Branding the CSI Network

September 26,2007 at Chris Glass

If I am to believe the wikipedia, and I usually do, William Golden was inspired by Shaker design when he crafted the CBS eye symbol back in 1951.

It's nice to see how well this ol Eyemark has held up over the years.

Of mild interest is to see the call letters becoming more important. With web addresses and the tiny real estate of onscreen menus, this makes fine sense.

Also interesting is how the treatment reflects the design style (or software) of any given period. If that's any indicator, it appears we're getting back to the excess of the 80's. Gnarly.

Me? I'll be happy when this treatment is filed away and replaced by something with a less heinous "S."

Will they iTouch Designers?

Posted by Bennett Holzworth on April 24, 2008 at Be a Good Design Group


As I work on my four year old G4 I can’t help but imagine that graphic designers are becoming useless to the likes of Apple and to a certain extent Adobe. I can think of very few software or hardware upgrades that were made in the last couple of years that have made our job significantly faster, better or easier. Sure we will be able to work faster when Adobe comes out with software that is ported for Intel machines, but do we really need anything much faster? When it seems that iTunes takes up about as much processor speed as Photoshop, I realize that it is not designers that are driving the technology anymore. So what industry is driving the market for faster computers? The obvious answer is video.

I have to admit that I love new technology and software just as much or more than the next guy. But many times I agree with those nay-sayers that argue that we don’t need software beyond Photoshop 7 and InDesign CS. Unless you are in the market for more filters and better drop shadows, what have we really gained from the last several Adobe upgrades?

So what can these companies do to generate a little more need (as opposed to sheer want)? As you might have gathered from the above graphic, I am hoping for iPhone multi-touch technology in the next generation of iMacs. If Apple takes away the mouse and keyboard and truly connects the designer to their computer, then the designer demand will be unstoppable. Then we will all be closer to feeling what the early twentieth century typesetters felt when they physically locked up that type in the chase. I know Apple wouldn’t be the first to have touch screen computers, but as they have proven with the iPod, you don’t have to be the first … just the best. Wasn’t it Malcolm Gladwell that pointed out that the originators and extreme innovators usually fail? Sometimes the market isn’t ready and primed for a certain innovation. For example, the Newton.

Since Apple appears to have mastered the multi-touch technology, when will we see it in their computer line? Jobs did make a special effort to note that this technology was heavily patented. Is it time that Apple starts paying a little more attention to the loyal designer base and work with Adobe and others to deliver a truly innovative product? Here’s to “pinching” instead of (command) + (+) or grabbing that antiquated old magnifying glass.

Accepting change--The evolution of Fast Food logos

posted at June 06 2005 at Chris Glass

I bitched about the new White Castle logo a couple years ago. Today I was driving home, saw an old Taco Bell sign and was transported back to a happier time—when evolution wasn't so far out there.

How I miss the crisp gridded balance of yore. The warm tones are fading. Browns replaced by blues. Type now looking like it would be at home amidst fluorescent splatter from the 80’s.

Okay, fine. I can deal with all this change. I am resilient. I am hopeful.

Who Shot the Serif

This article is original from I love typography


One of the reasons for starting I Love Typography was that I felt there just wasn’t enough being said about the topic. Secondly, and more significantly, I always found it difficult to quickly locate typographic resources. The long-term aim of this blog is to be such a resource, a one-stop-shop for everything about typography, from terminology to new typefaces, from inspirational examples of type to choosing the best font for the job, whether that be on- or off-line.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at type terminology. Now, before my alliteration sends you running, let me say that there is nothing to fear. But why should you be interested in the terminology of type? Does it really matter if I don’t know my ascenders and serifs from my descenders and spines?

Well, what you will discover, is that learning just a little about the terminology will help you to have a greater appreciation for type; it will also help you to identify different typefaces and fonts — and that in turn will help you make better, more informed choices about the fonts you use. Oh, and lastly, you’ll learn what fish scales and serifs have in common.

Today we’re going to get intimate with the serif (you’ll learn more about her friends in future Typography Terms posts):

One of the terms of type that most are familiar with is “Serif” and is easily distinguishable from Sheriff — John Wayne has shot and killed several sheriffs; to the best of my knowledge, he has never out-gunned a serif. Serifs are often small, but they’re tough.

Before writing this, I sent several questions on type terminology to friends who know little about the topic. Most answered “What’s a Serif?” with something like, “it’s the curly bits at the ends of letters”. And although you are unlikely to read that in a typography text book, that’s just about right (though they’re not always curly).

So why the word “serif”? Well, it’s commonly held that the origin of the humble serif can be traced back to ancient Rome. Before an Inscription was carved into stone the letters were first painted on. Anyone who has tried painting letters will know that one is left with slightly wider sections at the ends of the brush-strokes. The stone carvers would then faithfully carve out the letters including the flares at the end of the strokes — thus was born the serif.

However, it looks as though no-one knows much about the etymology of the word “serif”; some say that it comes from the Dutch schreef, meaning “wrote”, while other sources say the term “sanserif” actually pre-dates serif, so that sanserif on its own simply meant without serif (though that begs the question, where did the word sanserif originate?).

Interestingly the equivalent term in Japanese, uruko, means fish scales, and in Chinese the term, translated literally into English, comes out as “forms with/made with legs”. The Chinese one is perhaps the most descriptive. So if someone tells you to “give it legs”, you’ll know that they are requesting a serif font. And if someone shouts “he has no legs!”, then I guess they’re looking at Helvetica.

The TypoWiki defines a serif thus:
A serif is a flare at the end of a letter terminal.

And Wikipedia as:
non-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols.

