Idle Musings | 2008 May

Archive for May 2008

If I had one of these I might actually take a bath more than about once every decade or two.

Mini Rainboot Gardens

In Design, Food on May-23-2008 with
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[Found via swissmiss]

Mr. Clean Outdoor Ad

In Advertising on May-22-2008 with
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Rainwater Vertical Garden

In Design, Food on May-21-2008 with
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[Found via AzSustainability]

The Death of the Republican Brand

In Marketing, Politics on May-20-2008 with
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Republican Party leaders have been flipping around like fish out of water trying to identify possible remedies to their 2006 mid-term election losses. Their most recent effort, a new national Congressional campaign slogan, “The Change You Deserve,” was quickly identified as the advertising tag line for the anti-depressant Effexor. Ouch. But the biggest Republican problem seems that many of their leaders don’t realize the dire straits they are in. One that does is Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA). He recently said that Bush had just “killed the Republican brand” and “if we were a dog food [Republicans], they would take us off the shelf.” In the last 90s when I lived on Capital Hill in DC and worked in Northern Virginia I had a couple chances to speak with Davis. Although I did’t agree with many of his positions, he listened and give direct and candid responses to my questions, such as the status of DC Statehood (he was Chairmen of the Committee). He told me what he thought and not what I wanted to hear in every instance. It would seem he is doing the same to his fellow party members. I wonder if they will listen.

Obama Draws Crowd of 75,000 In Portland

In Photography, Politics on May-19-2008 with
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More photos here at Time Magazine.

An Interview With Nicholas Felton

In Design on May-19-2008 with
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I’ve really enjoyed Felton’s work for sometime, including this wonderful personal annual report. But he has done a lot of other stuff.

You’ve produced editorial artwork for several magazines, including PRINT, Metropolis and Wired. How are those projects different from say, designing a logo or a typeface?

In a lot of ways, they’re actually very similar. I approach every project systematically, and develop a set of rules that will help me make something consistent and interesting. With a typeface I’m considering all the angles, lines and transitions which will create a kit of guiding principles that direct every decision. The same is true in a logotype or a diagram or a publication, I try to develop a system that is robust and interesting enough to carry all the parts of the design in a successful manner.

Malcolm’s Gladwell New Book: Outliers

In Books on May-19-2008 with
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Following on the huge success of The Tipping Point and Blink, Gladwell’s publisher has announced his third book: Entitled Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t. According to the Amazon description:

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

The description from the Little, Brown catalog includes:

Outliers is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In Outliers, we’re going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We’re going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world’s greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don’t. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us—the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual—I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.

Sounds interesting to say the least. Only problem is the book doesn’t release until November of this year.

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