Here’s a quickie. The past week has seen official announcement that a division of Time-Warner is extending a revered, groundbreaking milestone work of fiction which has stood for decades as a wholly-contained, even sacrosanct, piece of great art. The news of these “prequels” has, predictably, generated endless commentary from fans, industry and critics. In fact, there isn’t much I can say which hasn’t very likely been said dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times already.
So instead I thought I would just share the promotional images here, to see how this artwork-turned-”brand” is being “extended,” visually.
I think this is what everyone’s been talking about—right? Unless I’ve gotten it confused with something very similar. Anyway, here’s the rest of the set: read more…
Things have slowed down a bit, here, at Modern Ideas the past month or so. Realistically, that’s likely to remain the case for a while. More than two years into this, there are still plenty of things I want to do. But some other things are probably going to take priority for a while.
In both cases, you’ll just have to trust me, to an extent. One big project is definitely happening, and in fact has been in progress for more than a year already, but I’m approaching the make-or-break phase where I will really need to stay focused on it for a while if it’s going to get done at all. And it will get done, at which point I’ll be ready to actually share it here. Hopefully that will be some time this year, but it won’t be real soon.
At the same time, I may soon start devoting a big chunk of time to a new ongoing paid-work arrangement; I hope the previous item may produce money some day but that’s entirely speculative, whereas this other item will provide straightforward, immediate income, if the deal is ever closed. Right now it’s weeks into contract-negotiation Hell between the two other parties involved. Meanwhile I’m just sitting on the sidelines, having already agreed to the terms asked of me, most of which involve confidentiality almost to the “I can’t even talk to myself” degree. In fact, I may never mention this again just to be on the safe side.
So, bottom line, I’ll have a lot going on (and possibly a whole lot going on) about which I won’t have much to say for months, at least. I’m not shutting down this blog, and there are various things I hope to get around to writing here before the year is all of a sudden half over. But a week may go by with no post quite a few times, and I’m not sure that I’ll get around to any free-fun design projects like this, or this, for quite a while.
We’ll all manage.
Here’s another little spare-time project I’ve produced for my own amusement, and now offer to the world under the heading of “free stuff.” It’s a list of episodes from the MTV series Daria, sorted by season and which disc they appear on in “The Complete Animated Series” DVD compilation:
Image links to a print-resolution PDF (though this PNG file might still give you printing quality similar to that of the actual DVD case packaging)
And with the main content appropriately posted up at the beginning, for a change, I’ll now proceed into the usual progressively more ramble-y notes and commentaries. read more…
Okay, my calendar says last night was the new moon, but close enough. (For all I know the moon could even still be in the sky, here, at the moment, except that it’s overcast.) What news?
Let’s begin with three items from The Atlantic. First, Alexis Madrigal compared examples of letterhead from Thomas Edison and rival Nikolai Tesla, and concluded that “it’s no contest whose letterhead is better. Judging by these examples from Letterheady.com, Tesla wins by a mile.” I wonder, though. Perhaps it depends on what your criteria are for judging “better.” The Tesla letterhead is eye-catching, but at the same time might be great for convincing people you’re a dangerous mad scientists while less effective at winning business from Westinghouse, e.g.
And then two from the excellent spinoff site Atlantic Cities. Wonderful old TWA posters by David Klein, possibly one of the last gasps of this kind of style in the realm of non-ironic corporate advertising. And the “Patchwork Nation” map which assigns every county in the United States to one of various community types. The terminology might be improved—I’m not sure I would associate the phrase “monied burbs” with Lorain County—but it’s fun to play around with.
Next some vintage design of a different era, circa-1980 postmodernism. Oh yeah, I remember this stuff, its traces still lingering around when I first began studying graphic design. Just go browse the image gallery at least.
And finally, a more recent change in tastes, with Seth Stevenson’s amusing and gleeful examination of the rise and fall of advertising agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky. I have to generally agree; they really were almost worshipped for a while, and they probably did deserve a good smacking-down for those horrible Burger King ads, alone.
Some comments on the recent logo redesign announcement from comics publisher and IP-licensing company DC:
In an assortment of delicious fruit flavors!
First of all, if it feels like we were just here not all that long ago, well, we were. After decades of the “DC Bullet” design, the company introduced a swoosh-y design back in mid-2005. My own comments at the time, on a now-lost blog, were “DC Comics boldly leaps (in a single bound) into the mid-90s” and “It’s like the ‘Electric Blue Superman’ aesthetic applied to logo design.” I didn’t think it was bad, really, just kind of corporate-slick and trendy. (To say nothing of the official announcement with its ridiculous fluff-statements like “There was a level of concern that we weren’t fully utilizing the power of DC.”)
I suspect that many people, like myself, had finally found the design growing on them a little bit these last few years, which points to what might be my biggest criticism of this redesign: it just seems like flailing. read more…
Here’s something I started working on way back last September, actually, and finally have ready to share: a schematic diagram of Ohio’s major highways in the style of the iconic London Underground map of Harry Beck.
Click the map for a larger version
This one has really turned out to be, perhaps as much as anything else, an illustration of the value of acting on novel ideas rather than sitting on them.
