Save the Date

If you are in NYC on May 18, 2010.

Inflexible

Why do I always seem to do battle with myself every time I start to work on a post? (you shut up. no, you shut up) I find myself ready to make a pronouncement then realize I haven’t thought things through thoroughly. Soooooo here we go again…

This post is about logos and originally I was going to come out (swinging) and saying: FLEXIBLE LOGOS ARE THE BEST LOGOS. ALL OTHERS ARE BAD.

There may have been flexible logos before, but MTV definitely made the flexible logo part of their identity. Their ever-changing mark signified forward thinking, playfulness, and a reflection of the culture of their audience. The logos were often wonderful expressions of graphic design, possibly crossing the line into art.

Go here for a nice compilation of the MTV logo:


Be sure to check out the MTV logo story where you will find:

"The next, and probably most revolutionary part of the story came when they were asked to come up with the "corporate colors" for the logo. The decision was made that there weren’t any, and that the logo should always change. Knowing that many animators, designers, ad agencies, etc. were going to be working with the logo made them think how, just like rock music always changes, the logo should also. This was a concept that had never been used on a logo before. The "M" and the "TV" could be made of any colors and/or materials."

There were obvious rules. The big “M” always stayed in the same font family (ish), the font of the “TV” never changed and the size relationship to one another didn’t change nor did their placement. After that, let the fun begin. What we were given was a character unto itself. It had a personality and an attitude. While there were many animated logos, you never saw the NBC Peacock spit tar into the CBS eye.

When I was running The Movie Channel, we always had fun with the logo. When promoting a specific movie, we often animated it into the actual footage for the promo’s end page. When we shot original footage for the network, we would place the logo on any and all spherical and disc-like surfaces (dog toy, cocktail napkin with drink ring). Both the MTV and the TMC logos were for entertainment networks and I think the logos had the obligation to entertain. (NOTE: as soon as i find copies of the TMC logos. i will re-post)




But I think we are meant to take comfort in certain logos that don’t change very much or if they do, they evolve. The fact that they remain the same signifies (falsely or not) stability. Banks tend not to change their logos drastically. Government offices don’t try to hip up their logos. These institutions mean to convey a solid presence. Again, falsely or not.



Or my favorite...
I find comfort in the relative stability of Barney's.


(chase, mobil, pbs and barney's logos courtesy of Chermayeff & Geismar)

As my friends know, I am starting the MFA program in Design Criticism at SVA in the fall. Like MTV, the “D-Crit” department has an ever-changing logo. The “D” and the “Crit” remain the same. They are separated by an “X”, a crosshatch, an intersection. Placed under the intersection are still images rapidly cut together. The images appear to be objects, events or concepts that have been previously critiqued or may be critiqued in the future. It is important that the logo remain ever changing so that viewers see a never-ending range of topics relevant to the program. Go here for a peek.


No, you shut up.

Collecting Intelligence

Just finished an essay on book collecting by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) called “Unpacking My Library”. While I own a good number of books, by his standards, I could never be called a collector. For Benjamin there were 2 types of collectors. No, let me take that back; there is the acquirer of books and then there is the collector of books. The acquirer will purchase luxury editions and libraries with no real love for their content; he has purchased the bibliophile’s version of the trophy wife. I had a friend, RP, who had 6 different copies of Lolita in his library and has never read the book. I was baffled.

The collector has deep passion for each leather-bound book or even cloth-bound book. The collector will read the books that can withstand handling and if not, it goes in the glass case. However the collector knows the title is worthy because he will have read a different edition of it. This collector is cognizant of its quality and worth.

Ok, so I am not a collector but I do think I have the same passion for books, as does Benjamin. He mentions that the act of buying of a book gives it its freedom. It rescues the book from a lonely shelf and transports it to the hands of a lover.

If I am not a collector of books then you can call me a collector of stories. And I believe that just by reading them, I, or any reader, have given these stories their freedom. I love to look at all the books in my library, both read and unread. The ones that have not yet been read remain under figurative lock and key until it is their turn. Make no mistake, I also do care deeply about how they are packaged. It is rare that my book covers are not interesting or of some good quality.

One of my absolute favorite books is my paperback copy of Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey with its spine so broken, it is held together by scotch tape. So no, I don’t have any editions that are worth much of anything but I do have some titles that are worth the world.






(this is the copy that i bought in paris) Hee!

Please to enjoy

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.



absolutely beautiful

thanks to PJ for finding this.

