While my trip to New Mexico was thoroughly enjoyable — you can now see my pictures posted to Flickr — I’ve just about had it with traveling.

Thanks to a combination of inclement weather and corporate incompetence, my return trip from Albuquerque, NM to New York City took a total of twenty-four hours. My original and re-scheduled flights were delayed, canceled or, through airline mismanagement, never properly booked no less than six times, causing me to spend virtually all day yesterday sitting on my rear at airport gates. It felt like a miracle when I limped home at 1:00a on Tuesday morning after first setting out for the airport late on Sunday evening.

For me, there are two take-aways from this misadventure: first, I’ll never again violate my personal rule of avoiding layover itineraries when traveling across the continental United States, especially if I’m flying into or from relatively small market destinations like Albuquerque. It’s just too risky; when a scheduled flight is canceled or delayed, the paucity of flight alternatives can be disastrous. Direct is the only way to go.

Second, I’ll never again fly the airline I flew to and from Albuquerque — whose name, in the interest of discretion, I won’t reveal here. That’s right, I’m not saying who it was that squandered an entire day of my life. Not even if you call me names, put a curse on my subway line, or even if you acronym-ize the title of this blog post.

A recap of Leo Burnett creative director Donald Gunn’s 1978 hypothesis.

This weekend I’m in the beautiful state of New Mexico visiting my good friends Gong and Bonnie, who live in Santa Fe. It’s my first trip here ever, and it’s beautiful. The light, in particular, is unnaturally gorgeous. Or, at least, that’s how I’m explaining the photos I’ve been taking today.

Very attractive design of menus.

Some people find it hard to believe, but I do in fact like to use typefaces other than Helvetica. Recently, for instance, I’ve been really feelin’ Apex Serif, a beautiful, contemporary typeface that, as the name suggests, even has serifs. I like it so much that it’s the primary typeface for a side project I’m working that’s currently in ‘coming soon’ mode.

It’s not that often that I come across typefaces that I like as much as Helvetica, or even as much as Apex Serif. I probably wouldn’t have found it, though, if I hadn’t been flipping through the FontShop’s massive, nearly comprehensive tome, “FontBook.” It’s billed as “the largest typeface reference in the world,” and just a single flip through its 1,500 pages leaves one with no reason to doubt that claim.

The book is most directly a product of the mad mind of Erik Spiekermann and co-edited by Jürgen Siebert and Mai-Linh Thi Truong. But I was first turned on to this new version by Stephen Coles, author and editor of the wonderful Typographica blog. Stephen was a long-time user of the previous edition of the book, and was so persistent in sending his notes and corrections to the editors, that they hired him to help with this edition, fact-checking, editing and working on cross-references. In the interview that follows (conducted over email), I asked him about who would take on an outsized project like this and why.

Excellent round-up of how technology is changing hard copy media. Via Unbeige.

Based on the number of reader remarks at the bottom of yesterday’s post, my write-up of Greg Maletic’s wonderful documentary “Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball” wasn’t exactly a hit.

Was that because pinball isn’t among the topics that ignite tremendous passion, at least among the Subtraction.com audience? Maybe. But I think it’s more likely because of the way I wrote the piece.

I’m a long-time reader and fan of The New Yorker, and yesterday’s piece was my clumsy attempt at aping a bit of its editorial style. That magazine’s matter-of-fact yet constructionally elaborate prose has always been very attractive to me, both because it’s so incisively compelling and because it’s so efficient. I tend to go on and on when I write, using a lot of words to say relatively little. Writers for The New Yorker use a lot of words to communicate quite a lot of ideas with great richness. Can you blame me if it’s something I aspire to?

Slick re-creation of the BumpTop interface prototype built using Adobe Flex.

Beautiful photographic alphabet.

Amazingly, this article was not written in 1998, though it reads like it: “Instant-messaging programs allow users to organize contacts into ‘buddy lists’ and see who is online and available to chat at any given moment, world-wide. With most IM programs, users can start real-time conversations with one or more contacts, including multiple participants simultaneously. Sending a message opens up small windows on the participants’ screens where users can type their chats. Most programs also offer file-sharing, voice and video features. IM can be used on computers and on wireless devices like cellphones.”

