ideas

After last week’s surprise drubbing at the hands of the National Capitol Planning Commission and members of the Eisenhower family, architect Frank Gehry got himself out in front of the debate earlier this week to try and smooth the situation over a bit concerning his planned Eisenhower Memorial in Washington DC. At the meeting last week, you might recall, the NCPC still wasn’t certain about the dimensions and scope of the project, while some members of the Eisenhower family asked that the whole project be put on hold, wanting to slow the whole thing down so they’d be able to think it all through more clearly. The Washington Post reports that in a meeting on Tuesday evening, Gehry admitted that the issues people were having with the memorial were “fair” and that they “are asking good questions.” What’s more, the architect reportedly explained that this is the sort of project that takes on lots of thinking and revisions as it goes along, and that he’s planning to agree to the family’s request for a meeting to make sure he gets the memorial right. “We’re clearly going to make them happy,” he told the Associated Press. Though if none of that works in appeasing everyone, we bet that Gehry will have no choice but to reassemble his Super Tech Squad and demand things go his way…or else.

You know when a comic book publishing company decides to gather up all their best-selling characters and put them all together for a series, a la the Superfriends or The Avengers? That sort of thing happened for real this week, so long as you replace “superheros” with “super successful architects.” Yesterday, Frank Gehry‘s company, the aptly named Gehry Technologies, which consults architecture firms in technology issues and has its own 3D modeling application, formed a “strategic alliance dedicated to transforming the building industry through technology.” This group is described as being formed “to drive technology innovations that support the central role of design in the creation of culture” and includes pretty much everyone whose names or firms regularly appear on shortlists for high-profile project. Zaha Hadid is there, as is Skidmore, Owings & Merrill‘s Chairman Emeritus David Childs, David Rockwell, Moshe Safdie, and Ben van Berkel, co-founder of UNStudio, among other highly-notable luminaries. They were all together yesterday for this inaugural meeting, at the Freedom Tower in New York no less, which must have been something to see. Sadly, we must report that no supervillians (not even the anti-modernist Prince Charles) showed up and thus, no super battles took place. However, they’ve stated that they plan to all get together to meet once per year, so here’s hoping for 2012.

Remember back in the very early days of 2010 when Unhappy Hipsters caught the world by storm? The site, which re-purposed photographs taken for magazines like Dwell by captioning them with funny quotes about the tragic ennui suffered by wealthy modernists. Not only was the site wildly popular online, with links galore, it even made it into Psychology Today, which tried to get to the bottom of why all these modernism-loving people were just so darn sad. Now, as these things tend to happen anymore, the Tumblr site has been turned into a book, published by Chronicle and entitled It’s Lonely in the Modern World. Instead of simply going the easy route and essentially copying the site with photos and captions, co-founders Molly Jane Quinn and Jenna Talbott write pieces of advice on “how to navigate the vast array of concrete finishes and plywood grades, accessorize with children and pets, opine with authority on rooflines,” accompanying the funny captions underneath all those photos of sad modernness (here’s a scan of two pages, so you can see for yourself). Apartment Therapy has a nice, quick review of the book, which they describe as having an “extra-dry brand of design-centric humor.”

At this point, among the millions of tributes to Steve Jobs you’ve likely run across, you’ve undoubtedly seen Jonathan Mak‘s image of the Apple logo with a profile of Jobs in place of the usual bite mark. While it’s clearly become one of the most shared tributes of this online collective mourning, it wound up hitting a bit of a snag over the weekend, namely that someone else had thought it up nearly the exact same layout back in May. That person being UK-based designer Chris Thornley, who works under the name Raid71. He’d posted his image, with Apple’s logo in black and Jobs’ silhouette in the surrounding white, on both his website and on his Flickr account, calling it “New Editorial – Steve Jobs.” It even wound up later appearing in Creative Review. After Mak’s initial, overwhelming success with his version (white Apple logo and black silhouette), word spread over the weekend that he’d blatantly stolen the concept and was unfairly reaping all the benefit from it, finally resulting in a response from the 19 year old student. Mak writes on his blog that he had never seen Thornley’s image before and will not apologize for stealing it, since he’d come up with the idea himself and had even performed some due diligence in searching “Apple, Steve Jobs, logo, silhouette” to see if anyone had come up with it before. He writes, “The visual connection between Steve’s profile and the logo seemed too obvious to not have been picked up on yet. Turns out, I’m right.” Furthermore, he apologizes for not having responded to the complaints sooner, and reminds those who have branded him a thief, that he hasn’t made a penny off of his version of the illustration.

It’s getting to be that time of year when the weather turns ugly, trapping you in doors, occasionally even forcing you to spend extended periods of time with your immediate family. As such, you’ll need to start stocking up on good books. Our good pal Debbie Millman, who has just a couple of credentials to her name, like serving as AIGA‘s president, running the world’s most listened-to podcast about design, working as a Chair at the SVA, and being the president of Sterling Brands, to name just a few, has her latest book coming out next week, on October the 10th. Entitled Brand New Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits, Millman talks to a veritable who’s who of branding pros, including Seth Godin, Wally Olins, and Malcolm Gladwell, about what a “brand” means today. We, and most likely you, have been fans of Millman’s for years, so this seems like almost necessary reading and is sure to be great. As an extra perk, since publishing books usually means book tours, you’ll perhaps get a chance to meet Ms. Millman as she starts crisscrossing the country as early as next week, with a launch party on October 27th at the SVA. Here’s a bit from the book’s description:

Slowly but surely, branding has become the umbrella under which advertising, marketing, and PR all reside, which means every forward-thinking business person, every consumer really, must speak the language of brands. After all, we live in a world with over one hundred brands of bottled water and there are more than 19 million customized beverage choices a barista can whip up at your local Starbucks. The word brand is no longer a simple differentiator of the cereals in our cupboards, nor is it a manipulative brainwashing tool forced on us by greedy corporations, as some consumers may believe. As branding moves into every sector of business and pop culture it’s an important topic, and in the book, Millman offers perspective on how branding is shaping society.

