Regardless of your politics, I’m pretty sure that you can get behind Scott Hansen (Mr. ISO50 / Tycho Music). He’s a brilliant designer. His print work, in particular, is a major fount of inspiration.

I saw this morning that the Obama campaign has commissioned him to do a poster, presumably a follow-up to the iconic image done by Shepard Fairey.

This kind of blew my mind. Partially because it’s a weird convergence. I didn’t really know who was paying attention to ISO50. I knew he was big but, you know, big the same way that James Doohan might be big at a Star Trek convention or the former quaterback might be big at a high school reunion. So it was strange when all of the sudden he had been commissioned by Barack Obama who is big like running for President big.

It also blew my mind because I had just assumed the previous poster had been a lucky fluke for Mr. Obama. And it may have been, but the campaign embraced it and apparently are looking for a follow-up. When I read that the Obama campaign had contacted ISO50 and asked for a poster, it got my attention. Is Barack Obama (or someone on his campaign) really that in touch with the power of a designer like Scott? Unless the design geek demographic is more important than I realized, something is going on here. Scott’s design does have broad appeal and it’s definitely evocative, but I wouldn’t call it mainstream by any means and a presidential campaign is about appealing to the masses.

That’s what gets me excited. Is the mainstream shifting? Is great design like this seeing it’s day? Is this an acknowledgment of the real power and appeal of a great design and a great designer? Apparently, the first poster is doing some good. I can’t wait to see what ISO50 has created for the second.

I just posted a major update of Simple Styles that work with February CTP bits. This was a major rewrite and now includes almost all of the major controls that ship in the box. They’re also a little simpler now.  TabControl, for example, went from hundreds to dozens of lines.  I’ve also taken it upon myself to give SimpleStyles their own tag line, so here it is: SimpleStyles: Simple Looking, Simple Tweaking.  Let me know if you want to write a jingle.  Play around and let me know what you think.

This ia bit of a tangent from the content I normally post, but worth checking out. Looking for a low cost way to enter the fast paced, high energy world of print collection? Interested in very small prints? Tiny Showcase has some really beautiful pieces and, though small, they sell for $10-$12/piece.