The Orange County Register confirmed it will outsource copy editing and page layout to an editorial services company based outside New Delhi, India. So much for local knowledge and the sense of place that only local publishers can deliver.

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An isometric landscape, Web Trend Map 3 pins down nearly 300 of the most successful and influential websites plotted against the metaphor of the greater Tokyo area train map. Different train lines correspond to web trends such as innovation, news, social networks, and so on. Whimsy and inside jokes add intrigue and fun to the interface. The bottom layer includes a rating of brand experience analogous to experiences at various types of Japanese restaurants. Here’s a designer (Oliver Reichenstein) who knows how to create an original and creative experience, one that applies fundamental design principles of simplicity, clarity, character, feedback and interactivity.

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The thing about innovation is that you know it when you see it.

One version comes from Tribune Co., which has been exuberant about becoming “an oasis of creativity.” Newsies have encouraged us to watch Tribco’s Orlando Sentinel where Sam Zell’s new regime of former broadcasters is touting an innovation model for newspapers. The first sighting: a redesign of The Sentinel leaked by “oppressed” journalists at the Los Angeles Times, also a Tribco paper. Alan Mutter calls the radical format “scary.”

Desperate may be a better word. Radical is fine, but bad is bad. This kind of “innovation” not only gives design a bad name, but it is a cynical assault on real change. Design isn’t the problem at The Orlando Sentinel or most other newspapers. Relevance is. Innovation and creativity are ways to change that story. Tribco could have started by distinguishing its journalism, then designing inspired products that make it immediately accessible and relevant. Instead, Tribco’s shock jocks seem to have taken their lead from the Broadcasters’ Easy Guide to Change: One, change the management. Two, replace the “talent.” Three, after One and Two exacerbate the problem, change the set.

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“There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools,” said the early 20th Century designer and writer Eric Gill. I’m one of them. Two, fun, font games test the fool in you.

The first is “Font, coffee or baby name.” I was five for five (I think). I’ll reveal answers and score later.

The second, The Rather Difficult Font Game, is for those fools who think they know the difference between Goudy, Gaudi and gaudy. Not a good test for MySpace designers, but my 24-out-of-34 was disappointing, too.

All of which recalls the priceless zefrank video send-up, “I knows me some ugly.”

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One of my past lives collides with present ones in three short videos. And then there are the larger stories …

A single entry in the SND design contest from the Los Angeles Times

Web 2.0: The machine is us

My Space: I know me some ugly

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