Art and design among other things, such as culture, etc

Creative Review posted a link to this video.

The interviewer walks around and spontaneously asks people questions about Graphic Design.  It really is astounding how few people know what the profession is.  It’s not like we are asking what is postmodernism, or some other obscure theory, etc.  Maybe we designers really view the world with tunnel-vision.  Maybe that’s our problem, we are assuming that everyone will understand the true power of design.  Our audience, the people we are trying to communicate to, don’t have a clue who is on the other end.

Most everyone in America has been in an asphalt rectangle, delineated by perpendicular white lines known as a parking lot.  And most have seen which spaces are designated for expectant mothers and people with disabilities.  It makes perfect logical sense to provide a parking advantage to people that have a harder time walking than others.  Also, if an expectant mother happens to be going shopping in her third trimester, then of course these little parking perks make her life easier. We have quietly accepted these social constructs and complied with the rules while we continue to seek the closest possible spot near our destination.  We slowly drive our motor vehicle passed the handicap spaces down and up the many lanes searching for that perfect spot.  In the end, the less fortunate ones have to suffer through the extra 20-30 yard walk to their destination.

Located in Savannah, Georgia, there is a shopping plaza called Abercorn Common.  It was built by local developer, Melaver, Inc.  Melaver’s principle mission is to provide us with sustainable buildings that are better for the environment.  Abercorn Common is no exception, as it is the first Retail Center in the United States to become LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified through a program set up by the  U.S. Green Building Council.  Great, Melaver did what they set out to do.

It does not , however, make logical sense to give preferential parking to consumers who drive a more environmentally friendly vehicle. Which is what Melaver and the Abercorn Common complex did.  After the recognition that the building itself received, It seems like these signs were just an afterthought.  You know, just something to try and put the icing on the cake.  But I think it was just too much icing.  It really would be naive to think that someone driving a big SUV would drive past one of these spaces and think, “Oh, well I guess I should retire this old hog and get a new hybrid.”  To them the sign is almost as ridiculous as saying, “See, people with handicaps can park here, if you disable yourself at your own expense you can park in these bright blue spots anywhere.”

I realize that it might be an incentive to show people that driving a hybrid not only saves you money on gas and is better for the environment, but you can also get parking perks at select shopping plazas.  The only problem with that is it’s really not much of an incentive at all.  If you remember, we have already accepted the fact that some people can park closer than others and we have dealt with the extra trek to the entrance. People in this country are so set in their ways, so stubborn, even with gas rising above $4.00 a gallon, that they will not change.  They have been doing this for 50+ years and a parking space sure ain’t gonna change ‘em now.  The problem with this sign is not what it is saying but how it is saying it.  Because what it is saying is “Drive hybrid vehicles.”  but the presentation of this statement in the context of a parking space is disheartening to think that we are resorting to things like this to get people to realize it’s time for a change.

Atlantic Monthly has a wonderful article by Lisa Margonelli discussing the possiblity of termites helping humans produce a renewable type of gasoline called cellulosic ethanol.  It’s a provocative article that alludes to the production of the new ethanol in the near future. Who would have thought?  Its extremely exciting to see such innovative ideas spring up when we, as a country are in such a desperate need of it.  And its also exciting to think of the possibilities of the new companies’ brands and marketing material.  The notion of running our economy on “sawdust, lawn clippings and old magazines” is unique and deserves some new forms.

Creative Review posted an excellent article about Obama’s trip abroad.  Dan West comments on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and connects it to Obama’s candidacy.

Some ex-employees of Google started up a new way to search the web.  Is it the total opposite of Google?  The main page is just as minimal, except it’s mostly black with a touch of blue, gray and white.  Are the founders of Cuil trying to say something?  Are they trying to point out that not only is Cuil trying to compete with Google but it is also going to take everything that Google had going for it (the clean simplicity of searching a massive internet) and make it black and blue.  They are making Google black and blue all over.  Cuil’s logo also isn’t as goofy as Yahoo!’s or as clean and formal as Google (even though Google’s logo works incredibly well) but their logo definitely offers a bold look to their viewer’s.  However, Google broke away with it’s simplicity, Cuil is tweeking the same design principles and applying some gradients to everything (which is now used everywhere) and expects to stand out.  We’ll see what happens.

