Sesame Street is 40 today - Google celebrates in style.

I’m not far behind Sesame Street in the age stakes - and as I was born in the US, I had early and regular doses of inspired madness from the Children’s Televison Workshop before returning to the comparatively limited TV of 1970’s Ireland.

Funded with millions from the Carnegie foundation, the show ploughed this money into the ideas of innovative educationalists, superb musicians - and Jim Henson’s team of anarchic puppeteers. The series had a visual wit and pace that was hugely influential, and they pioneered techniques to present information and knowledge in the most sticky of ways, to the most fickle of audiences. I’m convinced that Sesame Street was one of the influences that made me a visual communicator!

Their website has a brief section on the history of the show, as well as some classic clips that are worth seeing.

Have a Sesame weekend!

At the Red Dog 16th Birthday Party (thanks, Mary!) Great idea: 16 limited edition posters available to take for free- but you have to make a donation to charity for the tube to take them home. Excuse the poor quality cameraphone shot - it doesn’t do justice to the designs. Well done all.

The always interesting Information is Beautiful brought this to my attention: It’s from a New Scientist feature on the relative carbon footprints of domestic pets: Essentially, they’re saying a Labrador causes more harm to the planet than a Toyota Landcruiser. But will your SUV fetch a stick and make you smile?

The Information is Beautiful book isn’t out on this side of the pond until next year - but it is now available for pre-order.

Mix red-berry tea with a shark-finned infuser for a truly terrifying brew!

It was an entry in an online product-design competition earlier this year, but it’s not yet in production. Click the pic to see the blog of the industrial designer who created the concept.

I first came across this earlier this year - in our ‘pre-blog’ existance! - so it was great to be reminded of it by the folks we follow at Tumblr.

“Hello Kitty: A cool cat turns 35”

(article via latimes.com, and link to the animated design history promo)

A glimpse into the awe-inspiring (but completely unpredictable) power of licensed character merchandising.

The ultimate “Designer” Pumpkin. Happy Halloween!

Terrifyingly Great Pumpkin Carving

Anna Goodson (an agent for illustrators) has been running an pumpkin carving competition for a few years - click on the pic to see this year’s harvest.

I’m off home to carve ours shortly… feeling both humbled and useless by these guys!

Have a great Halloween Weekend!

Protecting the Brand of a Living Legend

Great article from Time on the complexities of managing the brand assets of a public figure - Nelson Mandela.

“There’s no doubt recycling is good, but in many cases, reusing is even better. Aiming to keep its share of reusable boxes out of the recycling bin, Columbia Sportswear recently launched an effort to let customers request that their orders be shipped in boxes that have been used before.

Consumers can already buy and sell their own used boxes on BoxCycle, which we covered about a year ago, and now Columbia Sportswear is bringing the concept into the corporate domain. When online shoppers reach checkout at Columbia.com, the website gives them the choice of shipping their order in a previously used cardboard box. Since the launch of the effort in August, more than 60 percent of online customers have selected the used box option, Columbia says. Perhaps even more interesting, however, is that Columbia places a sticker on the outside of each used box that includes a unique code and number. Entering that number or scanning the code via mobile phone into Columbia’s “A Box Life” community site reveals a wealth of information about where that box has been. Then, before sending their reused box on its next journey, consumers are encouraged to post pictures of their own to the A Box Life Flickr group and to tweet about their box’s journey by adding the hash tag #aboxlife to Twitter posts when they have something “box worthy” to share.”

Here at DesignTactics we’ve tried to beat the Christmas rush by sending a Halloween card to clients this year - it features a nifty pop-up pumpkin. Excitingly, it’s been picked up by Creative Review; see more by clicking here.