The city and region of Cleveland, and their potential for tourism, have plenty of interest to me beyond just the specific potential for graphic design to boost the latter.
Technically I don’t live in Cleveland and never have. I’ve never even had a full-time job in Cleveland. Of course, I have worked there on many occasions, and visit Cleveland often; even if one disregards the fact that Lakewood is not just near Cleveland but essentially a part of Cleveland in more ways than not, Cleveland is obviously the focus of a “region” which I’ve called home for several years now.
I will confess that, even after all this time, I don’t really consider myself a “Clevelander” and probably never will. But the fact that I don’t have some sort of deep personal-identity attachment to Cleveland, and continue to live here anyway, is arguably a testimonial in favor of the area rather than a failing. I like Cleveland, and northeast Ohio generally; I think there are many great, underappreciated attractions in the area, and I’ve had many enjoyable and successful experiences showing the city off to guests.
So I absolutely believe that Cleveland has additional potential as a tourist destination, and a desirable place to live as well for that matter. And in that spirit, I think that one of the last points emphasized in Susan Glaser’s recent Plain Dealer article, that “Clevelanders need to believe in themselves before anyone else will” is one of the most important points.
I remarked to a friend not long ago that in Northeast Ohio, perversely, it’s really kind of a “point of pride” to be downtrodden. And while I’m so, so far from being a Pollyanna (if you’ve ever read my political writing you know this very well) I think the pessimism and self-mockery is a bit overdone in Cleveland. read more…
Been a while since one of these. But, it’s quiet lately; the typical post-holiday client “coma” seems to be deep indeed, this year. In the meantime, then, a few items of interest:
Last week, Slate posted about “The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See,” a painstakingly produced work by “one dude named David Imus working in a farmhouse outside Eugene, Ore.” It did win the Cartography and Geographic Information Society’s Best of Show award, although honestly, the wonder seems a bit lost on me. It isn’t like the Imus map is really any more easy to navigate, at a glance, so far as I can see. And if you’re still going to have information packed so densely that you have to hunt around, anyway, I don’t see the real advantage over computer-generated maps. Oh well. I was at least interested in the notes about how the ordinary, computer-generated maps are made.
At Low End Mac, meanwhile, another design celebration in which I can’t quite wholeheartedly join: the 10th anniversary of the “desk lamp” iMac. Personally, the “middle iMac,” between the “space egg” original and the “featureless slab” model which I have, never quite sat right with me, aesthetically. That big dome just seemed awkward. That said, LEM’s roundtable restrospective on the design and its legacy is very good reading.
To round things out, three links on the past and future of what we call “the book.” First, it “seems that Amazon and others have been using statistics that skew the data” to exaggerate electronic books’ displacement of print. Second, The Atlantic has a look at some ambitious design work which may offer the paperback book a new lease on relevancy. Finally, a curious discovery: Lady Bluestocking’s facsimile dust jackets for vintage books. I’m not familiar with most of the books in her catalog, though the dust jacket for this one is pretty darn amazing at least:
Available for purchase
The Plain Dealer‘s Susan Glaser has recently been considering Cleveland as a tourist destination, with an article on her own views of the Forest City’s strengths and weaknesses last month and a follow-up with reader comments today. I think this is a very worthwhile issue for discussion, and that in mind I’d like to share a few thoughts of my own.
First of all, before getting to anything else it’s interesting to me how many of the suggestions in Glaser’s follow-up story fall entirely or in part under the heading of “graphic design.” A majority of them probably amount to issues of “design” in some sense or other, really, but within that, many suggestions are really calls for better visual design:
- a complaint of ugly scenery on the rapid line from the airport points to a big clean-up operation, certainly, but perhaps also to installing some kind of attractive visual elements in addition to clearing out the ugly stuff
- a complaint of RTA ticket machines is basically a call for better interface design
- another of Glaser’s readers recommends better provision of maps and travel schedules at bus stops
- one correspondent complains (very reasonably) of the difficulty of finding a way into Tremont and suggests some kind of shuttle service, but Glaser herself adds the additional/alternative solution of a good wayfinding sign system
I think more and better graphic design could definitely help Cleveland and surroundings, in these ways and more besides; I still think something like the coordinated visual branding I encountered in France sends a great signal to visitors. Of course, as with most of the other suggestions in Glaser’s articles, two significant questions are left unanswered: 1) who would be responsible for making proposed improvements happen and 2) how and by whom would they be funded?
It’s funny how college students can be perpetually broke, but somehow have the most amazing toys and gadgets stuffed into their tiny rooms.
I recall scouting a photo shoot in the residence halls while I worked at Drake University, in fact, and being struck by one pair of students with an astonishing projection home theater system just-barely wedged inside their box of a dorm room. Suddenly all that larger, “suite” style housing that universities were building as fast as they could made perfect sense to me. The existing situation in front of me, after all, was a plainly ridiculous juxtaposition.
Of course, packing an already-crowded dorm room with showy electronic entertainment kit is nothing new. Back in my own dorm days, at dear auld ISU, things were much the same. The “god box” computer, the speakers which could go to 11, etc. But perhaps nothing stands out, 15 years later, quite like this one kid with the 200 disc CD changer. read more…