There are numerous kinds of serif. The two main types are Adnate and Abrupt (these are further subdivided into many more groups which we’ll look at in future). The Adnate serif is more organic. Notice how the serifs join the the stems via a curve; the Abrupt Serif — as its name suggests — is squarer and more rigid; the Slab Serif is a good example of an abrupt serif. It’s not rude; it’s just square.

In future articles we’ll be taking a closer look at these related topics:
Serifs, in and out of fashion;
Serif or San serif — which should I use?
Great Serif typefaces for Web and Print.

Well, that’s all for today on serifs. Actually, there’s a lot more that can be said, but I’ll give your scroll bar a rest. In future posts we’ll be taking a look at more Typography Terminology. Eventually, this series will be edited and published as a downloadable PDF “e-type-book”.

Marshalls.com redesign

So Young, and So Gadgeted

public at June 12, 2008 By WARREN BUCKLEITNER in New York Time



EVERYONE knows that babies crawl before they walk, and that tricycles come before two-wheelers. But at what age should children get their first cellphone, laptop or virtual persona?

These are new questions being faced by 21st-century parents, and there is no wisdom from the generations for guidance. You can’t exactly say to your teenager, “When I was a boy, I didn’t have an unlimited texting plan until I was in high school.”

Some parents eagerly provide their children with technology. “My 4-year-old has been on the Web since he could sit up,” said Samantha Morra, a mother of two from Montclair, N.J. “My 6-year-old has an iPod and wants a cellphone, although my husband and I aren’t sure who he’d call.”

Others, like Christine Jorgensen, a mother of three from Flemington, N.J., are more cautious. “I’m not a huge fan of flooding my children’s lives with the latest gadget,” Ms. Jorgensen said. “My children go online for schoolwork, but our computer is in my sight, and protected to the teeth.”

What’s the right approach? Studies of child development offer some middle ground. Long before the invention of the first microprocessor, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development by watching his own children. His theories bring some logic to the debate about how to support your child’s growth with the latest technology.

AGES 0-2 Babies and toddlers cannot use a mouse until at least age 2 1⁄2, and flat monitors do not offer much in the way of stimulation in Piaget’s first stage, “sensorimotor.” To work at this age, technology products must act like a busy-box, with lights or sounds that respond to a child’s actions. Toys like the Laugh and Learn 2-in-1 Learning Kitchen ($71, www.Fisher-Price.com), which has doors and switches for a baby to explore and a crawl-through doorway, fit well with this stage.

But even these activities should take a back seat to real experiences. It makes sense to stick to materials that squish in a child’s hand. Invest instead in a camcorder to catch those first steps.

AGES 3-5 “Preschoolers today are growing up in a digital world, and they see their parents using devices like cellphones and computers,” said Prof. Sandra Calvert, director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University. “They like to play with pretend cellphones as if it were the real thing.” This pretend-play is actually an important part of the Piaget “preoperational” stage, when children first understand that they can control the events on a flat screen.

This is an age when they can take real pictures with cameras like the V.Tech KidiZoom ($60, www.vtechkids.com), and can explore interactive versions of their favorite shows on PBS Kids (www.PBSKids.org) or Nickelodeon’s Noggin (www.noggin.com). For $10 a month, the subscription version of Noggin removes the ads, and the activities adjust to a child’s level.

A TV can be made interactive with the growing number of TV toys like ClickStart: My First Computer (www.leapfrog.com, $60), or video game consoles running games like Go, Diego, Go! Safari Rescue ($40, www.take2games.com, for Wii and PlayStation).

Portable game systems that can make it easier to wedge a wriggling preschooler into a car seat include a Leapster (www.Leapfrog.com, $60) or Nintendo DS, running software like Scholastic’s Animal Genius ($30, www.animalgeniusds.com).

All of these are well suited to this stage of development.

AGES 6-11 At the age a child can ride a bicycle comes the ability to search the Web, and the whole digital world starts to open up. Suddenly they are hooked on favorite video games and watching funny videos on YouTube. But Piaget labeled this stage “concrete operations” because children still have trouble with abstract ideas. Professor Calvert reminds parents that electronic devices should be used to “supplement rather than replace real experiences,” and encourages them to “make sure there’s an overall sense of balance” in activities during this stage of life.

This is a time when parents need to keep an eye on the screen and steer children toward good sites, like Club Penguin (www.clubpenguin.com), which introduces the notion of chatting and the online stand-ins known as avatars. It also teaches them that there is no free lunch online, and that paying members ($6 a month) can have a fancier igloo.

While video game consoles like the Wii and PlayStation have fewer gimmicks, they have been known to eat up large chunks of a childhood if used unmonitored in dark basements. Fortunately the number of games with redeeming qualities is growing. The just-released Pokémon Mystery Dungeon for the Nintendo DS can exercise reading skills, and Wii Fit has recently captured the curiosity of phys ed teachers. Wild Earth: African Safari (www.majescoentertainment.com) can turn a child into a wildlife photographer, and Boom Blox ($50, www.ea.com for Wii) and Lego Indiana Jones ($50, www.lucasarts.com for multiple platforms) are thick with collaborative problem-solving opportunities.

By age 10, many children can start editing videos and programming with software like M.I.T.’s Scratch (www.scratch.mit.edu), a free download for Macintosh or Windows. Scratch lets children drag and drop routines that take the form of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

AGES 12 AND UP Besides being much harder to wake up, middle- and high-schoolers are reaching the cognitive functioning of an adult. They have entered Piaget’s “formal operational” stage, able to juggle synchronous streams of information from phones, MP3 players and laptops. Communicating with friends is on par with breathing, to the delight of your wireless provider.

In fact, cellphones are now more or less mandatory for children at this age. Besides providing a social advantage, phones can reduce parental stress in a crowded mall, get children in touch for homework help, serve as a call to dinner — and be withheld as punishment that really works.

