These days, you'd have to live under a rock to miss the Mad Men fashion discussion. Costume designer Janie Bryant--who combines vintage and hand-created period clothing for the characters of the 1960s advertising world--has been credited with changing the face of late-2000s fashion, and it isn't a stretch. Recent runways have featured full skirts and nipped waists and shifts that celebrate women's curves, shedding modern light on dressing up.

But for all the focus on buttoned-up, ladylike splendor, there's at least one woman highlighting the fun of Mad Men's fashion, too.

Freelance illustrator and designer Dyna Moe (depicted in the self-portrait on the right) started inking kitschy Mad Men illustrations when actor Rich Sommer, who plays Harry Crane on the show, asked Moe to create a Christmas card. She decided to mock the advertising illustration of the era, and pressed on with it, illustrating a scene from every episode and posting them all on Flickr. (She was also behind the popular Mad Men Yourself avatar). She drew for three seasons, and last month, Penguin culled Moe's illustrations, along with era-related features, for Mad Men: The Illustrated World.

When a social network like Twitter allows a user to select a theme to represent themselves in the digital world, that user is choosing to identify their digital persona with colors... And we wanted to look at who chooses what colors... If the world is made up of people and those people have a color preference... what then is the color of Texas? What color are mothers? What color are we?

By looking at the more than 1 Million people who have used our Themeleon tool to design their Twitter Profile in the past 3 months, we were able to paint a picture of the world connecting colors to locations and profile data. Below is a visual guide to what we found: What we noticed first was that a huge majority of people don't wander that far off from Twitter's default light blue colors... and then we went digging deeper.

*A little note regarding the "World vs. U.S." - We know the map is of the United States and does not represent the world, we only focused the map part of the infographic on the U.S. so we had a manageable amount of data to work with and geolocate. The keywords, male & female and video sections below all use data from around the world*

Click The Image Below for the High Res Version

A Colorful Tour of the Themeleon World

We took the colors from 100,000 profiles designed with Themeleon and geolocated them to the designers location. Although it is a little dark in this compressed video... Each location has a spectrum strip of colors... the more colors from a certain area, the taller the strip. (The US is well defined, Europe and East Asia... although you can see some outlines of other countries too.)

Colors of the Social Web from CHROMAom on Vimeo.

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In the sports world, fashion has to serve practical purposes-- its fabric has to be comfortable and moisture-wicking, its shapes have to be well-fitting and easy to move in, it has to meet regulations and it all has to work around or over or under protective gear.

That's not to say, however, athletic uniforms are totally devoid of style. On the contrary, they often involve the history of a team's country or region--maybe even of the team itself--in emblems or designs, along with a usually bold color scheme. Take, for example, the jerseys on the field at this year's 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.

While the games are well underway, we're taking a look at six colorful home jerseys and their style stories.

[South Africa]

South Africa, the home of the 2010 World Cup, is a country with an oft-turbulent history, and it's represented, in part, in the colors and symbols of the South African jersey. During apartheid, the springbok antelope was a national symbol of South Africa, as well as a mascot for many athletic teams. After apartheid ended, however, only the country's rugby team kept its springbok mascot (after intervention from then-president Nelson Mandela); now, teams are known as "Proteas," and that regional (and sometimes-controversial) flower is shown on this year's South African jersey.

In a blog post long, long ago we scoured through what was then the 119 circulating currencies of the 192 UN member states to find some of the world's most colorful currencies. And we found a few, but the comment section was filled with bank notes that were not taken note of. So, with the suggestions of our members and a bit more scouring here are some more colorful bank notes in part two of The Color of Money From Around the World or The World's Most Colorful Currencies. And don't forget to check out part one, The Color of Money from Around the World, and the site Ron Wise's Banknoteworld who seems to have a complete collection of world currencies scans.

Faeroese króna

Palettes by isotope.151

The @ (a.k.a at-sign, at-symbol, commercial at, snail, arrobase, monkey tail, little mouse, asperand, alphastratocusa along with many other names) is very familiar to us in the digital age, but like so many other things that are perfectly adapted and @ home in the digital age its historical uses, and the development of the symbol itself, is often never known, taken for granted, and forgotten.

While There are many different theories of how @ developed, it is fairly obvious its first widely accepted use was for representing commercial pricing rates ("at the rate of" 12 @ $1 = $12). It wasn't until 1971 when Raymond Tomlinson, an American programmer, used it as the natural division within the first e-mail message ever sent, that @ took on its modern meaning, and subsequently, a symbol for "The Internet", computerization, or modernization as a whole.  Now it has gone as far as being admitted into the Museum of Modern Art's Design & Architecture collection.

