I am a skeptic of pennies to begin with (I’ve been know to throw them away when they get too jangly in my pocket), but yesterday I was surprised to notice the sudden appearance of an entirely new penny design. Naturally, I consulted the internet. Turns out that starting in February 2010, the Department of Treasury began minting pennies with new tails-side design that features an image of the union shield, which is “emblematic of President Lincoln’s preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country”.   This is the third redesign of the tails-side of our penny–first was the wheat penny from 1909-1958, then the Lincoln memorial design from 1959-2008, and now this. As long as it doesn’t affect my pressed penny collection, I think I’ll be all right.

The appearance of miraculous images is no longer just for the Catholics. For all you Rastafarians out there, it appears Jah works in mysterious ways, too.

Check out this picture my sister took of my brother down the beach. Look at the wood by his feet. Can you see the image of the Non-Virgin Bob Marley?

As a Clevelander living away from home, news like that of LeBron leaving town may hurt, but not as deep as the news that Cleveland’s own Harvey Pekar passed away yesterday. I was prepared to write some heartfelt account of what Harvey meant to me and to my city, until I found this post from Anthony Bourdain. It’s brilliant. Enough said. I hope your heart will be as touched as mine was. Oh— and the image is from a school project of mine from Kent State that has never seen the light of day, until now. I felt it was appropriate.

Topics covered in Yau’s nearly daily posts range from the fanciful to the serious, from a chart showing How to beat Super Mario Brothers 3 in 11 minutes to an infographic on how much a musician needs to sell online to make minimum wage. It’s an interesting exercise in how visuals can clarify facts—or in some cases, muddle them: Yau does as much reveling in beautiful graphics as he does intelligent questioning on how the data is collected and parsed.

Most exciting are Yau’s posts on infographics that show what raw data can only imply. This elevation map of San Francisco’s prostitution arrests, for example, builds hills and even mountains in the areas of the city where the most arrests take place. The map’s designer, Doug McCune, points out the shadows formed by these peaks, which imply that this issue reaches far further than the crime itself.

If admiring the work of others weren’t enough, Yau has created your.flowingdata.com, which allows users to track data on themselves via Twitter. The program takes the information you tweet, from what you eat to when you go to sleep, and creates beautifully clean word clouds, maps, or time series graphics. Maybe statisticians are aesthetes just like you and me after all.

The Communication Arts Design Annual 51 (September/October issue) will feature two of our favorite Loyola University Maryland pieces, the Sophomore/Junior Search Piece, which is printed on newsprint and the School of Education Viewbook. There’s been a lot of interest in the newsprint piece so we’ve posted more images after the jump for your viewing pleasure…

I’ll admit, I’m an Apple fan. But when the new iPhone 4 was announced I was convinced to wait before purchasing it. I knew from experience that the first batch of any product is bound to have its share of problems.

Seems like I was right. Along with having proximity sensor trouble, signal strength can now be added to the growing list of problems. If you hold the phone like you would any other you run the risk of losing all your bars of reception. Why? Because while being designed at Apple they didn’t realize that by having the antenna on the outside surrounding the phone would mean the user would be touching it.

Don’t worry though, there IS a fix! It’ll just cost you $29.00 at an Apple store to buy an awful looking “bumper” to wrap around your phone. And there you have it, fixed reception issues for yet more money. Or for the “DIY-ers” you can be like this guy and use a $1 bracelet.

I understand even the best companies make mistakes, but this is a great example of what could happen when a company puts form over function. Maybe they’re feeling the pressure from the HTC Touch 2 or the newly announced Droid X and rushed through vital testing. Whatever the cause, the iPhone 4 is beautifully designed but what’s the point in beauty if it doesn’t even serve its purpose?

World Cup fever is everywhere, especially in the office lately. Amidst the exchange of ideas and change requests, you’ll hear various profanities or exclamations coming from around the boomerang table.

Obviously the World Cup’s presence is especially pervasive on the internet right now. I recently found this illustrator who has been doing some pretty interesting work inspired by the beautiful game.

His name is Charis Tsevis, and he’s a designer from Athens, Greece. I like how he expresses the kinetic energy of the event with traditional African design patterns. His process reminds me a bit of Chuck Close’s work too, who happens to be a favorite of mine.

Check it out…

In August, 1945, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was shooting in Times Square when the US declared victory over Japan, and an end to WWII. At the same time, 27-year-old nurse Edith Shain joined co-workers and fellow New Yorkers pouring into the streets to celebrate. An unknown soldier grabbed her by the waist, tilted her back, and gave her a kiss. Eisenstaedt snapped an image, which later appeared in LIFE magazine, and 65 years later, that photo remains instantly recognizable to millions of Americans.

One of the most fascinating details about that photo is the fact that Eisenstaedt failed to catch the names of his subjects, and for 35 years, neither was identified. That changed in 1980 when Ms. Shain sent a letter to him, finally solving the mystery by identifying herself as the recipient of a kiss from a man she didn’t know, saying, “Someone grabbed me and kissed me, and I let him because he fought for his country.” The modest woman later confessed she kept silent for so long because she was embarrassed to have been photographed while kissing a complete stranger.

Edith Shain passed away this week at the age of 91. When I read her obit yesterday in the NY Times, I was struck by a comment she once made about the iconic photograph and what it meant to her. “It says so many things,” she told the Associated Press. “Hope, love, peace and tomorrow.” Well said, Edith.

For decades the Associated Press Stylebook has been a journalist’s most sacred rule book. When the book first launched in 1953 I bet the editors never thought they’d be adding a “social media” section to their orderly, crisp white pages.

Social media has been both a journalist’s arch-nemesis and best friend over the recent years. But if you’re confused by the language of the intangible community of social media, blogs and forums the Associated Press Stylebook has brought in the big guns to lay down the law.

The 2010 edition was released earlier this month and includes sensible changes such as changing “web site” to “website” and allowing “fan,” “friend” and “follower” to be used as both nouns and verbs.

Ever wondered what POS meant? Well, before it wouldn’t have mattered. POS could have stood for “practice obnoxious singing” for all I cared. According to the Associated Press, POS stands for “parent over shoulder”. I guess the teeny-boppers use it to indicate to their friends on IM or text messaging that a parent is close by? Does this sort of thing really belong in the Associated Press Stylebook?

If silly acronyms weren’t enough, you can bet that words such as “retweet,” “trending” and “unfriend” also made it into the social media guidelines.

Yes, those are now “real” words.

I don’t know whether or not to be thankful that this social media world has finally laid some ground rules or upset that more trees were cut down to add extra pages on a media-type that is so subjective that even journalists are asked to observe it with discretion.

Just when we thought social media land was a free-spirit, cyberspace teenager who let anyone post, chat, blog and tweet the Associated Press has officially let us know that this form of media needs parenting too.