How did I not know about Oh So Beautiful Paper until this week? Now this is a girl after my own heart. Blogging exclusively about lovely, creative, unique paper goods… It doesn’t get much better.

Brilliant use of Flash by August to deliver an auto-resizing background photo.

I want a high-resolution copy of Jesse Owen’s CD packaging for “The Bright Sadness” to use as my desktop wallpaper. His portfolio has one of the most novel UI schemes I’ve seen in quite some time.

Very few people can tout themselves as designer, illustrator, animator, filmmaker, photographer, musician — oh, and don’t forget dreamer. Joe is fantastic on all fronts.

I must’ve overlooked the articles archive in Jason’s redesign when I oohed and ahhed over it before, because it’s really fantastic and I feel like I’m seeing it for the first time. Just like the front page of the site, it brings all the best things about print (well, except paper, of course) to the web.

“The critic also knows how difficult it is for any design owner to receive a critique. This means going beyond basic cordiality and politeness. A skilled critic will understand the design owner is invested and works to reduce the ‘attacking’ feeling that is a natural reaction to any criticism.”

Super sweet tiled background generator. Choose foreground and background colors, texture, and pattern image, opacity, angle, and size.

Want pretty ampersands in Wordpress-generated content? Enter Classy Amp. Designed for headings but a breeze to apply to any function.

Biggest. Form fields. Ever.

Something new to try the next time I need to use PNGs: Unit PNG fix. (Sidebar: I long for the day when we can pretend IE6 never existed. Oh wait… That may be never.)

I never thought this day would come, but I’ve migrated this little bloglet to Wordpress. Farewell, MovableType — it’s not you, it’s me.

I’ve been living under a rock design-wise these last few weeks (or longer), so today I did a bit of catching up. Noteworthy: Viget Labs blog, Poccuo, Northtemple and Matt Brett.

I had scribbled down Hydra Studio on a piece of scrap paper well over a year ago and finally got around to perusing their portfolio. Really fantastic work there. They clearly have a broad range in their aesthetic — clean and modern, organic, high-impact, delicately refined.

Gorgeous typography work on Words Are Pictures. So many powerful statements told through type.

“The handwriting of typographers intrigues me because it raises so many questions… Has the rise of digital communications made handwriting redundant? Do modern typographers, born of digital tools, lack the finesse of their more wizened counterparts?” Most interesting to me are the multiple handwritten “typefaces” of Bantjes.