Parenting skills for this age include reading phone bills. Lori McCoughey of Mahwah, N.J., a mother of two, saved $200 a month by switching to Verizon’s friends and family plan. There are also pay-as-you-go plans like those from Tracfone (www.tracfone.com). For $50, you get a working LG 225 camera phone, preloaded with 100 minutes. A meter counts down the remaining time.

Giving collegebound children their next digital prize, a laptop, while they are still in high school gives them time to set up their MP3 players, learn how to find Wi-Fi zones and write papers before they are on their own. They can also create portfolios on Google Page Creator (www.pages.google.com) to show off their accomplishments to college admissions offices or future employers.

If he were alive today, Piaget would probably advise parents that for a young child, everything — whether it has batteries or not — is a discovery waiting to happen. But toys work best when they are matched to a child’s level of development.

The Many Faces of Design Leadership

post by Kevin McCullagh on Monday, June 02 2008 in Core77



'What the hell is Design Leadership anyway?' is what I keep hearing people mutter under their breath these days. It has become one of those subjects that any player in design now has to have an opinion on, but debating it usually generates more heat than light, as self-anointed design leaders rehearse their personal or company agendas. Self-importance, not clarity, seems to be the main concern. At one level this isn't surprising. Leadership is a slippery topic these days: there are more books on Amazon attempting to define the mojo of leadership than that other holy grail, innovation. The 21st century is dogged by crises of authority: whether they are presidents, CEOs or premier league soccer managers, today's leaders are less respected and less certain of their position than the self-assured chiefs of yesteryear, like Margaret Thatcher, Jack Welch and Bill Shankly.

There are many different types of design leaders—and no common template. A corporate design manager helping to steer a company into an emerging market requires a very different skill set and approach from the head of a start-up consultancy pioneering new methods in the design of public services.

Having become a live topic in designland, leadership is now an even harder subject to get your arms around. Unlike business leadership, which is about leading organisations, the remit of design leadership is fuzzier. It is often used interchangeably with design management, but is also liberally applied to any big personality around the industry. Faced with such confusion it is worth stepping back to ask a few simple questions. What makes a design leader? Do they have to be designers? Who is leading whom? And to where exactly? I have recently been forced to grapple with these questions while producing a Design Leadership programme for senior designers from a range of companies and disciplines. Leaders as pathfinders First, it is useful to reflect on why Design Leadership has become such a hot topic. It began as a more specific 'grey hair' discussion within design management circles in the early noughties. But unlike other such debates this one captured the imagination of consultants, academia and the blogosphere. What is driving this widely felt need for leadership? One answer is that designland is feeling a collective sense of both disorientation and opportunity— have designers ever felt so simultaneously highly valued and uncertain about their future? As I have previously argued in these pages the design industry is living through 'seismic times' and 'as the ground shifts under our feet, we scramble for a clearer view of the emerging landscape.' To push this geological metaphor further, the industry is looking for pathfinders to guide us through unfamiliar new territory to the land of opportunity.

Self-importance, not clarity, seems to be the main concern. At one level this isn't surprising. Leadership is a slippery topic these days: there are more books on Amazon attempting to define the mojo of leadership than that other holy grail, innovation.

Many new paths are being cleared in numerous directions—from selling one-offs in art galleries to facilitating co-creation processes—by very different types of pioneers with their own perspectives and tool sets. For me it is useful to think of design leaders as trailblazers taking design forward in different ways. They break new ground by envisaging and then helping to create the future shape of the profession.

10 faces of design leadership
To illustrate the point here are 10 types of design leader who have pushed the boundaries of the profession over the past few decades— for good or bad. The categories are neither exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive... but hey, everyone loves (to hate) a list.
The Maestros
Design craft leaders who have raised the bar in design practice. Exemplar practitioners who have set new standards in their own fields include Jonathan Ive, Naoto Fukasawa, Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Thomas Heatherwick.

The Visionaries
Discipline leaders who have pioneered new fields of practice, like Bill Moggridge in product interaction design; Ron Arad in design art; Larry Keeley in design strategy; and Live|Work in adapting product and interaction design methods to the design of services.

The Managers
Corporate leaders who have led design to the top table in their companies and in turn elevated the design function, like J Mays as VP of design & Chief Creative Officer at Ford group, Chris Bangle at BMW, and Tom Ford at Gucci.

The Entrepreneurs
Business leaders who have explored new ways of doing business in design, like Terence Conran as design consultant and retailer; David Kelly in the foundation of Ideo; and Tom Dixon with his unique combination of roles as designer, manufacturer and director of Artek.

The Ambassadors
Communication leaders adept at accessing public, business and government forums to convey the benefits of design, like Richard Seymour and Dick Powell with their TV programmes; Clive Grinyer in various private and public sector roles; and Tim Brown, most notably at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The Entertainers
PR leaders who have captured the imagination of the non-design press and re-positioned what design means in the public consciousness—for better or for worse—like Philippe Starck, Karim Rashid, and Marcel Wanders.

The Scholars
Education leaders who have pioneered new forms of design education, like Michael and Katherine McCoy at the Cranbrook Institute in the nineties; Gillian Crampton-Smith, the founder of both the Computer Related Design course at the RCA and the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea; Lidewij Edelkoort in her role as chairwoman at the Design Academy Eindhoven; and Patrick Whitney, Director of the Institute of Design at IIT. And let us not forget the unsung leaders of great courses, such as those at the Universities of Cincinnati and Northumbria.

The Provocateurs
Thought leaders from outside designland who challenge its navel-gazing tendencies and cajole designers into reflecting on the context in which we work, like the ever polemical James Woudhuysen with his exposes of design's muddled thinking and low expectations; John Thackara in his eclectic dispatches from the fringes of design, art and environmentalism; Rick Poynor with his well aimed broadsides; and Roger Martin with his home truths on how designers are perceived by business people.

