The end of Summer is nearing this weekend, but the heat in LA is not letting up. This was the actual temperature at 5:15pm when I left work today in Chatsworth, CA. Luckily where we live in W. Los Angeles, it’s about 20-25 degrees coolor.

I hope all you graphic designers will get as much of a kick out of this sketch as I did. Silly, yet so true.

And this one should make all the freelancers smile…

When a British artist was denied US backing to paint a portrait of President George Bush he decided to make an ‘alternative’ version - from images of porn.

My passion for vintage design recently had me googling old supermarkets. To my surprise, I found some great blogs and sites that focus on this exact subject. Pleasant Family Shopping is a sweet blog “dedicated to preserving the history of retail chain stores of the past - with an emphasis on supermarkets and discount stores.” Also catching my attention is Groceteria, “a site about the history of the American supermarket, from both an architectural and a business perspective,” concentrating mainly on the 1920s through the 1980s. Such wonderful history, details and photos on both sites.

Here’s a collection of color vintage supermarket photos from The Imaginary World that warm my heart.

I think I came across the site of ‘The Office of Design and Architecture’ a few times already, but this time I had to blog about one of their designs. Corn is great, boiled, grilled, broiled whichever. It’s even greater in a salad, but how do get the kernels off the cob? Usually a messy attempt to use a knife seems to be the solution. That’s where OXO (Kitchen tools etc) came in and asked TODA to design a handheld device to fulfill above mentioned task (if anyone has used one of these, does it work well with grilled corn as well?).

The Oxo Good Grips Corn Stripper 1128000 is the result:

After spending a bit more time on their site, I saw that one of TODA’s offices is located in Hamburg, Germany (for those who don’t know, that’s where I used to live before I moved to Los Angeles). That put an extra smile on my face. Germans are known for clean and sleek design, right ? Moreover, the corn stripper appears to be very safe and easy to handle.