In Brief: RIP Michael Cronan, State Mottos Redesigned, Hot Knights, Portlandia Returns

• The art of the album cover lives on at Munich-based ECM Records.

• Time for a new calendar. You can’t go wrong with this giant bubble-wrap version.

• San Francisco-based graphic designer Michael Cronan has died at the age of 61.

• The New York Observer rings in the new year with a list of “eerily prescient, stupefyingly accurate predictions for 2013,” such as “Christian Marclay‘s The Clock is released as a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt as the minute hand” and “Just as you feared: Instagram makes millions off your sepia-toned photo of a dog crossing his paws.”