Flickr pool from an idea by Naz Hamid.

Greg Maletic’s film “Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball” is, like many of its peers in this recent golden age of documentary films, a temporary detour into what might have otherwise been — and what may yet be again — overlooked subject matter. It’s highly entertaining, completely engrossing and beautifully made, but you’d be forgiven for not expecting much in the way of day-to-day practicality. As it turns out though, it provides a surprising amount of tangible relevance for those of us working in digital design.

With a prefigured sense of melancholy, Maletic uncovers the tale of Williams Electronic Games’ last ditch attempt to reinvigorate a gaming industry suffering through a precipitous decline. That the decline followed so soon after the industry’s peak, and that both happened so recently — the pinball business hit all-time highs in 1993 and was on its last legs by 1998 — is a turnabout in fortune familiar to anyone who lived through the dot-com wave that boomed in the late 1990s and foundered in the early part of this decade. In a way, the one can be seen as a less-glamorous template for the other, or even a cautionary tale for the present.

“For all the good the show has done, some animal welfare activists and others who monitor cruelty conditions in New York say it depicts a level of enforcement that is at odds with the reality on the streets.”

Very encouraging.

“You need a clean browser screenshot for a design presentation? Look no further…”

After filming in a part of southern Utah used to test eleven atomic bombs, ninety-one members of the cast and crew of “The Conqueror” got cancer in the ensuing years and decades.

“Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer has accused Apple boss Steve Jobs of being ‘greedy’ at a conference.”

Ouch.

On the advice of readers a few months ago, I decided to sample HBO’s urban crime procedural series, “The Wire,” reaching back in time to 2002 to start with the first season on DVD, courtesy of Netflix. Almost immediately, I understood what everyone was raving about. My reaction: “Oh, so this is what the best episodic television ever written looks like.”

“The Wire” is an embarrassment of riches. It’s full of pitch-perfect storytelling, methodically and confidently strewn across long, ambitious story arcs and populated with vivid, complex characters. Its attention to detail, and its inconspicuously accurate and unflinching realism are everything I’d ever hoped for in a dramatic series. The erratic and usually rare appearance of those virtuous traits in supposedly superior shows has frustrated me so much after years of TV viewing that it’s simply astonishing that this show has been able to sustain them so uniformly and effortlessly. The series also happens to be the best acted show I’ve ever seen — if there’s a more scarily commanding performer on television than Idris Elba as Stringer Bell, then I haven’t seen him. That guy should be a superstar by now.

After some patience, I finally got my iPhone situation sorted out: I’ve now happily left Verizon Wireless behind and am using my new iPhone on AT&T with generally satisfactory results. I tried AT&T’s wireless network for about a week in 1998 but dumped it quickly because its signal quality at the time was just plain unacceptable in New York City. So I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by how often my calls sound clear and strong; the network has obviously been significantly improved. The voice network, that is. You can pretty much forget about the company’s EDGE network for any sustained or urgent Internet access.

But that’s not what I’m here to complain about today. Rather, I want to point out a couple of conspicuous deficiencies in the iPhone. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m generally delighted with it; without a doubt, it’s a breakthrough device and, more importantly, it’s fun to use. But there are two significant and, to my mind, glaring omissions in the design of this product.

Seventeen handy, JavaScript-loaded bookmarks.

Yesterday we officially launched a brand new version of AIGANY.org which was beautifully and smartly designed by the dynamic duo of Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen over at Kind Company. They’re a small but extremely talented shop in Brooklyn that’s doing some stellar work, including a terrific and invaluable resource commemorating the work of Alvin Lustig.

AIGANY.org is the official site for the New York chapter, not to be confused with AIGA.org which was famously and wonderfully redesigned earlier this year by Happy Cog for the national organization. Naturally, our site is focused on all the design-related events that the chapter puts on in New York City during the fall, winter and spring of each year. All modesty aside, it’s really a hell of a lot of stuff; you’d have to TiVo the majority of a television season just to attend half of these events each year.

