I somehow missed the news that Gary Dahl, inventor of the Pet Rock, died a couple of days ago. The Spokesman-Review’s Doug Clark is on the case—because it turns out that Dahl was a Rogers High School graduate. Who knew?

In 1975, at the height of the craze, my best friend owned a Pet Rock. My feelings about it at the time can best be described as ambivalent: even as an eight-year-old, I understood how unbelievably dumb it was, yet I couldn’t deny that I really, really wanted one. Probably my first lesson in marketing.

Dahl, a “down-at-the-heels advertising copywriter” when he came up with the Pet Rock idea, was no one-trick pony. He published Advertising for Dummies in 2001. And a year earlier he was the grand prize winner in the 18th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a competition that “challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.” Here’s his winning entry:

“The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land’s end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.”

RIP, Mr. Dahl. You done your hometown proud.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  comments(1)

Last week, ArchDaily shared some behind-the-scenes photos taken in the Blade Runner model shop. (For you nerds out there, the entire 142-image Imgur album is here.) While I yield to no one in my love for the 1982 film, I’ll be honest: this post is really just an excuse to share one of my favorite Clive James poems.

DECKARD WAS A REPLICANT

The forms of nature cuff-linked through your life
Bring a sense of what Americans call closure.
The full-blown iris swims in English air
Like the wreckage of an airbag jellyfish
Rinsed by a wave’s thin edge at Tamarama:
The same frail blue, the same exhausted sprawl,
The same splendour. Nothing but the poison
Is taken out. In the gallery, that girl
Has the beauty that once gave itself to you
To be turned into marriage, children, houses.
She will give these things to someone else this time.

If this time seems the same time, it’s because
It is. The reason she is not for you
Is she already was. Try to remember
What power they have, knowing what sex is for:
Replacing us. The Gainsborough chatelaine
She studies wears a shawl dipped in the hint
Of jacaranda blossoms, yet it might
Remind her of sucked sweets, or the pale veins
Of her own breasts. Setting the Thames on fire,
The tall white-painted training ship from Denmark
Flaunts the brass fittings of the little ferry
That took you as a child to Kirribilli
On its way to Wandsworth, then the Acheron
And Hades. Those gulls that graze the mud
Took sixty years to get here from Bundeena.

At an average speed of forty yards an hour
They hardly moved. It seems you didn’t either.
You stood still with your head wrapped in the armour
Of perception’s hard-wired interlocking habits.
Ned Kelly was the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
Dazzled by lipstick pulped from waratahs,
The smoker coughs, having been born again.

(2003)

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

If you’re up for a deep-drive today, Wayback Machine has you afternoon planned out for you. As an internet archive, the website backlogs previous designs of almost any website you can think of, effectively giving you an evolutionary timeline of the internet.  It’s flooring to see how far we have come. At the risk of dating myself, my first favorite website that I can recall was Yahooligans.com – a search engine for kids that was packed full of fun games and bright colors. It looks just as I remember it did in 1999. As I stare at the page, watching the text dance with pixelation and squinting to read the icons, it’s easy for me to see how we have refined web design and created such a lovingly user-centric craft.

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

It’s mid-March and already the spring-time lovelies are peeking their heads out of the ground to brighten up the Pacific Northwest. To say I am excited is a gross understatement. Being from Alaska, sunshine works wonders on me and those added splashes of natural color basically makes me skip to work. If you are lacking in either of these categories, here is my treat to you: 10,000 flower images stitched together by French director Thomas Blanchard. You’re welcome.

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

Helvetica has always had a sense of purpose. While it’s one of several great fonts at every designer’s disposal, it is—by far—the most famous. And it didn’t achieve this status simply by lookin’ good (although the documentary certainly didn’t hurt). Helvetica is educated. Hardworking. Likable. And for nearly 60 years now, its success has depended on keeping an open mind and never being afraid to appear on anything, anywhere, at any time. In short, it’s never met a design it couldn’t help. In this regard, Helvetica is a very charitable font.

That’s why we formed Helveticahaus—to showcase a typeface that’s willing to give itself over to a higher calling. And with your support, this haus will give aspiring designers an opportunity to continue to use Helvetica in new and exciting ways.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

If you’re one of those who wonders why so many people these days are concerned, hurt, offended, or “made uncomfortable,” by something as innocuous as a word, a photograph, or a tasteless joke, this is the site for you.

On the “problematic nature of the snow shoveling gender gap,” for example, we learn that “the patriarchy hurts men just as much as women: forcing yourself into rigid gender roles keeps you outside on a cold, snowy day, gents. Wouldn’t you rather be inside while your partner shoulders some of the burden?”

It’s brilliant stuff.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of presenting a lecture at Boise’s fourth annual Modern Masters series, sponsored by Preservation Idaho and Idaho Modern. The subject? The late Spokane architect Kenneth W. Brooks, part of our region’s stellar mid-century modern architecture movement that spanned two decades beginning in the early 1950s.

Brooks received three national awards from the American Institute of Architects in three different decades: Washington Water Power Central Service Facility (Spokane, 1959—the first national AIA award in the state of Washington), Intermountain Gas Company Headquarters (Boise, 1966—where Saturday’s event was held), and Columbia Basin College’s Art-Drama-Music Complex (Pasco, 1978).

Though I never had the privilege of meeting Mr. Brooks, his determination and love of his craft were unparalleled.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: architecture the design life  |  make a comment