The Scribes
Editorial leaders who have pioneered new forms of design journalism, like Deyan Sudjic with Blueprint; Jeremy Myerson with Design Week; Tyler Brule with Wallpaper and Monocle; Bruce Nussbaum at Business Week; the teams behind Core 77 and Design Observer.

The Curators
Influential museum and gallery directors who have presented design in new ways to new audiences, like Stephen Bayley at the V&A Boilerhouse and the Design Museum; Paola Antonelli at MoMA; Alice Rawsthone at the Design Museum; Murray Moss at his Moss store; and Carla Sozzani at her 10 Corso Como store.


This is obviously a partial list—and some leaders could feature in several categories. For example, Steve Jobs is in a class of his own as not only a business but also a pivotal design leader for his sophisticated understanding of design and the exacting standards he holds Apple designers to. No matter. My point is to illustrate that there are many different types of design leaders —and no common template. A corporate design manager helping to steer a company into an emerging market requires a very different skill set and approach from the head of a start-up consultancy pioneering new methods in the design of public services.

The Post-Materialist | Muji Obsession

By Nick Currie in New York Times



A report from our Berlin correspondent on design in culture.
The Japanese call them (that is, they call us) “Mujirers” — people so addicted to Muji’s “no brand quality goods” that its store openings and new product announcements set our pulses racing. In Japan, the store can cater to all your needs, from cradle to grave. Since the 1980s it’s offered not just household goods, but food, clothes, bicycles, campsites, phones, yoga, furniture, floral shops, cafes, even off-the-peg concept homes. And, some would add, a state of mind.

Here in the West we’re finally getting the chance to discover why a brand built on the apparent absence of branding inspires such loyalty. New York Mujirers experienced a bout of tachycardia last week when the city’s second Muji store (the first is in SoHo) opened on the ground floor of The New York Times building (40th Street side). Up to forty Mujis are set to follow, in cities across the US. Here in Berlin, the opening of the city’s first Muji store two weeks ago in the former British Council building threw many of us — thrifty, discriminating people inexplicably thrilled by self-assembly pens, wooden toys and endless rows of subtly-nested semi-transparent plastic boxes — into a state of tastefully-understated hysteria.

What unites all these products is a certain lack of splash, an avoidance of unnecessary color, pattern and detail. Designed by the likes of Naoto Fukasawa — whose recent book with Jasper Morrison calls the aesthetic “Supernormal” — Mujiware approaches the Japanese ideal of shibui: an unobtrusive beauty. The company is also committed to fair trade, sustainability and recycling.
I always think of Muji as the kind of store likely to appeal to readers of early Nicholson Baker, a man who could wax lyrical for pages on the origami-like beauty of a milk carton spout. But in fact it’s cyberpunk sci-fi writer William Gibson who really nailed its appeal: “It calls up a wonderful Japan that doesn’t really exist,” Gibson wrote, “a Japan of the mind, where even toenail-clippers and plastic coat-hangers possess a Zen purity: functional, minimal, reasonably priced. I would very much like to visit the Japan that Muji evokes. I would vacation there and attain a new serenity, smooth and translucent, in perfect counterpoint to natural fabrics and unbleached cardboard.”

Muji the company is, characteristically, more restrained. Its Web site says it’s all about “the confident awareness that modesty and discretion are, together, the better part of style.” Be still, my beating, ecologically-packaged heart!

website rough layout

Sculptor as Magician

By ROBERTA SMITH Published: May 30, 2008 at The New York Time

BOSTON — The Indian-born, London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor has always been a kind of magician, which cuts two ways. Whether with blazingly reflective metal surfaces or dark, plush, seemingly infinite interiors, his pieces dispense multiple visual thrills and mysteries. But the same effects can make his work appear tricky, decorative and shallow. It hasn’t helped that they seem to have been concocted by playing fast and slick with the innovations of his Minimalist and Post-Minimalist predecessors.

These objections fade without entirely disappearing in the face of Mr. Kapoor’s small, well-chosen survey at the Institute of Contemporary Art here. “Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future” includes 14 works that concentrate on the last 15 years. It was organized by Nicholas Baume, the institute’s chief curator.

The works range from acrylic and resin volumes reminiscent of Donald Judd’s work to an immense half-dome of deep red wax and paint kept in shape by a built-in slow-moving scraper. Titled “Past, Present, Future,” this piece suggests a planet shouldering its way through the museum’s walls.

Seeing Mr. Kapoor’s work as it has unfolded over time diminishes the new-model appearance his gallery shows can have. Underscoring that point is a pair of dazzling if thin shows of his new work at the Gladstone Gallery’s two spaces in Manhattan. The smaller show — a matched set of three geometric forms and a smallish Serra-like curve in polished steel — inaugurates the stately new Gladstone emporium on West 21st Street in Chelsea.

Taken together, however, these three shows indicate that Mr. Kapoor shouldn’t be considered merely derivative. He combines too many disparate strands of art, thought and culture, and he does it seamlessly. He is a brilliant and unpredictable if sometimes ingratiating synthesizer who has simultaneously refined, repurposed and betrayed some of the dearest beliefs and most despised bêtes noires of late-20th-century sculpture.

It has probably aided this project that Mr. Kapoor, who is 54, did not begin life in a Western culture. He was born and grew up in Mumbai when it was still called Bombay, and in 1973 moved to London, where he studied art and then took up residence. He is a decade or so older than most of the Young British Artists, who took the art world by storm in the early 1990s, and his sensibility is markedly different: he greatly prefers gentle seduction to shock tactics.

His sculpture is in many ways one long ode to the modernist monochrome and its emphasis on purity and perception, enacted in three-dimensional space. It carves, colors and complicates space in different ways, adding interactive aspects and pushing that purity back and forth between votive and technological, East and West.

