It’s no surprise that as software tech improves, new file formats get whipped up to cope with the waves of standards that tangle developers. Sure thing. I get that.

But that doesn’t mean new format standards are any more convenient for end users — especially when they can be used as leverage to soft-force consumers into buying the latest and greatest software. Microsoft proved that with their annoying “.docx” format in the latest iterations of Word, replacing everyone’s trusty “.doc” format and confusing office-dwellers everywhere.

But another software giant has pulled the same move. And I made a quick Venn diagram to illustrate the cacophony. 

I’ve been using Dove soap since I was still watching “He-Man” on TV. Don’t ask me why. It’s just always been there. We all have comfortable purchases, and I’ve always known if I reached for the Dove bar on the shelf at Safeway, I’d know exactly what I was getting.

Until I saw Dove soap for men. Whoa, now. Here was a lesson in marketing, product and package design if I ever saw one. Considering Dove has made this their biggest product launch of 2010, and even pushed it in its own Super Bowl commercial, there had to be something to this. Could the Men+Care line solve the problem of flat sales in the men’s toiletries business?

Heck, how many times do you even get to ask a question like that?

I needed to figure out what you got for a full $1 mark-up from the regular Dove soap. Curiosity got the better of me — being a man, after all. I dropped the extra bill and opened up a package of Men+Care to find out.

Sometimes insubordination pays off in truly amazing ways. To whit: French graphic studio H5’s epic 15-minute animated logo-based short film, “Logorama.”

This mini-masterpiece flies against the grain every which way, filling each frame with characters, buildings and paraphernalia entirely constructed with corporate logos. According to Flux owner Jonathan Wells it took an astounding four years to complete, and in the process it didn’t acquire a single scrap of corporate permission for its logo usage. Yet it soars. See for yourself.

I recently took a half-month trip to Hong Kong, and spent the better part of my free time scouring the suburbia and the… urbia. In any case, it’s no surprise that what came across was a thriving mish-mash of Western and Eastern design constructs.