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!

Created by open-source mapping tool MapBox, Don’t Fly Drones Here highlights off-limit zones for UAV owners in the US and Canada based on local regulations, including locations with major airports, military bases and national parks. The map’s creators are seeking submissions for additional off-limits areas.

image via MapBox

via Wired

---

Link

---

Governing trademark body IP Australia has denied BP to trademark Pantone 348C green as its own.

At Comic-Con, Marvel previewed a Guardians Of The Galaxy animated series it says will air on Disney XD. Attendees got to see a one-minute preview featuring Rocket Raccoon and Star-Lord, along with a panel discussion featuring the Marvel Animation brain trust—as well as Fred Tatasciore, the voice of the Hulk.

The panel also previewed a full episode of the upcoming Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors, plus clips from the now-officially-confirmed second seasons of Avengers Assemble, and Hulk And The Agents Of S.M.A.S.H., all of which also air on Disney XD. And since every Marvel property has to connect to every other Marvel property, a crossover was teased that will link the Hulk cartoon with characters introduced in the Guardians film (and which will presumably also set up the Guardians animated series). And of course, all of these shows join the live-action Marvel’s Agents ...

Keith Olbermann isn't done discussing the NFL's lack of punishment.

Keith Olbermann of ESPN has been at the forefront of taking the NFL to task for its gross mishandling of Ray Rice's suspension for domestic violence, and Olbermann isn't resting yet -- not by a long shot.

On Monday night he discussed the "profound ethical breach" by commissioner Roger Goodell for his role in handing out the suspension of Rice. Pointing to a problematic interview on "Mike & Mike" by NFL Senior VP of Labor Policy Adolpho Birch, who seemed to have a fundamental lack of understanding regarding Rice's legal proceedings and the league's reaction.

Perhaps most disturbing was Birch's admission that the league prioritizes suspension length based on the type of breach as it relates to "the values of the league." This presents the NFL as an organization in line with the majority of public sentiment: They care about drugs and player safety, not women -- at least insofar as suspensions are concerned.

This leaves us with the ethical breach, which Olbermann calls "disturbing." According to a report from Peter King, Rice's wife led an impassioned plea to the commissioner to not damage Rice's career and convinced him this was a one-off incident. This was all conducted in the presence of her husband, the man who beat her, and the discussion flew in the face of standard legal procedure, which typically insulates victims from attackers in order to gain an impartial testimony.

Olbermann says it best.

"If Roger Goodell really conducted a meeting with both Ray and Janay Palmer Rice present, he destroyed the impartiality of his own investigation. He ruined it. I call on Commissioner Goodell to withdraw his two game suspension of Ray Rice now and recuse himself from determining Rice's punishment and say that the decision about how long Rice should be suspended has been turned over to, well, to almost anyone who didn't make the victim sit next to her attacker in front of his employers and the judge."

It's unlikely the NFL will respond, but it's clear Olbermann wont stop -- nor should he.

The future of SDCC ZombieWalk: San Diego, held annually during Comic-Con International, is uncertain after a car drove into a crowd of participants and spectators Saturday, injuring three. A scheduled Oct. 26 event has been called off. “Yes, the October walk is canceled,” organizers posted on their Facebook page. “We are evaluating continuing at all, […]

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

When it comes to leaked Nixon conversations, this one is pretty tame. However, it is refreshing to know that between his paranoid wiretapping and outright anti-Semitism, he was as into pandas as the rest of us.

hodad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky_BA7L22_k

• 29.2K

   
• 
• 

•  29.2K

Come and Take It Texas, a group affiliated with the open carry movement, is complaining that topless protestors are ruining their monthly walks in support of gun rights.

They are being “trolled by skanky topless libtards,” one post on the group’s Facebook page reads. Another post identifies the counter-protestors as members of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA), even though they made no claim to being affiliated with that organization.

The topless counter-protestors carried signs that read, “You realize that everyone thinks you’re overcompensating for your teeny tiny ‘gun’ right?” and “Boobs for peace.” The women confronted the open carry advocates and said that as long as they openly carried their weapons, the counter-protestors would bare their breasts.

One of the open carry advocates, Tom Jefferson, claimed that counter-protestors harassed them. “They followed us into a small coffee shop and called us the Aryan Brotherhood,” he said. “They continually used terms like white pride and white power.”

Nationally syndicated conservative radio host Dana Loesch responded to the protest on Twitter:

At which point the Founder of MDA, Shannon Watts, indicated that these protestors did not belong to her group:

One of the protestors involved confirmed her non-membership in MDA on Facebook:

Watch a video of the protest — in which the gun rights activists superimpose misogynistic captions over the women’s breasts — via YouTube below.

Original Source

https://twitter.com/Rickyeatacid/status/493779991466102784/photo/1

Original Source

submitted by trueslicky [link] [1 comment]

allmyalbums:

- I am going to listen to all the albums on my iPod in alphabetical order

- I will write something here about each of them

- I will skip things like Blixa Bargeld reads The Death of Bunny Munro and Rifftrax: Point Break

- I will listen to single songs that I don’t have the whole album for, but will probably not write something

new project