Scroll down to see what people think the color of @ is.

@ History

"No one knows for sure when it first appeared. One suggestion is that it dates to the sixth or seventh century when it was adopted as an abbreviation of “ad,” the Latin word for “at” or “toward.” (The scribes of the day are said to have saved time by merging two letters and curling the stroke of the “d” around the “a.”) Another theory is that it was introduced in 16th-century Venice as shorthand for the “amphora,” a measuring device used by local tradesmen." - Why @ Is Held in Such High Design Esteem

A hypothetical evolution of the at-sign

Medieval monks abbreviated the Latin word ad (at, toward, by, about) next to a numeral.

It was originally an abbreviation of the Greek preposition ανά (transliterated ana), meaning at the rate of or per.

Here’s a roundup of the most colorful art, products, websites and such that I’ve come across in the last week.

Interior

'Clouds' for Kvadrat by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

kvadratclouds.com; bouroullec.com

"'Clouds' is a colorful concept that evolves as you add elements to it, producing a three-dimensional effect, coating architecture in a fluid yet chaotic way."

A nice write up about the latest wallpaper trends and tips on how to best incorporate them into your home or office by House to Home.

Archive designs

Wallpapers taken from the archives are historic but far from old-fashioned. Follow our tips to make a traditional archive-print wallpaper work beautifully in your home.

• You don’t have to live in an old house for these wallpapers to work, but, for best effect, choose a design that suits the scale of your home. For example, the small florals typical of the 1930s can look lost in a high-ceilinged room, while heavily patterned Victorian prints can overwhelm a small or low-ceilinged space.

• To make a beautiful wallcovering the focus of the room, pick out key colours from the design and repeat them in plain fabrics and painted woodwork.

• To mix in other prints without outshining the wallpaper, stick to a limited colour palette. Alternatively, choose another print from the same collection – they’re grouped to co-ordinate, so the hard work’s been done for you.

• If you like an eclectic look, you can team an archive wallpaper with modern furniture, but echo the design – for example, a pattern with gentle curves will look better with furniture in curved shapes.

• If you want to find a paint that matches the tones used in an archive wallpaper, look at heritage and period paint collections.

Geometrics

Love geometric wallpaper? Use it to create a fabulous look with these simple rules.

While video games are often a great source for a colorful experience, few celebrate color as specifically as the recent THQ offering de Blob. I first saw this game in 2007 at an event called the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. Sandwiched in the back half of an area called the Independent Games Festival, I discovered that the game had been developed by a group of students from the Netherlands and was about repainting a drab city with color. de Blob is the game's mushy little hero, who bravely takes on the task.

The idea is innovative, but the execution was another thing altogether: I played the game using a trackball to roll De Blob around, and it really stuck with me how easy it was to control, but also what a pleasure it was to play. By rolling through paintbuckets, de Blob would gain a new color, which he then spread to the drab buildings around him by rolling past and bouncing all over them. I laughed out loud a few times while playing. Not only was the game fun, but it seemed to truly celebrate color and communicated a unspoken emphasis on its importance in our daily lives.

It's no surprise that this clever little game didn't remain under the radar for long. THQ got wind of the student project and voiced how impressed they were with it. Soon enough, THQ had acquired the rights and got to developing a new version of the title for multiple gaming consoles. A company called Blue Tongue Entertainment took over development of the version for the popular Nintendo Wii, while another called Helixe worked on developing a version for Nintendo's handheld gaming system, the DS.

In the Wii release, you get to learn more about the story surrounding de Blob and why his painting skills are so important: the city of Chroma has been overthrown by the evil I.N.K.T. Corporation, and all the surroundings have lost their color and turned gray. To right the wrongs that I.N.K.T. has wrought, de Blob must find paint and bring life back to the city again. Beautiful, energetic music has been added to all the levels, and beautifully complements your journey as you roll about reviving your surroundings. Players are awarded higher scores based on how many colors they use to paint city blocks and structures, encouraging creativity.

Here are the current color, logo and uniform designs of all 32 National Football League Teams. Many of the same team colors are used throughout this classic American sports league...

NFL Color Count:

AFC

-EAST-

Buffalo Bills

Miami Dolphins

New England Patriots

New York Jets