If you, like so many, have become lost in the deluge of job loss numbers from U.S. newspapers, there is now a virtual map that tracks the casualties—for better or worse.

The cleverly titled Paper Cuts was founded by Erica Smith, a graphic designer at the daily St. Louis Post-Dispatch who—after watching multiple friends and colleagues get gifted with pink slips—sought to paint a broader picture of the losses. She began aggregating numbers from press releases, wire reports and grapevine tip-offs, and ended up with some of the most comprehensive tallies on the topic to date.

And the numbers are staggering, particularly when the years 2008 and 2007 are inspected side-by-side. In 2007, the estimated 2,185 job losses, including layoffs and buyouts—illustrated in multicolored pushpins—freckle Smith’s map in shallow clusters at its four points. Flip to 2008 and the map is covered with a dense thicket of pushpins, representing an estimated 15,554 job losses—approximately 15 percent of the total newsroom workforce.

Adding insult to injury, Smith recently told the American Journalism Review that her count could be substantially undershooting the actual number, as many news outlets do not announce their cuts; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ total, which encompasses all newspaper positions from editors to delivery drivers, shows a total of more than 22,000 in 2008.

So far, Smith counts nearly 1,000 cuts in 2009. With The New York Times reporting today that its earnings were down 48 percent year-over-year in the last three months of 2008, the best we can do is pick up a paper and hope for a silver lining in 2009.

Just in time to hype the March opening of Watchmen is a new viral campaign that falls in line with a major trend in entertainment marketing where the advertisements are actually done for fictional products that only exist in the movie or show. In the case of Watchmen, they've created a Web site for The New Frontiersman, the fictional right wing conspiracy 'zine beloved by my favorite character, Rorscharch. The site includes a sweet 1970's style video of an NBS newscast from the alternate history of Watchmen, a picture of Dr. Manhattan taking a picture of Louis Armstrong on the moon, and some other classified files that look neat but won't make much sense if you haven't read the graphic novel.

You can even sign up for their rss feed or follow them on Twitter if you're interested in making sure you know the latest conspiracy theories from an imagined alternate history.

Though the site looks a lot like 42 Entertainment's Dark Knight viral campaign, the design is actually courtesy of The PPC Group on behalf of Paramount, which is distributing the film outside of the U.S.

It's that time of year again. And if you're like I am, you care more about everything around the Super Bowl than the game itself.

With the Super Bowl comes another rendition of the championship game logo. The recipe for the logo has changed very little over the past 40 years. Large, warped Roman numerals are typically the focus of the graphic, but depending on the year, that can be confusing.

As the Roman numerals grow and recede, so does the difficulty of building them into the design. Only the first game, called the First World Championship Game, had no Roman numerals.

“Super Bowl XXXVIII?” [Armin] Vit said. “You lost me at the second X. After that, I kind of stop reading.”

The New York Times is displaying some alternate logos for this season's big game and, in my opinion, some designers have come up with better choices. I like option two from Pentagram. It's simple and conceptual.

Over the next three years, in-store marketing activity will grow at a higher rate than any other marketing tactic, according to a study by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Deloitte Consulting. Formerly the domain of promotional agencies, in-store marketing is getting so popular that according to AdWeek traditional agencies are adding their own promotional marketing units to meet customer demand for point of purchase specialists.

It makes perfect sense when the broadcast media audience has become so fragmented and the visual clutter of print so oversaturated that marketers would turn once again to the point of sale where millions are guaranteed to see their marketing every week. Katy Bachman of MediaWeek crunched the numbers and pointed out that while 21 million people watch Dancing with the Stars every week, 150 million walk through a Wal-mart.

And no longer do in-store promotions have to be static. In-store digital signage and closed TV networks are popping up in retail stores across the country. Of course, with America making hard decisions until the economy gets back on track, many brands will find the battle being won or lost on the shelf.