Mr. Kapoor has paid homage to Minimalism’s faith in weightless volumes, abstraction, specific materials, saturated color and simplicity of form. But he has also explored different materials’ capacities for visual illusion, the biggest of Minimalism’s no-nos and a tendency that encroaches on territory pioneered by installation artists like James Turrell. Mr. Kapoor’s use of dry pigments echoes Process artists like Alan Saret and Wolfgang Laib, although it has a long history in Hindu rituals.

And despite the high degree of abstraction in his art, living form, if only the viewer’s body, is always implied. Perhaps this is why Mr. Kapoor largely bypassed the immense installations and environments favored by so many sculptors of the last 30 years. Instead he has displayed a knack for compressing his various effects into reasonably portable if not exactly domestic-scale objects, even if they are temporarily set into walls or floors. Their scale can make them seem all the more magical, focused and intimate.

In “My Body Your Body” a rectangular cavity set in a wall with an indeterminate interior coated in deep blue pigment confronts us like an upright coffin, but also like a doorway to another world. In “Marsupial” a large slab of dappled lavender resin angles out from the wall, not unlike an eccentric collaboration between Richard Serra and John McCracken; but it also has anthropomorphic aspects. One side presents a slanted pouch but also a wormhole of space; the other bulges toward the wall, like the head or ear of someone straining to eavesdrop on a conversation in the next room.

Above all Mr. Kapoor surpasses many of his forebears in the restrained accessibility of his art and the ways its formal conundrums and surface pleasures open subtly to deeper forms of thought. This is most publicly evident in Mr. Kapoor’s wildly popular “Cloud Gate,” an enormous, shiny, pillowlike archway (known as the Bean) at Millennium Park in Chicago. One of the larger pieces at the institute is “S-Curve,” a double curve in polished steel that resembles a middle-size wall. As in a similar single-curve piece at Gladstone’s 21st Street space, the steel curves both horizontally and vertically, creating a concave and convex face (two of each in Boston).

The inclination to liken these works to fun-house mirrors lessens as you realize that the opposing curves are as different as night and day, order and chaos, Classicism and Expressionism or even heaven and hell. As you pass the concave sections of the piece in Boston, the very floor seems to rise up and harrow your malformed reflection. Yet one convex side at least serenely reflects your familiar self and about half the works in the show on an expanded plane, granting the slightly crowded installation a startling spaciousness.

Especially good, when seen in reflection or directly, is an untitled piece from 1998 in fiberglass painted matte white. It is essentially a cavity without a wall. From one side it presents a luminous egg shape the size of a small Airstream trailer; its proportions and profile change as you move around it. Suddenly you realize that the other side is relatively flat and that a large perfect rectangle has been cut in its thin shell, revealing an ambiguous interior of shadowed whites. It’s an egg with architecture where a space-age Punch and Judy might pop into view any second. This work is balanced by the nearby “When I Am Pregnant,” an equally indeterminate white bump on a white wall.

Mr. Kapoor’s passion for red, the most passionate of colors, is certainly evident in Boston, but it dominates his show at the Gladstone Gallery’s flagship space on West 24th Street. An enormous pocked horizontal chunk of red resin measuring more than 4 feet in diameter and 33 feet in length resembles a much-abused lipstick until the title — “Blood Stick” — turns it rather melodramatically into a giant’s club. But you can get lost in the metallic red interior of the cooling-tower enclosure that is “Here for Alba,” and a large tear-shaped wall piece titled “Drip,” also in metallic red, implies both blood and another abstract pregnancy.

Design That Fits to a Tee

by Laura House May 16, 2008 in AIGA



What began humbly enough as a design submission for an online contest has spooled into the thriving T-shirt business and web-based community, Threadless.com. Now a multi-million dollar enterprise selling more than 90,000 tees a month, this is the little community-based design company that could.

Central to its success are the independent designers and supporting community that make up its more than 650,000 registered users. Here’s how it works: the site holds ongoing open calls for T-shirt designs, which are then scored and critiqued by users; next the winning designs are printed and sold. When it comes to the democratization of design, a T-shirt is about as accessible and utilitarian a vehicle as it gets. This medium offers wide exposure for budding designers, and an affordable (reprinted tees start at $5) way for people to support independent artists. And of course there’s the benefit of having something unique to wear, cooler than the average mall gear.

Jake Nickell, a self-described “entrepreneurial mad man” who programs “neat community websites nonstop” is the founder and CEO of Threadless. In 2000, while a student at the Illinois Institute of Art–Chicago, he entered a design contest on the now-defunct Dreamless.org. The charge was to create the official T-shirt for an event in London. Nickell’s design won the competition—a perk for an art student. However, the greater reward was the exposure to a unique online community of designers.

“It was a great environment for hobbyists and professionals alike to unleash creativity in their free time,” Nickell says of Dreamless. Artists chatted online, shared critiques and bantered back and forth in mock design battles. It was through this online forum that Nickell met his first partner, Jacob DeHart. Although no longer with Threadless, DeHart was crucial to its inception.

Inspired by the London contest, Nickell and DeHart decided to host another design competition as a thread on the Dreamless forum, aptly titled “Threadless.” “We thought it would be a fun project that would give back to the community by actually making goods out of the work created by these artists,” Nickell explains. “We started it as a hobby⋯ just a way to enhance the Dreamless community.”

The winning design was then printed on T-shirts and sold. Any profits gained were put towards hosting another competition and printing more winning designs. For the first few rounds winning designers received a few free tees, but by 2002 they were able to award a $100 cash prize.

Nickell and DeHart each invested $500 to fund these competitions that they began hosting on a Threadless site. As Threadless expanded, they created the umbrella company skinnyCorp to launch other online projects and communities. “For those first two years, every dime we earned from selling tees just went right back into printing more of them,” recalls Nickell. Not only were funds tight, but their free time was, too. Nickell and DeHart each worked full-time jobs, while attending college and running the business on the side.

