Liquid Treat

"Cigar, cigarrettes, school supplies" reads the creatively spelled line of text squeezed below the hand-lettered sign of Katy's Candy Store, in business from 1969 to 2007. The Brooklyn shop and hundreds more timeworn New York City storefronts are lovingly preserved in Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (Gingko Press), a new book by photographers and authors James and Karla Murray. An ode to the endangered species of the mom-and-pop shop, Store Front takes the reader on a technicolor walking tour of humble neighborhood haunts (Ideal Dinettes) and New York institutions (Katz's Delicatessen), all captured in stunning oversize images alongside interviews with shop owners. The bittersweet chronicle of the urban retail life cycle doubles as a fascinating atlas of street typography.

In a world of shrinking attention spans and contracting markets, a new breed of e-commerce company is banking on the one-shot deal: Here today, gone tomorrow. One of our favorite newcomers to the fast-paced e-tail scene is RIPT Apparel, a Chicago-based online T-shirt shop that showcases one unique graphic T-shirt per day (yours for $10 plus $2.50 shipping in sizes ranging from small to 3XL) along with information about the artist behind the design. After 24 hours, each shirt "rests in peace forever," explains TJ Mapes, RIPT's Web director. Think of it as Threadless with ADD. Since the site's launch in June, we've been impressed by the diverse bunch of wearable graphics, including a Romanian illustrator's Frank Kline-y take on the Japanese flag, an aviating platypus, a killer popcorn popper, and robots -- lots and lots of robots.

Visionary architect Le Corbusier preferred drawing to talking: "Drawing is faster," he said. "And leaves less room for lies." Now, paint purists everywhere can adhere to his prescribed color palettes, selected to complement or contrast with white or natural materials. kt.COLOR, the Swiss specialty paint manufacturer that brought you Yves Klein blue in a can, also produces handmade paints in 63 colors licensed from Fondation le Corbusier. Choose from two palettes: LC 32 is a collection of 43 pastels from the monochrome Salubra wallpaper collection of 1930, and LC 43 is a powerful pack of 20 colors introduced in the 1950s to play off materials such as lime plaster, raw concrete, and wood. If the prospect of Veronese Green and Bright Orange is too overwhelming, fear not -- Kt.COLOR also offers a collection of 17 "Variations on White."

Just in time for the back-to-school season, Penguin Classics will roll out a trio of timeless tales with a 21st-century twist. The publishing house recruited graphic artist Ruben Toledo to bring his signature à la mode elegance to the covers of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Part of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions line, the books will be published later this month. Penguin has previously enlisted the likes of Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and Roz Chast to illustrate Deluxe Classics covers. One of our all-time favorites is Charles Burns' striking carcass cover for a 2006 edition of The Jungle, muckraker Upton Sinclair's slaughterhouse exposé.

Watch out YouTube, because wacky wedding videos have nothing on vintage commercials. From Duke University comes AdViews, a growing online archive of television commercials that date from the 1950s to the 1980s. Alongside ads for familiar products such as Crest, Pampers, and an array of breakfast cereals ("Honey-Comb’s big! Yeah, yeah, yeah!") are those for brands that have been lost to the ages, including Studebaker, Fluffo, and sinister-sounding Sugarcane 99, the Splenda of its day. The newly-digitized archive contains commercials created or collected by ad agency Benton & Bowles and its successor, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, and can be viewed and downloaded for free via iTunes.

Penguin Books recently challenged United Kingdom college students to "design a fresh and bold new look" for Donna Tartt's 1992 hit novel The Secret History. Their mission: to create a striking, imaginative cover design that would bring the cult classic to a new generation of readers. A panel of publishers, designers, and one design enthusiast (novelist Hari Kunzru) selected a winner in Peter Adlington, whose abstract cover design recalls the work of Saul Bass. Alas, Adlington's design won't be produced, but he does get £1,000 (around $1,600) and a six-week internship at Penguin's London design studio. Judge the top contenders and shortlisted designs for yourself at the Penguin Design Award Web site.