Some good advice from Rebeca Méndez, principal of Rebeca Méndez Design and formerly of design studios such as Ogilvy & Mather’s Brand Group and Weiden + Kennedy. Note to self: follow it.

1. Experiment—create work for yourself, independent of clients, responding to your own questions and curiosity.

2. Collaborate—work with or form a collective of your friends and peers, especially those in other disciplines (writers, architects, artists, musicians, dancers).

3. Have integrity—do your professional work without abandoning your personal convictions and values.

More after the jump as well.

I Love Typography’s round up for best typefaces of 2008. A couple of nice gems there, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of new expressions; they kind of look like Hoefler knock-offs to me.

From The Design Conspiracy:

Designed to reflect the explosion of excitement that was the opening weekend, the project allowed us to build on the Southbank Centre’s new Wolff Olins designed identity and push the graphics on the web.

Rather than make users trawl through page after page we created one page that was home to over 50 events. We also created a YouTube channel for Southbank Centre and on the weekend we streamed Overture Radio.

Link to the website here: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/overture/

Thanks to Andrew for the link.

Peter Arnell reveals the new Peapod Neighborhood Electric Vehicle on today’s Martha Stewart show. Visit peapodmobility.com for more information.

From the New York Times Advertising - As Consumers Try to Cut Back, Tropicana Promotes Quality and Value. New work from Arnell.

The new Mindshare identity via Moving Brands.

Moving Brands appears to be a more or less unknown British design studio, although I’d seen some of their work before without knowing they were responsible. Highlights of their slim online portfolio include identities for “ovi” (an online service from Nokia, not unlike Apple’s “me”) and the work for Mindshare, which captures the concept behind the name in an visually interesting way. From their website:

The symbol has been created to reflect the structure and form of Mindshare’s business. It shows two forms coming together to create a new, strong form reflecting Mindshare’s partnerships with clients, suppliers and other agencies.

The work is an odd mix of the standout and the strange. For instance, I’m not a big fan of what I see as the odd, somewhat overly complex logo for swisscom, although some of the executional variations are really beautiful (see below).

Having been on the opposite end of the type of documentary “teamwork” type of photography that Moving Brands features on their website, I don’t give too much credence to this kind of thing. Having said that, it is refreshing to see in a design studio with this level work and is something one would more likely expect from an IDEO or a Smart Design.

Although the name of the studio is a bit hamfisted, they do seem like they’re up to something good. I look forward to seeing more of their output in the near future.