By 2003 it was clear that this was more than just a hobby. Nickell and DeHart scouted office space, quit their jobs, finally began earning an income from skinnyCorp (by programming and designing other websites) and even hired their first employee. Although not profitable yet, Threadless proved that they could build an e-commerce website.

By 2004 they had outgrown their 900-square-foot space. Two blink-of-an-eye years later they were up to 18 employees and running the operation from their current 25,000-square-foot facility. The team took on an investor, Insight Venture Partners, to manage the rapid growth. Nickell admits, “I’m much more interested in the creative, fun side of the business. It’s nice to have someone with expertise that is invested in the business, to help us figure out all the boring stuff.”

It seems like a simple concept, this T-shirt business, but visit the site to catch a glimpse of why this model has thrived. Far from floating adrift in cyber-space, Threadless has sparked a vibrant, involved community with an inviting, friendly vibe. Members can check in on designers, keep up with celebrity tee sightings, rate submissions or chat back and forth with other like-minded members. When asked if he ever dreamed the community would expand as it has, Nickell says, “I did not envision it to be as large as it is. I think that having a variety in the designs that get chosen is pretty important in keeping the community fresh. To be able to see design trends come and go is important, and we always need to be on top of what is cool at any given moment.”

Today, winners receive a sizeable cash prize ($2,000), extra exposure with an interview slot on the site and, more importantly, they get to see their designs splashed across chests everywhere. Maybe even a few notable chests, since Moby, Hot Chip, the Decemberists and MTV reality stars Rob and Big are all Threadless fans. The designer success stories are impressive, too. “Tokidoki is a great example of an artist that has gained huge exposure since being printed on Threadless,” Nickell points out, referring to the Italian artist Simone Legno, who has gone on to collaborate with LeSportsac, Oniksuka Tiger and Sanrio. Another is Glenn Jones, who “recently started up his own T-shirt site and left his full-time job due to his fame and success on Threadless.”

Nickell’s advice for other aspiring designers? “Submit to Threadless!” he jokes—well, sort of—adding, “I would say try to do work that you are passionate about and that you find fun. Don't give in to boring clients, it’s not worth it!”

Proving that commercial success need not be dull, the Threadless empire continues to evolve. In fall 2007, its first retail space, or community center, opened in Chicago. The street-level store gives way to an upstairs, interactive floor used for gallery shows promoting independent artists, design classes and other special events. The company has also created its own private label to further perfect the end product. As for the future, Nickell muses, “We plan to continue to grow the awesomeness levels to new, previously unreached heights.” And as with all things Threadless, we users will be the judge.

A Graffiti Polemic

by Steve Grody December 11, 2007 in AIGA



Contemporary graffiti pieces of the full-blown, Wild Style variety straddle the aesthetic fence between the vernacular and fine art, with the best work deserving the analysis of an educated eye, the kind usually reserved for galleries and museums. Graphically, graffiti “writers” work with letter-based forms and are concerned with personally derived font styles and execution; however, functional readability often takes a back seat to artistic expression, placing it firmly in the fine art camp.

Snobbery puts blinders on even the most erudite art appreciators who fail to recognize the merits of work from a can of spray paint, no matter how technically sophisticated it might be. Aesthetic sensitivity is in the eye of the beholder. Having an eye for one area of visual art does not necessarily translate broadly, so that, for example, even those familiar with modernist, abstract artists such as Robert Motherwell or Franz Kline, often regard graffiti pieces with condescension, begrudgingly acknowledging the craft as contemporary urban folk practice at best.

Because graffiti has developed outside of the academy (and, importantly, outside of its control), outsiders rarely see it as a practice that goes beyond a stylish skill. But in fact, works produced by graffiti writers demonstrate a broad spectrum of expressions, from the obvious formal issues of design, to a fully formed poetic—crossing the dividing line between “high” and “low” art. Interestingly, most veteran graffiti writers recall the emotional impact that they felt—and felt was expressed by—the first example of powerful graffiti they encountered. The difference between snobbery and simply having individual preference for one aesthetic mode or another is the moral presumption people associate with their opinion. That is, those doing gallery or career-oriented art might presume, albeit unconsciously, that a gallery or museum based endeavor is intrinsically more worthy and of greater social value than graffiti. It is that judgmental stance that keeps one from engaging with less familiar modes of expression.

Snobbery, of course, cuts in any direction: graffiti writers tend to have blinders on, too, preventing them from appreciating or deeply understanding much of the classic art throughout history. While some would recognize a Matisse, would they also understand the radical aspects of his art, the line it treads between representation and abstraction, as well as his exquisite color formalism? (Then again, most artists and art history scholars miss Matisse’s formalism as well.)

ritic Christopher Knight, speaking this year at the Painting’s Edge program in Idyllwild, made the argument that Clement Greenberg, the prominent art critic from the 1950s and ’60s, did a great disservice to further generations of artists and critics by proposing a cultural dividing line between high art and popular art. Knight proposed that since there are examples of supposedly high art that are sterile and ineffectual and examples of popular art that are emotionally compelling, should we not throw out those rigid, black-and-white categories and simply look at a given work and judge it for how it succeeds on its own terms?

As in any artform, authority of creative expression develops through committed practice and thought. Graffiti writers may not have common art terms such as “warm/cool split” or “figure and ground” in mind as they work, but they use these ideas intuitively. For instance, writers may not use the term “formalism,” but they often obsessively make sure the visual weight in pieces balance out, a central concern of visual formalism.