The other day, as I was eating my cereal after I had just woken up, I sat downstairs across from my nine-year-old brother and watched an episode of Spongebob Squarepants.

Spongebob has always pleased me.  The jokes are well written in that the literal actions that the characters take, appeals to the younger intended audience while the dialogue and insinuating remarks provide a chuckle to the adults that may be enjoying the show.  But everyone knows that, thats why the teenagers who want to be adults too soon in high school, but, are still in high school, have various Spongebob paraphernalia.  They like to think that they really understand the show from an adult perspective but they really only laugh at the show for its literal, “Three-Stooges” humor, when they are home from school, alone, watching Spongebob.

But the episode that I engaged in that morning had a different impact on me than usual.  I mean, I got all of the literal humor, the usual hilarious aspect of all of the characters’ personalities, but the subtle connections the show was making to real issues became apparent.  The episode called “Suction Cup Symphony” was episode number 109 in season number six and it first aired on March 6, 2008.  This particular realization came with this scene close to the beginning of the episode.  Squidward drops both Patrick and Spongebob out of his window because they are bothering him (as usual) while he is “honing his musical talent.”  After the characters land on the hard sea-floor, this dialogue occurs:

Patrick: “Owww, Ohh, Sponge-bob?”

Spongebob: “Yes Patrick?”

P: “I think I broke my bottom.”

S: “Haha, broke your bottom! Oh, Patrick you’re a card! Broke your…”

Patrick, startled, turns to Spongebob…

S: “Whooaewww.”

Patrick obviously hurt, shoves the “butt bones” back into his body, obviously hurting himself, as you can now see the bones in his mouth.

Sponge-bob turns to Patrick and with the look everyone seems to give when they say this:

P: “Hey Patrick, I think you should see a doctor.”

Patrick gives the answer that most people, in this country,  are now giving.

P: “I can’t see a doctor because my job doesn’t provide me with health insurance.”

S: “What job is that?”

P: “Exactly.”

It would be extremely naive to assume that Nickelodeon’s intended audience would or should know anything about health insurance.  Therefore we must assume that Spongebob’s writers did expect for an adult audience to witness the dialogue while watching the show with their children, or catching it while flipping through in the morning.  This resulted in the conclusion that the writers deliberately included an allusion to the problem with the American healthcare industry.  But the real question is, why?  Spongebob Squarepants has no (at least to my knowledge) political agenda at all.  It’s one of Nick’s top shows and its loved by most Americans.  Maybe that’s just it.  Maybe Americans love Spongebob for his innocence amidst all of the corruption that the audience sees in the show.  Through it all, the little yellow sponge never soaks up the corruption that the greed of Mr. Krabbs or the self-indulgent Squidward or sometimes even his best friend Patrick brings upon him.  They all seem to form some pretty heavy opinions in the show, but Spongebob is always the mediator.   He’s the peacekeeper that honestly and sincerely means no harm.

So why talk about healthcare then?

Well a couple of weeks ago, I went to see the new G-rated animated feature film, Wall-E. In my opinion, it was excellent.  The characters, the idea, the imagery were all outstanding.  But what’s interesting, and as Frank Rich of The New York Times touches upon, is that relevant issues have subtly evolved from the form suited for the pressing mass media to more of an art.  Wall-E, as a piece of cinema, deals with the apocalyptic result of our ongoing rate of consumption on earth.  A very real issue that is being confronted on a daily basis.  (Not really on the forefront of the news channels but it still lingers every once and a while.)  What is significant about Wall-E is that the G rating indicates that its intended audience is “everyone.”  Our culture really morphed the G rating as being mostly directed at children, which is fine, mainly because it continues to prove my point.

