From Wikipedia
The Courier was manufactured by Toyo Kogyo (Mazda), and imported and sold by Ford Motor Company as a response to the unforeseen popularity of the small Toyota and Nissan/Datsun pickups among young buyers in the West. Like the other mini-pickups of the time, it featured a sub-2 liter four cylinder engine, a four speed manual transmission, rear wheel drive, an impressive load capability of 1,400 lb (635 kg) considering its size, and a fairly small price tag compared to full size pickups of the time. To circumvent the 25% Chicken tax on light trucks, Couriers (as with Chevrolet LUV’s) were imported in “cab chassis” configurations, which included the entire light truck, less the cargo box or truck bed and were only subject to a 4% tariff. Subsequently, a truck bed would be attached to the chassis and the vehicle could be sold as a light truck.

3form – Building a Brand from Jeff Bates on Vimeo.

Role: Storyboard/Art Direction; Design and photography, Galen Leith, Adam Deleeuw, Analisa Estrada; Videographer: Cory Lesuer

The Salt Lake City chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design is pleased to announce the 2010 AIGA 100 Show Winners. The 100 Show, this region’s most prestigious juried competition, honors and showcases the year’s best design, advertising and digital media. Of the 100 pieces selected, only 10 are awarded the coveted Copper Ingot, one of the most sought after communication awards in the Intermountain West.

It’s a good skate, but starting at 5:30 AM is way too f#@king early. Thus, all the excitement on the bench.

Fab.com is a new flash site, ala Gilt.com, it will feature daily design inspirations for everyone, with an eye toward helping members incorporate aesthetic appreciation into their daily lives.

The site launches in 5 weeks, invitation only, sign up here: Fab.com

From the Financial Times’ How to Spend It magazine. By Deyan Sudjic.

We all struggle to keep at bay the avalanche of shoes, books, newspapers, old toys, ancient Christmas tree lights and retired kettles that constantly threatens to spill out of every corner of the home to overwhelm us.

Turn your back on the domestic world for a moment, and the armed truce that we have with our possessions turns instantly into an open conflict. Yet there is salvation at hand, an evangelist has come amongst does, dispensing instant calm in the midst of domestic chaos. The Vistoe system brings with it such an air of sanctity that you could be forgiven for thinking that you were buying spiritual enlightenment, rather than a humble shelf.

But Vitsœ is not just any shelf. This shelf is a ticket that gains you admission to a better, gentler world. It’s a product of the legendary German designer Dieter Rams, the main who did all that matt black stuff for Braun, and a designer who has such a famously well-developed sense of visual order that he can’t bear to go on a country walk without picking up every scrap of litter he finds. His Vitsœ shelves are a study in refined less-is-more minimalism. With Vitsœ, he has created the visual badge of a secret society.

Walk into a living room, spot the tell-tale signs of the metal legs, and you know exactly the kind of people you are dealing with. This is the shelving that Richard Rogers has in his own home, for heaven’s sake. This is the kind of minimalism that doesn’t need to raise its voice to deafen you.

It consists of a set of skinny metal shelves, supported by deftly sculpted vertical aluminium extrusions. But Vitsœ offers so many permutations, bolt-on extras and high-performance competence that you simply know that it will suddenly transform your life. It encourages us to believe that we can win the essentially Canute-ishnature of our struggle with stuff.

Of course, Vitsœ does everything it says it will. What it can’t achieve is all of those implied extras. Fill every one of those shelves with neatly ordered rows of discs, video cassettes, books and lever arch files, and they are still there, staring down at you from the wall. You can put all your books on a shelf, but you still haven’t turned into a Zen Buddhist.

VITSOE