Screen(saver) Gems

For Crew devotees, you may remember a post several months ago with a round-up of desktop wallpaper favorites. As you might imagine, a designer has an equally important decision to make for those (rare) times her screen goes idle. Choosing a suitable screen saver is somewhat more challenging than wallpaper shopping (with fewer quality options available), but there are a few standouts I would like to suggest.


For months now, I have been rocking the mesmerizing Drop Clock at work. You can download it here free of charge (although it will prompt you occasionally to purchase it). But if you aren't sold on that, there are a few other timekeeping options that would make good choices. Check out Simon Heys' Rotary Word Clock and Word Clock (both free downloads), a standard flip clock from Fliqlo, and the Polar Clock from Pixel Breaker.

If none of those float your boat, we're moving on to my top five non-timekeeping screen savers. Also from Fliqlo comes a fun lego building screen saver called Briblo. You can try out a Kuler screen saver that generates a feed of popular color harmonies from the Adobe Kuler website. For die hard fans like me, download the opening credits of Mad Men from the AMC website to set that as your screen saver (my choice for my home computer at the moment). There is an unusual, fun screen saver of Japanese girls dancing available at Uniqlock (you're just going to need to check it out to see what I mean). And finally, perhaps my favorite choice: Veer has created a screen saver that is simultaneously eerie, funny, and clever. Like something out of a cheesy horror movie, the eyes of offbeat portraits will follow you around the office until you return to your desk and get back to work. ••••