(and apologies to NK for not crediting him earlier on the things he found for me. hee)

Female Design

(I apologize for the f-bombs but this puts me over the edge.)

As I read this I could barely breathe. A “nick”? “down there”? Really? Really?

Really?

Are you fucking out of your minds? ARE YOU FUCKING OUT OF YOUR MINDS?

I know this is coming from a “good place”, that it is meant to prevent future female genital mutilation. But you are not stemming the tide.


For FUCK’S SAKE. You are cutting little girls.

Please do not confuse this with circumcision which is supposedly done for health reasons or whatever. When they cut little girls, it is only because they are afraid the girls will experience sexual pleasure later on in life. There is NO practical purpose.

I can’t breathe.

'Tis better to give...

Re-gifting or re-giving is the act of taking a gift that has been received and giving it to somebody else, sometimes in the guise of a new gift. (wikipedia)

The practice of re-gifting is frowned upon/taboo in polite circles but occurs regularly in most. I, of course, have NEVER re-gifted. Hee. But if you look at it differently, it is morally and ecologically sound to re-gift. Let’s say you receive a sweater that looks like the microscopic cross-section of a paramecium and it doesn’t happen to be your style. It is far better to give that sweater to someone whose taste it suits than to add to the ultimate waste in the world by buying another one just like it for a different relative with questionable taste. Now there are two paramecium sweaters floating around the world when there could have been just one. And think of what happens when both of those sweaters start falling apart in about 6 months with the synthetic fiber having a carbon half-life of about 5,730 years. If you don’t know anyone who might be interested in the sweater, you can re-gift it to a local charity. Morally sound.

Or you can be evil like me who re-gifted a lot of t-shirts designed by a reprehensible person to all the homeless people who hung out in that said person's neighborhood. Or maybe that is just creative re-gifting.

There is, however, a wonderful item that changes the dynamic in a fun way. It is the gift that expects to be re-gifted.



Next time you go to a party, bring the wine in the Built wine tote and leave it behind so that your host will have something to put her wine in when she goes to her next dinner party…and so on.


Last winter TP brought 2 of them over. A few weeks later I took one of them over to LM and MM’s house (to which they replied I would be seeing it again when they next come to visit). The second one we took over to LO and RS’s house last Saturday (to which LO replied she would be bringing it back over to TP. I doubt one has found its way back home so quickly).

The reason it can be re-gifted is because it really isn't the gift in the first place. It is just the wrapping. The wine is the gift.

Therefore, when the Built tote is the gift itself, you may not re-gift especially when it is the beautiful one given to us by our niece, GK. This one will only be going out to the deck and back.




Fantastico!

Well, Looky Here.

UPDATE: Sad news on a Melbourne Banksy wall from reader Mike





Let me begin first by saying that I know next to nothing about street art. I am a fan, but still, a layperson. When I was preparing to write this post, I went around the neighborhood (east village and Noho), snapped some pics, planned a brief outline of the discussion and then I started reading.

Oops.

The more I read, the more I realized how much I don’t know. The thoughtfulness, passion and scholarly writing by the fans and critics humble me.

(By the way, there are a lot of Banksy and Shepard Fairey discussions right now. Just to get you started.)

I doubt I’ll get any serious street art writers/bloggers reading this but if you are, stop right now. I will only piss you off.

So much of the street art has become my local outdoor wallpaper. And like wallpaper, the more you see it, the more immune you get to the details. Because I became so used to it, I stopped seeing it. But when the art started to be sanctioned, I began to pay attention again; probably due to the expansive scale and exceptional intricacies not afforded to the artist on the run. The Haring reproduction on the Deitch Wall (Houston and Bowery) was the first piece I noticed in 2008. Then, of course came Os Gemeos and now Fairey (see 4/28 post).




We all watched with great curiosity the building of the Cooper Square Hotel (more on the building in a post on EV/Noho architecture later) as it was destined to do battle with its surroundings. They hired four graffiti artists to paint one side of the building in order to make the building feel like part of the neighborhood. While many neighbors complain about absolutely everything, I think the gesture is fantastico.







And just last week Shepard Fairey remade the wall of the Cooper Square Hotel. Yes this street art is sanctioned (and this can even be called corporate) so it can’t be called graffiti but the temporariness of it does give it some cred.












Here are some fine samples of what we have come to expect from the art in my hood.

















Having these guys around brings comfort when so many some of the big pieces like ESPO and REVS have disappeared.
thanks for the espo pic



The street art discussion will continue on future posts. Fantastico!