Everybody loves the familiar, right? It's comfortable, reassuring, gentle . . . and everywhere. If everybody loves it, that means it's hard to get away from. It's almost impossible for a thing--a consumer good, anyway--to be familiar and individual at the same time. You've seen this problem in shoes, at least if you've tried to buy men's shoes for shorts-or-sports wear in the past couple years.

Doreen Hing saw the same problem during her years as a shoe designer, and grew weary of it. When she began to observe it again, this time in canvas totes, she decided to put a stop to it. She was "visually bored" with the totes around, so she came up with totes that are anything but boring. She and Jennifer McKinley formed Plank, which brings a welcome measure of wit and design flexibility both to the surprisingly stiff world of accessories and to life outside the classroom, using fun graphics and strong color combinations.