I don’t have much experience designing packaging, but I have to imagine most designers view the barcode as a formality, the last little piece to add, tucked away in the corner or the bottom of a box. The Japanese firm Design Barcode thinks otherwise as they specialize in making creative barcodes to enhance the look of packaging. They won a Titanium Lion in 2006 for their work.

It may seem like a tiny detail, but it can add a wealth of personality to a product, and with store shelves as the place where many purchase decisions are made, that can be a big deal.

barcode revolution via the dieline

London-based street artist “The Decapitator” is on tour in the colonies, NYC to be precise, and blood has already been shed. First on his hit list was Shakira’s Rolling Stone cover, which he offered copies in a treasure hunt in the Union Square Barnes and Noble.

Posters designed by fellow street artist Shepard Fairey to promote the game DJ Hero were also given the decapitator treatment. And while Decapitator’s brand of humor is dark as it is, it takes on a darker tone with his work on the poster featuring the late DJ AM.

Finally, he collaborated with Poster Boy for a scat-themed defacing of some phone booth ads. Fun for the whole family!

To see more Decapitator shenanigans, check out the video of his londonpaper hijack.

the decapitator (flickr) via animal ny

What a lovely, simple concept behind these Google promotional videos to create a narrative through search. Robert Wong of Google Creative Lab introduced the Search Stories videos by writing:

While we’re proud of the innovations we’re making in search, we’re proudest of the things people use search to accomplish. In other words, the best search results don’t show up on a webpage — they show up in somebody’s life.

Check out the full set of videos here.

Health and medicine can be a confusing and overwhelming category, look no further than the health care reform debate as evidence. But not every medical issue is serious. Headaches, minor cuts, allergies, and blisters are small obstacles in our path to wellness, but pharmaceutical companies still treat these issues as serious business, aside from a few cartoon characters on bandages and overly cheery people in medicine commercials.

Help Remedies believes the best way to solve simple medical issues is to be simple. They do this with straight-to-the-point language and color-coded packaging, which also happens to be bio-degradable. Adding a little personality and fun to the equation makes Help Remedies an easy-to-love brand. And if you’re bored, they can help you with that.

on the web: Help Remedies

When IKEA recently mailed their annual catalog, eagle-eyed fans of the brand noticed something was a bit different compared to last year’s edition - and just about every other piece of IKEA branding ever produced. After 50 years, IKEA has replaced the iconic Futura-style IKEA Sans typeface with Verdana, a font designed for Microsoft in 1996. Typophiles were shocked (shocked!) IKEA, a company that built its brand with forward-thinking design, would choose what they felt was an inferior typeface.

The anti-Verdana group voiced their displeasure on blogs and on Twitter, while some cracked jokes elsewhere. There is even an online petition (serious business) that has received over 3000 signatures.

IKEA spokeswoman Camilla Meiby says, “Verdana is a simple, cost-effective font which works well in all media and languages,” something I guess they weren’t able to do with IKEA Sans. Verdana has an advantage over IKEA Sans in that it is designed specifically to be read on computer screens. With that in mind, maybe this move is a signal that IKEA will ramp up its digital marketing efforts, both on the web and with mobile phones, and perhaps Verdana is more practical than IKEA Sans in accomplishing those goals.

In a similar rebranding move, when Tropicana changed their packaging last winter, complaints from customers they deemed too loyal to upset forced them to switch back in a well-publicized debacle. IKEA, on the other hand, is brushing off the initial criticism by saying they “don’t think the broad public is that interested” in the typeface switch. For their sake, I hope they are right, and I hope the switch doesn’t cause more harm than good in the long run.

via idsgn