The point is that many issues confronting things that have needed change, or will need changed in the future are starting to make more of a presence in children’s entertainment than our dominant adult discourse.  Of course, Spongebob and Patrick didn’t go in depth on exactly how to reform the nation’s health care system or where they stand regarding the nationalization of health care, but it came up.  It is my hope, it maybe a naive hope, but I hope that children will take notice of these things they don’t understand and ask.  Hopefully, these 7- 10 year olds will bring it into conversation with their parents, teachers or friends. Maybe they can use the very mechanism I am using (the internet) to get more information and become more knowledgeable.  After all, most of those 7 year olds will be around at least 10-15 years after I die.  It’s really their issues to face, I’m stuck in the transition phase.

Relating a type of haircut to music isn’t done a lot with the exception of the ‘80’s.  Most of the time, the artist’s themselves epitomize the era with their own hairstyles.  The artist’s hair is then forever associated with their music.

A “buzzcut”, which traditionally is to simply to take an electric razor on its shortest setting and uniformly trim the entire head, is usually the fastest and probably the easiest way to cut your hair.  There really would be no point to visit a professional hair stylist in order to have this performed because of its overall easiness.  The term “buzzcut” was probably derived from the sound the razor makes when it cuts through hair close to the scalp.  It leaves your hair uniform and at one length all the way around.  Not only is the physical length of your hair short, but also the haircut incidentally is short-lived, as hair has a weird tendency to grow back.

With “buzzcuts” however, the actual quality and properties of the haircut itself lend to the qualifications of the tracks chosen for the recent compilation album entitled, BuzzCuts.  The 2-disc, infomercial offer is produced by Razor & Tie and with artists from the early ‘90’s thru close to now, this mix-tape provides just the right amount of “buzz.”

But one might ask, “What buzz?”  The buzz of this album is generated not by an electric razor; rather it’s the result of growing up as part of the so-called Generation Y.  These songs stimulate specific and sometimes significant moments in our childhood.  I could refer to a specific band entirely but most of the bands, not all, were one hit wonders when they released their first single.  One could argue that most Gen-Y’s could react just the same to any of the past 28 “Now” compilations but the Now mix CD’s culminate the actual pop music without discriminating against genre’s. Now provides the listener with most of the vernacular needed to address the same audio autobiographical references BuzzCuts does.  It’s a much broader compilation, therefore generalizes the popular music scene during that particular year.

In comparison, these “buzzcuts” were more “now” than the Now’s released from 1998 to now ever could be. The post-grunge, pop-punk hits like Sum 41’s Fat Lip, Crazytown’s Butterfly, Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal (which is a whole other issue in itself being that it’s a Michael Jackson cover, who in essence, was the king of pop which AAF is now a part of) escalated the popular music scene to a higher ground.  It seemed to make us believe that this music was now the Nirvana of our time, that it was different and that it had more integrity than other popular music at the time (which Nirvana did, but really not until Kurt Cobain’s death) therefore separated our musical taste out from the others. It was the now of the now.  This “buzz” was more current than the most current top tracks because they were top tracks but not really, “Top Tracks.”  But in retrospect, BuzzCuts, just like the haircut term, lumps all of this music together and points out that it was uniformly adolescent, premature and extremely short-lived.  It was almost as if the ‘90’s grunge period was fading and our hair was just starting to hang over our ears. Then we took the electric razor and gave ourselves quick haircuts with a dull, rusty razor resulting in BuzzCuts.

It’s odd that even though I can look back on the photo albums and see the terrible haircut my mother gave me with the old trimmer and I still think that it looks good because now (5 years later) I know how bad it was in comparison to now.  I think that’s why this album can have any impact at all.  When you go through and listen to the tracks, you instantly remember where you were in your life when that particular song was shoved down our throats on KISS FM, MTV, etc.  Even more than that, you love it, whether it was a bad memory or not because you notice the (hopeful) evolution in you, and your taste of music.  It almost makes you realize that you in fact were younger than you are now and have gone through changes from the time the song aired to the present.  Granted that happens with any music that you have held onto and loved for a while, but BuzzCuts represents that time in your life when you thought that you were yourself but you were really just acting like every other post-pop-punk-individual that listened.  BuzzCuts in a way forces us to grow up because it knows what we once were and we know that it knows. We then remind ourselves how much we’ve grown, but more importantly how much more we have to go.

