You've all seen this sucker before:

The venerable Heinz ketchup packet above has been around since 1968. Forty-two years later, they finally got around to a re-design. The new packet holds three times as much ketchup--perfect for me, since I normally use three of the old packets for the average order of fries--and can be used in "squeeze and pour" or "dipping" mode:

via cs monitor

It is with great excitement that we welcome our newest Coroflot job board partner - Brand New - into the fold! Brand New is *the* go-to site for seeing and discussing new corporate and brand identity work. Topical subjects like the most recent Super Bowl identity receive scores and scores of comments from their community of design pros -- not surprising given that Brand New is an off-shoot of the legendary online design community Speak Up.

So please extend them a welcome by joining the conversation at Brand New and, if you need some branding help of your own, post a job!

I keep discovering the most amazing social innovation work using social media being done by Parsons students. Check out this use of simple SMS technology, available in many African villages, to track medicine inventories at the local level.

One of the big problems in preventing and managing illness in Africa is the failure of governments to get medicines they have bought or received from outside agencies down to the village level. Sometimes the reason is simple inefficiency. Sometimes it is corruption. Villagers can complain but can't prove they haven't received what is promised. "Stock-outs" of medicines for malaria, TB, HIV and other diseases at local public health clinics is common.

In May of 2009, Oxfam and Health Action International (HAI) Africa convened 30 civil society organizations (CSOs) and policy-makers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to examine strategies for reducing stock-outs of medicines in Africa. Using Google Maps and SMS, the students were able to track 10 key medicines in four African countries.

The students who created this initiative-- Claudio Midolo and Michael Ballard-- belonged to the Parsons Open Society Institute and the CDT--Communication Design Technology program. Check out this video. And think about how we can use SMS in the US to make healthcare and wellness better.

I don't know how she came up with the number "27," but Helen Walters at BBW has put together an insightful list of the world's most influential designers.

Check it out. Who did she leave out?