Just a single mention of Crazy Mel in this edition of Quipsologies.
R.C Cosmos is on a mission: Make graphic design free, to change the way people think about design. Five minutes of painful sound and nightmare-producing typography.
What would Monopoly for the the 21st century (in this our electronic age) include?
Oh no! Barney the guard dog ripped Mabel, a teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley.
Watch a video about pitching to Subway, and then decide if you want to work in advertising.
How many of these and other predictions will come true at Apple’s DC?
As YouTube matures, more and more designers may look to promote themselves using online reels.
Comic book haters, unite under Otto Penzler.
In the future, every space may have an advertisement, according to this Baltimore Sun writer.
Even more Apple rumors for those of you licking your lips about the WWDC revelations: Machines move to Blue Ray / Get ready for a collection of Intel options in your new Mac / Leopard to have loads of new features. Believe at your own risk.
Reason #432,145 why Brooklyn rocks: It’s Art If You Want It To Be.
To suck or not to suck. [Thanks to Ricardo Cordoba for the link]
Print magazine’s online presence joins the rest of us in the Twenty-First Century with a redesigned web site.
More on the design of the CW network.
From Ms. Millman: Soda vs. Pop.
Vintage matchbooks. Yum.
If you were a dorky kid like me, you too probably wet your pants when you saw the trailer for the Transformers movie. Skip the stupid Mars rover first minute, bask in the rumbling transformery typography.
Also, learn about their own rebranding.
Apropos to Jason’s Subway pitch movie, do check its viral spawn at We Roll Big (a line so nauseating [“When we roll, we roll big”] it’s great).
The deadline for nominations to the Bad Design Amnesty exhibit has been extended to August 11.
On the “astro-turfing” of YouTube.
From the Scientific Journal of A-friggin’-men.
A recent Reuters photograph of smoke over Beirut’s suburbs was badly retouched and then released to the media.
Is it the brand, or is it the branding?
Typography put to use for a use you never thought you needed which will now haunt your thoughts all day.
…and people accuse ME of seeing shapes in clouds! (NSFW)
The problem, as I see it, is that book reviews all too often lazily fall into the buy it or leave it category. Thumbs up or thumbs down. This book is worth spending $25. Save your money and avoid this one. The corporate view of books is that they are a commodity to be purchased and not much more, and, while Kakutani’s review does not come out and say “don’t buy it,” the tone is tainted by this narrow view. The short reviews with stars that you can find on Amazon are fine — they help people decide if they should purchase a book or not — but I think that serious reviewing should go beyond this and try to analyze more carefully what the book is trying to do. — On the problem of book reviews.
A 7,000-year old tablet that was found in Bulgaria may be the oldest example of writing found so far.
Some advice for that next client meeting.
Alex Munt visits the Jean-Luc Godard exhibition, now in its last week at the Centre Georges Pompidou.
Currently at the Getty Center in Los Angeles — A Tumultuous Assembly: Visual Poems of the Italian Futurists.
And currently at the International Center of Photography in New York — Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt.
A gallery of television test cards.
Once again, Americans freak out over a tit…
…Sam’s Club employees freak out over a bikini…
…Chicagoans freak out over flower scupltures…
…and evangelical whackjobs see Satan in the AOL/Time Warner logo.
Riot Porn, a new photoblog.
Print and Pattern, a new print and pattern blog.
Local NPR affiliate WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show asked listeners for their visual response to the recent heat wave.
Beirut, Lebanon resident Mazen Kerbaj is posting his visual responses to the current conflict.
The death of a beloved graffiti. [via]
A critique of Mel “Sugartits” Gibson’s mug shot.
Twenty syphilis posters from the 1940s.
Artist Nate Harrison has compiled an astonishing history of the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music.
Scott Wade makes art with the dust on car windows.
It was bound to happen: The first album cover PR gimmick to use Google Earth.
Amazing cultural artifact time: (Uncle) Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut make an appeal for Cinémathèque Française head Henri Langlois.
Maurice Sendak’s first illustration job.
Here’s something lovely from Andreas Muller.
OK. Can we now call it quits on the Elvis Presley layout?
Communist Item One: Raul Castro has bad taste in caps.
Communist Item Two: a collection of nationalistic themes in North Korean art.
Decadent Western Item: a striking collection of guitar photographs by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.
As someone who grew up in the Buffalo area, I’m happy to see the return of the old Buffalo Sabres uniform. It certainly looks better than this one.
Poet Hayden Carruth celebrated his 85th birthday last week. Let’s end this week’s linkage with his Something For The Trade.
Please note well, all you writers, editors, directors
out there: when a phone call is terminated
by the other person you do not, NOT, hear
the buzz of a dial tone. You hear a faint click
and then silence, absolute silence, the Great
Silence, more eloquent than any electronic
buzz could ever be. In fact the dial tone
cannot be heard until you yourself hang up
and then lift the receiver again. Further
note this: you cannot tell from the click
if the other person has hung up reluctantly
or desperately, softly or violently. It is only
the sound of a disconnected circuit. I’ve read
this error in a thousand books, I’ve seen it
in a thousand movies, and how so many
of you can be so unobservant, you who
call yourselves artists, is beyond me.
Ah, my friends, you are becoming my
enemies, and I’m appalled by your irreverence
for the simple truth that should sustain us all.
Mike Essl wrote in with a missing Elvis clone. Thanks, Mike!
On Aug.07.2006 at 01:04 PM