The New York Times’ Jeff Schlegel spends 36 Hours in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.  He comments on the overall improvement of the city in the last couple of years saying that:

PITTSBURGH has undergone a striking renaissance from a down-and-out smokestack to a gleaming cultural oasis. But old stereotypes die hard, and Pittsburgh probably doesn’t make many people’s short list for a cosmopolitan getaway. Too bad, because this city of 89 distinct neighborhoods is a cool and — dare I say, hip—city. There are great restaurants, excellent shopping, breakthrough galleries and prestigious museums.

The article also provides readers with some hot spots in the city, where to go and what to see.  It’s weird because when you live and grow up in Pittsburgh you almost get tired of the seeing and doing the same things within this mid-upper size city.  When you’re living there, it’s not as cool as when you leave the city and tell others that you are from there. That’s where the “coolness” of the city really shines.  I must say, I am once again reminded of my Steeltown pride.

Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition The Weather Project at the Tate Modern in London has migrated to the U.S. in the form of massive waterfalls.

As observed by Design Observer today, as well as blogs around the web,  Wal-Mart is getting a new logo (Here is a timeline illustrating their visual evolution).

This decision to me, seems a bit unnecessary.  For a company that has been growing and expanding since it’s conception, and a history of providing straightforward affordable products to America’s consumers, a logo that resembles (to me) a combination of a Cialis-like-typography, along with an energy company seems like it merely applied some unneeded make-up on and now just looks excessive. I do understand the reasoning for implementing a more friendly, accessible typeface seeing as Walmart is under fire for its treatment of employees, but as Reena Jana of BusinesWeek says,

“The font used seems to echo a style that appears on Wal-Mart’s current Web site, as well as on its pharmacy prescription bottles, but not in the company’s current logo. As far as getting rid of the star…well, that to me always seemed like the coolest part of the logo. While the asterisk/flower is cute, something about an asterisk suggests a tangential quality. It’s not as assertive or as, well, rock-star-like. And while a flower is certainly pretty, and “organic,” it also comes off as a bit wussy. Maybe Wal-Mart wants to associate itself more with its increasingly eco-friendly identity. But stars (as in the sun), of course, are organic, too.”

I agree with Reena in that, the star is one of my favorite parts.  Just a few days ago, I visited a Supercenter in Somerset, PA and I was again astounded by the monumentality of the building, and the right then, I finally got the Wal-Mart brand.  It totally fit to me.  It was big, bold, and proud to be what it is.   It wasn’t pretending to sell things that were better than they are, it’s cheap stuff and they know that.  (However, as I am lavishing over it’s marketability and design sensibility, I shall note that I do not enjoy going to a Wal-Mart Supercenter, I merely am astonished at the consumer epicenter which it has created. And, if I had a choice, I would purchase well-designed crap over crap, any day.)

The makeover is probably a result of Wal-Mart’s ongoing competition with rival Target.  However, Target uses the always timeless Helvetica and a minimalist, shall I say “Jasper Johns” logo.  They have stuck with it and the Target brand has thrived as a result of its “whitespace.”  Target attracts customers because of its ability to make their consumers feel as though they are buying something of better quality, but in reality their products and labels, etc are just designed much better.

With the Dow dropping below 12,000 points, signifying a weak economy it would seem that Wal-Mart would be able to attract more of its targeted consumers without this revamp which, as we all know is very costly. I think that the shareholders and executives of Wal-Mart should have spent their money on advertising during this time of economic weakness. which not many corporations think to do (mainly, because they don’t have the money, but Wal-Mart obviously does).  Reinvigorate the public as to where to get their products and where to get them cheap.  Stand proud Sam Walton, and don’t lose that pride.

Walmart’s new signage. (Courtesy of Carlson Consulting Engineers)