Matthew Buchanan (Home)

The Dutch Icon collective, headed by Hemmo de Jonge, has an impressive collection of royalty-free work for sale. The examples above are just two of the 99 sets they’ve drawn to date, all of which are sold exclusively through iStockPhoto (which sadly means there’s no way to buy the complete series as a single set). The consistency and proportions are perfect throughout — alongside Drew Wilson’s Pictos sets, these are among the best stock icons I’ve seen.

For more similar resources, Meagan Fisher posted a great round-up of alternatives a month or two back.

Portland illustrator and designer Frank Chimero is kickstarting a book about why people make things, entitled The Shape of Design. If you’ve read his blog or seen him speak you’ll know he thinks deeply on this and related topics. I predict he’ll breeze past his target in the next few days today: consider me signed up. Also: ecstatic that Frank is a last-minute addition to this year’s Webstock speaker lineup!

New in the Rifle Paper Co store. (via Meagan Fisher)

Daniel Box:

Kyle Jones just released another hit with Haäfe & Haph, a set of gorgeous ampersands, not to mention a really lovely site to display them all.

Provided in EPS and Opentype formats for $10. Simply beautiful.

Ollie, now for sale.

Brooklyn-based illustrator, typographer and designer Jessica Hische has launched a store as part of her new site, where you can purchase her printed works including this type specimen sheet for the Daily Drop Cap project. Want!

Edit: Jessica also has one of the most in-depth Q&A pages I’ve ever seen, under the sweet title of “overshares”.

Big news overnight is the launch of Square, a mobile app supporting multiple devices that enables anyone to take credit card transactions without the hassle of merchant accounts or complicated fee structures. It’s the brainchild of Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey and with the likes of Buzz Andersen involved, it’s going to be huge. Impeccable website design by Bobby Andersen.

As pointed out in the notes by Max Wheeler and Lachlan Hardy, part of the solution is a physical card reader mechanism that sends magnetic data from a credit card to a supported device through its audio input jack, generating the power to do so from the swiping motion. Clever.