Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the Future of Web Design conference this year, partly because of the ongoing integration work (if you're following me on Twitter you know what that's been like) and partly because I wanted to save some cash for dConstruct 2008.

Luckily Jeremy Keith has done a fantastic job of liveblogging the presentations, so between his sterling effort and the torrent of photos on Flickr I can almost kid myself that I was there.

Roll on 3rd September.

Information architecture. Usability. Accessibility. Web standards. If you don’t know about these things, stop designing websites until you have learned. Competence in graphic design is merely a baseline; it does not qualify you to create user experiences for the web.

- Jeffrey Zeldman

Dieter Rams' principles of good design:

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.
• Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of these things.

Now this is a stroke of genius. Penguin are starting a new series of classic books, but with plain white covers, giving everyone the opportunity to create their own design.

According to consumer research conducted on what factors matter to people when they decide whether or not to pick up a book in a bookshop, the cover design comes out as most important. So this might be the stupidest thing we've ever done.

These “naked” covers will be made of art quality paper and shrink wrapped to stop them getting dirty before purchase, there is also an associated gallery for people to submit their creations.

The first six to be released are:

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Magic Tales by The Brothers Grimm
• The Waves by Virginia Woolf
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Emma by Jane Austen

I've always had a soft spot for Penguin, I feel they've been a genuine innovator in publishing ever since their inception in 1935 (the history of the company is a fascinating read), and this latest idea is right up there with their best.

By a complete coincidence I'm right in the middle of The True History Of The Elephant Man, their presence in my book collection is that pervasive.

Hat tip: BoingBoing

Lullabot have just released Lullacons Pack 1, a set of GPL icons for Drupal and other Open Source projects. These are 8-bit PNGs with 1-bit transparency so they will work in Internet Explorer.

They've also given people access to the original Photoshop .psd files, so you can create your own derivative versions. As per the rules of the GPL, if you do use them to create a new icon set then you have to make your modifications available to other people.

Dammit, if their podcasts weren't groovy enough, now they go and do something cool like this.