Has veteran artist Bruce McCall swiped, unintentionally or otherwise, the idea for his latest New Yorker cover? The October 3rd issue of the magazine features McCall’s illustration of Times Square, with a portion of the sidewalk cordoned off for tourists and another two sections dedicated as a “No Tourist” zone. Per usual for the magazine, it’s a clever, fun image. However, it’s also remarkably close to artist Jeff Greenspan‘s 2010 collaboration with Improv Everywhere. Entitled “The Tourist Lane,” Greenspan spray painted sections of New York sidewalks, labeling one side “Tourists” and the other, “New Yorkers.” On one hand, McCall certainly could have come up with the idea himself, explaining on the New Yorker‘s site how he came up with the concept after getting out of a cab in Times Square and being overwhelmed by the out-of-towners. On the other hand, Greenspan’s stunt garnered international press, with copycats painting variations in cities across the world, and the Improv Everywhere video receiving more than a million hits. So we suppose it isn’t inconceivable that McCall could have been aware of it and had it land somewhere in his subconscious. We’ll leave it up to you to decide. Whatever the case: interesting.

Remember those halcyon days way back in 2010 when you could go wait in an incredibly long line at the MoMA to spend a few seconds sharing a stare with Marina Abramovic as she sat and stared for her extremely popular The Artist is Present piece? If you’re hankering to return, and watching the Broad Museum get built in real time isn’t drawn out enough for you, designer and artist Pippen Barr has created the brilliant and bizarre The Artist is Present video game. Control your animated, adventure game avatar through the process of paying $25 for a ticket and then go wait in a very long line to see Abramovic. That’s it. And like the often-referenced non-game game, Penn and Teller‘s equally interesting Desert Bus, where you drove a bus through an unchanging landscape for hours but the steering had a slight pull, meaning you had to sit there and pay attention for all those hours, in Barr’s game, if you ignore your place in line, you’ll get bumped and have to start again from the back of the queue. Beside the game, Barr has a number of interesting comments about his creating the game, adding whole other layers to what first appears to just be a funny endeavor. Here’s a bit:

As happens when you make things, though, different meanings and ideas come up as you go along. On researching the show it was pretty obvious that the core mechanic of the game was about waiting – that’s pretty much what everyone focuses on when they think of the show – either waiting to see Abramovic or, in a sense, waiting with her. And that’s immediately titillating because waiting is obviously the height of poor game design according to convention. (Note that there are some great games about waiting, notably Gregory Weir’s Narthex and Increpare’s Queue). Part of my attitude to it, though, was to take it to some kind of “end game” – just waiting, so real other entertainment or chance of interaction, possibly for hours, possibly never even achieving your aim. Brutal waiting.

Sadly, there’s no bonus level in Barr’s game where if you touch the nude people, you get in trouble with the MoMA staff.

Getting a graduate degree in anything is expensive, but perhaps that becomes even more daunting when you receive an MFA instead of an often potentially more lucrative degree in nearly any other field. Such is the case with recent Bard College MFA recipient David Horvitz, who has found himself with just over $58,000 to pay back in student loans. In a move nearly as old as the internet itself, he’s taken a page from the original asking-strangers-for-money success story, Karyn Bosnak and her Save Karyn blog, and has launched a project called “fifty-eight cents.” After confirming with loan administration company Sallie Mae that his repayment checks could come from anywhere, just so long as his 10-digit account number is included, he’s asking for 58-cents from anyone who will spare the spare change. It’s certainly not the most original idea (Save Karyn, after all, launched a billion copycats, as did the Million Dollar Homepage and almost every other money-making internet meme), but who knows? We wish him the best of luck, and if there’s any extra cash left over in the end, we’d love to have a chunk to pay off some of our own student loans.

Making the rounds this week, and rightly so because it involves both a billionaire and something people can giggle like children about, is the launch of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation‘s “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge,” which is exactly what is sounds like. This week, at the AfricaSan Conference in Rwanda, the Foundation announced that it would be putting $42 million toward grants for helping to rethink and redesign the traditional toilet, searching for innovations that would aid not only sanitation in developing countries, but also finding ways to safely process waste into such things as reusable energy and fertilizer. The Foundation has released a list of the first eight projects they’ve given grants to (pdf), but because lists don’t get attention as well as an animated, somewhat humorous YouTube video, they’ve put out on of those as well:

Because the design world has been so vocal online for the lo these many years in regard to spec work (chiefly, of course, being against it), our anti-spec senses will likely now be forever heightened. So we’re not entirely sure what to do with the “Design for Paul McCartney” contest, which has just launched and will be running until September. In one sense, as it simply calls for “graphic art inspired by his critically acclaimed solo albums,” it’s a seemingly innocuous way to interact with fans and give the winners some nice prizes (which includes records, posters, tickets to shows, $1000 for the grand champion, etc.). On the other hand, the contest is helping launch a new tech start-up called Talenthouse, the top 10 winners will be displayed at Saatchi & Saatchi‘s online gallery (and if they wind up selling prints, is that $1000 prize such a great deal?), and, most obviously, used to help sell McCartney’s concert tickets and albums. So are we thinking too much into this? Or is it just your usual branded contest, like a Super Bowl commercial-making competition where, if you win, you get $1,000 for making a stellar ketchup ad, but the company in turn makes loads of money that dwarf the piddly sum they paid you? We don’t have the answer. Whatever the case, if entering this sort of thing gets you going, well there’s the link above. If it’s the sort of thing that gets you fired up, well we apologize for ruining your morning.