Greg Beato over at The Smart Set offers up a brief homage to the lowly business card. “Tweets fade into the ether and avatars are put out to pasture,” he writes, “but real paper business cards, these sturdy facsimiles of ourselves on custom-duplexed cardstock with metallic ink and die-cut rounded corners, are going to last forever…”
A new world record was set recently in ferret legging—the “sport” in which contestants place a pair of live ferrets in their pants and, well…wait. The last man standing is declared the winner.
The rules are simple: no underwear, and your pants need to be loose enough “to allow easy ferret access between the legs.”
New record-holder Frank Bartlett, a 67-year-old retired teacher, lasted 5 hours, 30 minutes.
UPDATE! The definitive article on ferret legging was written by Donald Katz and appeared in Harper’s Magazine back in 1992. Click here for the story.
It’s true. Steve Jobs and his appleheads are coming to Spokane – in the form of a new Apple retail store! This is some of the most exciting news I’ve heard in quite some time. After setting up shop in larger US markets initially, Spokane’s name finally bubbled to the top of the list.
From “In Praise of Idleness” (1932):
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.
For anyone out there who stubbornly refuses to recognize the near-limitless power of branding, I share this story without further comment.
According to this infographic, every country in the world is best at, or has the most of, something. Like Senegal and it’s gasoline bunkers, for example. Or Argentina’s horse meat production. I’ll let you see for yourself how the USA shines.
Jessica Love (seriously, that’s her name), a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology at Ohio State University, talks about how she’s fallen hard for pronouns. Me? I’m more of an adverb guy, but I totally see where she’s coming from.
Spokane County does a great job maintaining a number of conservation and natural areas; some are even within a few minutes of downtown. This one—the James T. Slavin Conservation Area—is a favorite of the intrepid Lily, my 12-year-old border collie. I’m not cool enough to own an iPhone, so you’ll have to make do with this picture, captured with my lowly Droid.
From Tom Holt: “Count no man’s life wasted if there is a beautiful, mysterious woman weeping at his funeral.”
Granted, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I honestly don’t get what this sign, on the corner of Sprague and Post, is trying to tell me. Has the City of Spokane generously set aside an entire district for “entertainment parking,” whatever that is? (Though, to be fair, watching certain individuals try to parallel park their ginormous SUVs does, in fact, qualify as entertainment…perhaps that’s what they mean.)
If, on the other hand, the City is trying to convince us that there is, in fact, a thriving entertainment district in the downtown area, and that this is the place to park if you’re going to partake of its many wonders, shouldn’t the sign read, “Entertainment District Parking”?
Then there’s the scary “TOW-AWAY ZONE” sign below. Kudos to whoever in the planning department remembered that compound modifiers generally require a hyphen, but still.
Somebody please explain this to me.
Integrus Architecture launched its new website and brand identity today—both of which were created by the brilliant minds at AMD. Take a look.
The wailing, rending of garments, and gnashing of teeth continues at length over the dearth of posting of late. I blame CK; the truth is, we’ve all been busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.
Or is it simply another sign that the apocalypse is upon us?
Either way, it’s the first time we here at AMD Headquarters have offered two blog posts in one day. So you’ve got that going for you. Which is nice.
Joseph Epstein writes about one of my favorite pastimes: finding typos in published work.
Apart from the smug self-satisfaction that comes when I catch the vaunted copy editors at The New Yorker asleep at their style guides, it’s a sobering reminder that mistakes often do, in fact, get printed—despite the best efforts of people a lot smarter than I. (Or is it “me”?)
Because it’s Thursday, I bring you Couch Cushion Architecture: A Critical Analysis.
All of us in the design profession have heard about the eventual, slow death of print. It began in earnest in the 1990s, and, according to some folks, it already has a tombstone. This is what keeps printers up at night.
So I was pleasantly surprised as my oldest daughter—a senior in high school—began searching for a university to attend a little over a year ago. Upon visiting several colleges, our mailbox has been inundated with print promotions, one after the other, not only from the schools we visited but also from unknown colleges around the country.
Having worked with college admissions departments, I can attest to the fact that these groups are typically very sophisticated in their approach to recruiting high school students (and their parents). So it must work very well to mail nicely designed brochures, post cards, and letters. Given that print still has far fewer restrictions than online design, higher-ed print pieces are often more visually pleasing that their websites. And in the case of my daughter, even after she committed to a university, they’ve kept sending her beautiful print pieces.
Print may be slower that it use to be, but it’s far from being on life support. In fact, I’d suggest that, given society’s appetite for all things online, print has become even more relevant: as a tangible, tactile, near-novelty that communicates emotions distinct from any click of the mouse.