The general visual style of modern graffiti evolved from the confluence of sociological and material elements. The sociological element is that of young people, originally of under-class demographics but now extending beyond class barriers, who want to leave a public signature (a tag), but quickly, so as not to get caught. The material element is the spray can. The reason that writers use spray cans for anything beyond a small tag (markers work well for those), is that the spray can, easily concealable and portable, can cover a large area quickly yet with control. And even though now there are legal forums for public art, where spray painting may be done in a relaxed manner, the stylish and often spontaneous look of the finished product comes from the roots of this movement. Something that stands out in the best work is the authority of technique and “pulp” energy that results from often having time limits and the knowledge that the work being done is illegal and will probably be gone in short order.

A central goal in graffiti is the development of a distinctive visual style, same as it is for most any artist. The development of this individual style is the single determining factor in how a writer is judged among his peers, the ultimate audience to impress. Various writers may be known for other attributes such as can control or color palette, but without an inspired creative letter style, a writer will never be considered in the top tier. Just look up at the billboards and buildings around you to appreciate this other kind of high art.

Pixels at an Exhibition

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN Published: May 18, 2008 in The New Times

What do video artists make of YouTube? Every minute, 10 hours of video are uploaded to the video-sharing site, which now shows hundreds of millions of videos each day. The place is a mess. Maybe artists should avoid it altogether.

The curator and Internet-art booster Rachel Greene has come up with another suggestion: artists could use YouTube, like a supply store, slag heap or rag-and-bone shop. To make the point, she recently asked a set of art-world figures — Sue de Beer, Matthew Higgs, Matthew Ronay and Wayne Koestenbaum — to present and project their favorite YouTube videos in Manhattan on May 13 at the Kitchen gallery. According to catalog copy for the show, “Artists Using YouTube,” some of the videos on exhibit provide “indirect fodder” for the artists’ own work.

Fodder — aha. Maybe that’s purpose of YouTube.

The shrewdest contributor to the show is the video artist Sue de Beer. De Beer’s first choice of clip is inspired: the final scene from “The American Soldier,” Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1970 film. Two slight men appear, backing nervously away from the camera, each with a gun pointed at the viewer. What an ingenious start. A woman in the frame cries out. The two men startle and turn, just as the camera does an about-face to show another armed man, on his knees, who fires two shots. Down fall both original men, as the film turns to slo-mo. The film is black and white, and the shapes are just simple enough — lockers, as at a bus station; short staircase; pay phone — to be readable at YouTube’s dirtiest resolution.

The person who originally uploaded the Fassbinder clip to YouTube was evidently drawn to the song on the soundtrack (“So Much Tenderness”) and framed the clip as a music video. But de Beer finds other significance in it. The threadbare print, the (mostly) immobile camera and the institutional quality of the set suggest a surveillance video. Indeed, one of de Beer’s other YouTube selections shows actual surveillance footage from the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School. She’s pressing the connection. Taken together, the Fassbinder and Columbine images are a good reminder that since 1970, when “The American Soldier” appeared, documentary audiences have had considerable practice reading surveillance and evidentiary images. With Columbine scenes and murders of all kinds playing on thousands of screens in the YouTube googolplex — the Saddam Hussein execution, the shooting of a police officer in New Hampshire — the Fassbinder scene comes to seem like one of them. Just as primitive artifacts placed in the context of high modernism seem to anticipate it, or interpret it, so a vintage film clip set online amid the YouTube flotsam can take on entirely new meaning.

De Beer also chose a video that shows the fashion designer Coco Chanel pricklishly fielding interview questions in unsubtitled French while smoking in the middle of her ornate drawing room. It’s moving and even unnerving to see a clip like this liberated from commentary. Even five years ago, you’d never have encountered it except in a documentary about fashion or feminism, where its significance would be assigned by pedantic talking heads. On YouTube, the strange tableau takes on a life of its own. Chanel can’t settle down; she fairly squirms and won’t take a seat in her own house. Similarly uncomfortable-looking is the dancer in de Beer’s final choice, “Footworkin,” an amateur video that shows a living-room dancer flapping and kicking to “My Funny Valentine.” Behind the dancer is a wilted bouquet of foil balloons, whose muted shine recalls the gilded mirror behind Chanel. De Beer draws bright lines with her curatorial choices, proposing connections between disparate images and showing how video clips are reincarnated by the format and community of YouTube. It’s an imaginative collection.

The other contributions to “Artists Using YouTube” aren’t as wisely chosen. The artist Matthew Higgs is also a curator, which might explain why his collection advertises its theme — the grooviness of the 1980s — so relentlessly. The archival clips he chose from YouTube serve as an audiovisual lecture, in which they do nothing but loyally make that case. One clip, of Talking Heads playing “Born Under Punches” in Rome in 1980, is shot largely at groin level, amid sound equipment that is being manipulated for feedback squeals and other effects; it’s like being close to the crooked spine and fritzed nervous system of a body that’s simultaneously pushing its sex appeal. The camerawork is pushy and invasive, and Tina Weymouth is stunning, but the film gains nothing, and loses much, by being on YouTube.

Higgs’s second entry, “New Order: Confusion,” is a music video, apparently originally sent to TV stations to promote the song (“For heavy rotation,” a card proposes at the end). It’s a kind of nocturnal race through New York City — subways covered in graffiti, old Times Square marquees and the twin towers in the distance — that seems coked-up on instant nostalgia. But does Higgs expect viewers only to share the ’80s love? It seems so: his final selection, a 1988 video by the Fall, is straight from the nostalgia-channel VH1 Classic, complete with the logo bug. Pop-culture connoisseurs should know about these videos. But get a collection on DVD. As YouTube entries, they don’t have much to say.

