A conversation between friends: director Werner Herzog and tightrope artist Philippe Petit PP: Film is a lying media. WH: It’s beautiful to invent. And truth is not found in facts per se. In Philippe’s case, there’s a deeper truth in what he’s doing–an ecstasy of truth. And he’s discovering, of course, walking in the sky, in the [...]

We’ve seen coffee cup sleeves used to carry advertisements: Last month, there was a sleeve around my copy of Metropolis magazine. Is advertising in the magazine no longer effective? What’s next? Banded bird, © Dan Soltzberg 2008 Previously: Forced Engagement

My latest interactions column, Living in the Overlap, has just been published. I riff on the relevance of pop culture, the spaces between disciplines and the importance of resisting the urge to label and categorize everything neatly. Here’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t tried: Project Runway, High School Musical, American Pie movies, robot wars, molecular [...]

NYT Op-Ed on expertise, perception, and trickery The volunteers knew the taste of strawberries perfectly well. That was the problem. The associations that came with the word “strawberry” overwhelmed the taste of chocolate. Every trickster’s hope, says Jim Steinmeyer, who designs illusions for magicians, is “finding smart people who bring a lot to the table — [...]

Although Clippy was reported dead in early 2007, his cousin Ibbi (a feminized toilet seat?) has stepped forward to head up the so-helpful-you-want-to-throttle-it department. It’s amusing to see a despised and unsuccessful software feature egregiously ripped off. Why did someone think this was a good idea?

Why The Audrey Gadget Flopped : NPR “After tons of testing and research, The Audrey, a kitchen computer designed for women, promised to be the next big thing. It flopped. Alex Cohen talks with Don Fotsch, co-creator of The Audrey about why the device failed.” Utterly content-free; they talk about how great Audrey is and simply blame [...]

In our recent AIGA Gain article about noticing, we relate how the process of noticing once and then noticing again is a way to find patterns and uncover themes. During my recent trip to the UK, I took this picture of a discarded banana peel. I didn’t notice other bananas, but someone else did and they’ve started [...]

Transcript of Frontline: The Merchants of Cool Douglas Rushkoff’s 2001 PBS special that journeys into the world of the marketers of popular culture to teenagers Transcript of Frontline: The Persuaders Douglas Rushkoff’s 2004 PBS special about “What’s going on in the world of today’s marketers and advertisers? What are the new and surprising methods they’re using to [...]

Some thoughts about the importance of and access to “think time” …The list that follows is reassuring for those who crave some repose without the need for an ashram. The “oases of thought” Buzan hears about are commonly: the shower; the bath; the loo; shaving; walking in nature; in bed (before sleep, in the middle of [...]

During a recent trip to Florida I took some time to check out the Disney-founded community of Celebration. The experience was much more subtle that I had expected; perhaps the true nature emerges more through residency than driving through. Overall, it felt a lot like The Truman Show - a set that made everything a [...]

I got this thing in the mail from a company called Veer. The cover slip said: “A giant hand. Angsty Cats. Rioting Models.” How could I not open it? It turned out to be a huge advertisement poster. It was so big that once I’d unfolded it, I had to lay it on a chair. [...]

Rotman magazine (PDF) with interview with Harry West from Continuum “Creating a product for people without studying them first simply doesn’t make any sense. The products we create are meant to help and serve people, and in order to do that we need to understand what people need, what they value and what their aspirations are, [...]

Ignore That Logo Under the Tape! - Olympic brand “protection” taken to a silly extreme To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape. In media centers, dormitories [...]

Female police officers ’should get bulletproof bras’ They are all emblazoned with the word “police” and made from cotton, polyester, elastic and some other synthetic materials, thickly padded and with no metal or plastic studs or fasteners. Padded underwear - front and back - for men Kerri Christman, owner of Butt [...]

Tattoo The Midget Has A Bigger Posse Tokyo, December 2007 Meme Diffusion Awesome gallery - from the official site, no less - of bootleg stickers based on Andre The Giant Has A Posse. I’ve got photos, but no stickers.

I’ve developed a taste for expensive yogurt. It started as a lark a few days ago, in a natural foods store near my home, when I saw Saint Benoit Yogurt for the first time. This single-serving yogurt comes in a miniaturized stoneware crock, colored and shaped like (what I imagine to be) a traditional European crock. [...]

The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn (Scientific American) Article itself has no real point of view, but surveys some interesting research. To this day people spend most of their conversations telling personal stories and gossiping. A 1997 study by anthropologist/evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, at the University of Liverpool found that social topics accounted [...]

Construction site, London, July 2008 The hook - a huge metal piece that moves through the site at all heights - is painted Day-Glo orange to increase the likelihood that people will see it, and avoid it.

Rack o’ seats, Tate Modern, London, July 2008 This is a nice touch: self-serve portable seating for your journey through an art museum.

I’m an occasional user of MyUPS (although their failure to offer a daily email or RSS update to track a package is ludicrous) and when visiting the site this week I had to agree to their news Terms of Service and update my contact information. This sort of web form typically covers basic logistical information [...]