Matthew Ronay, a sculptor and another contributor to the exhibition, sent Rachel Greene, the curator, an enormous list of links, flinging at her a series of sobs from the heart — a daunting stream of words and images half-designed as a filibuster. He chose videos that purport to show the supernatural, things like levitation and magic, and though no single one is decisive, they suggest in the aggregate that something is going on here. After Sept. 11, Ronay explained in an e-mail message to Greene, he felt drawn to Islam. “Is my desire to investigate Islam similar to the way that people became interested in Eastern religions during Vietnam?” Looking for answers, he writes, “I read some Joseph Campbell and Unabomber.”

You can’t help watching closely the video clips Ronay provided. A man rises into the air over a circle of fire. Alligators are hypnotized. Gurus of every stripe dilate. Ronay is obsessive. He’s got more. He’s trying to nail something down. Something in the compulsive amassing of evidence for animism, voodoo, shamanism and other paranormal phenomena is heartbreaking and rousing. In his e-mail message to Greene, he relates his YouTube search terms — “spells,” “sacrifice,” “rewilding” — and you can picture him skimming hundreds of videos looking for the face of God.

But Ronay is nonetheless a victim of YouTube. Unlike de Beer, whose rarefied selections make heavy demands on the viewer, Ronay approaches video through search terms, which means he encounters only videos that have been rigged to be found by someone with his interests. What’s more, the videos are prepackaged as proof of a paranormal realm, and that’s no different from how he employs them; he offers no new purpose for the clips. (It seems not to have even occurred to the fourth contributor to the exhibition, the art critic Wayne Koestenbaum, that YouTube videos could be considered freestanding art. As of this writing, he hadn’t settled on specific entries — only subject matter — for his part of the exhibition.)

No artist should take lightly the opportunity to use YouTube. In my view, YouTube is neither a nascent art form nor a video library but a recently unearthed civilization. Everything’s muddy and looks kind of ruined. If you don’t have firm convictions about visual art, you won’t come on them just by poking around; everything will seem worthless. But while most of the stuff being dusted off and put into baggies at YouTube are indeed bent spoons and dime-a-dozen arrowheads, an archeologist with his eyes open can still be surprised by treasure.

Connecting Game Players to Build a Sense of Loyalty

By SETH SCHIESEL Published: May 15, 2008, at The New York Times

Back in the analog era, delivering mass entertainment meant helping people connect with a character, a brand or a franchise. Few companies were more successful with that approach than Disney, with its stable of pop culture stars.

But these days that’s rarely sufficient. These days it’s all about helping people connect with one another. (Witness the rise of MySpace, Facebook and blogs.)

Disney’s video game division hopes to tap into that trend starting Thursday as the company opens DGamer, an online service and social network meant to connect players of Disney games across North America and eventually the world.

“DGames started from a realization we had in terms of what makes us unique from most game publishers,” Graham Hopper, the executive vice president and general manager for Disney Interactive Studios, said in a telephone interview. “Most game publishers have a collection of various franchises that don’t necessarily relate one to the other. We have a brand that incorporates a broad array of properties all under the Disney label. We know two things about someone who buys our games: One, they like Disney, and two, they like games. So with DGamer we saw a chance to build a community that brings together people who share those interests.”

The concept underpinning DGamer is the same as the theory behind Microsoft’s successful Xbox Live service and even the early days of America Online: If you tie consumers together in a social environment that goes beyond the actual content, they are likely to buy more in order to stay in touch with their friends.

Disney is introducing DGamer in conjunction with the Nintendo DS version of its new Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian game, which is timed to support the film’s debut on Friday. The DS is the most popular of the current generation of hand-held game machines and includes wireless Internet capability.

Disney plans to incorporate DGamer into all of its future DS games, including those in the popular kid-friendly Hannah Montana and High School Musical series. The service is meant to allow players of different games to chat with one another, compete on leader boards and earn rewards based on their progress. Mr. Hopper said Disney is the No. 2 game publisher on the DS behind Nintendo, though the studio does not break out separate financial results.

For Disney one of the major complications in developing an online social network is that many of the company’s most loyal fans are children. To prevent children from sharing sensitive personal information with potential predators, DGamer’s default settings allow players to communicate only through predefined phrases and answers along the lines of “How are you?” and “Yes.” Parents can log in to unlock more open forms of chat for their children.

Mr. Hopper said the service had cost less than $10 million to develop, partly because of investments already made in the company’s extensive Disney.com operation. He said that DGamer would become available internationally next year.

Three websites designed for Screenager group

Channel V --music website
http://intl.channelv.com/v.htm

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Rocket dog --snsneakers website
http://www.rocketdog.co.uk/

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Converse--sports products website
http://www.converse.com/

Book Review: The Endless City, by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic

Posted by: Robert Blinn on Monday, April 28 2008, at core77


An enormous orange compendium, The Endless City approaches architecture itself in scale, scope and design. All of the little details are right, from its visually comfortable grid to the stunning panoramic long-exposure photos of cities and urban sprawl. The result of a joint project between The London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society, the book contains so much data, information and statistics that some facts even needed to spill some over onto the cover. Despite the imposing cover, the information and opinions within prove not only to educate but also to inspire.

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Jacobs speaks lovingly about the diversity of the city streets, the need for a heterogeneous population and a "neighborhood" actively engaged in monitoring or policing its own behavior and growth. Walking down the quirky and vibrant streets of lower Manhattan, I can't help but feel that any other thesis would be tragically misguided. Consequently, I remained concerned until reading this book that urban planners might still hold some megalomaniacal tendencies. I was proven wrong only part way into the introduction and I still had a lot more to learn.

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Perhaps The Endless City is like a city-- enormous, deep and complex --while The Death and Life of American Cities is more like a neighborhood -- visceral, immediate and small. Jane Jacobs had one thesis while Burdett and Sudjic seem to have hundreds. If the The Endless City could be abridged into any one statement, it is this: The coming of the urban age is inevitable; we cannot control it, but we may be able to understand and shape how it develops and grows.