So to help keep everyone apprised of what’s going on, this redesign features a new blog called, somewhat cheekily, DESIGNY (RSS feed). Get it? DESIGNY, design-y and design-New York? Corny puns aside, we’ve staffed this blog with a hand-selected coterie of up-and-coming design tastemakers: Randy J. Hunt, Louise Ma and Michael Brenner. Between them, they’ll be covering all of the events we put on, and more.

If you buy yourself a piece of high quality luggage from Rimowa — and I’ve daydreamed about it, but have never been able to justify the exorbitant expense — you’re getting a structurally and aesthetically pristine object that’s going to get beaten up.

You know how airlines and luggage handlers can be; the vagaries of travel can be unkind to luggage of all kinds, including thousand-dollar, aluminum frame suitcases. The state in which a bag tumbles out of the chute onto a conveyor belt at baggage claim is never quite the same state in which you handed it over to the airline at check-in.

The thing with a Rimowa, though, is that those scratches, dings and dents are part of their aesthetic. A new, unspoiled Rimowa suitcase is actually the least desirable kind of Rimowa suitcase in that it is, to paraphrase something I once heard Jasper Johns say, an ‘ignorant’ suitcase. Unused objects are ignorant; only the ones that have been put to use, that have traveled, that have been tossed around have accumulated knowledge. That knowledge and familiarity, if it’s worn properly, can make an object desirable. A beaten, worn, scratched Rimowa then is actually a point of pride.

Great marketing idea: “Umpqua Bank [has] created a clever summer campaign to promote its services to small businesses: it is offering children a kit and start-up capital to set up and run a lemonade stand

Caitlin Dover on recent marketing trends for luxury residences.

“Fun, useful applications designed to run fast on your iPhone — even over AT&T’s EDGE network.” From the folks at Blue Flavor.

Calculate cab fares in seven major American cities.

“Many consumers bemoan the incessant rush of innovation that pushes manufacturers to tamper with products the consumers feel are already perfect.”

Thanks to Clint.

It’s still too hard to locate online versions of recent television commercials. When McDonald’s, say, runs an ad that I want to talk about here, I don’t know of a particular place where I can go find a link for it. Sure, the more notable ones make it to YouTube, but sometimes it’s the mundane ones that don’t that are more interesting to discuss.

There are two that I have in mind: one, from McDonald’s, features two young, college-age guys, beatboxing some ridiculous rhyme about Big Macs or something. And there’s another for Oreo cookies that plays like a home movie in which two pre-adolescent girls sing the praises of Oreos. If I could find them to show you, I would, but maybe you’ve seen them already.

They’re both cute enough, but what struck me was how thoroughly they ape the ‘YouTube style.’ Which is to say, they are shot on digital video (though at a higher grade of quality than most of the source material at YouTube) in a cinematographically naïve manner; they feature pronouncedly offhand, amateur and somewhat embarrassing performances from purportedly ‘real’ actors; and they are ostensibly improvised — or at least they go through considerable effort to obscure the influence of any sort of director behind the camera.

Via Coudal.

Good advice.

This afternoon I was chatting with a friend of mine about a graphic designer that we both know, and, maybe feeling a bit petty, we were remarking on how monumentally arrogant is this person. It got me thinking about how amazing it is to me when I encounter this kind of person — rude, disdainful and superior designers who can’t afford common courtesies to those below them in professional or social stature. When confronted with this type, what I invariably think in my head is, “Why are you so high on yourself? You’re just a designer.”

In no way am I trying to discount the social or material consequence of our profession; I’m as big a proponent of design’s singular, critical role in the world as anyone. At the same time, I try to remember that nothing that we do as designers is so important that it excuses us from being nice.

Aside from a very select few among us, we all earn our salaries in a service profession, after all. Which is to say that our job is to provide our labor — our design expertise — in service to others. By its very nature, that sort of arrangement demands a certain humbleness. With apologies to Yogi Berra: design is ninety percent talent and hard work; the other half is people skills.

And speaking of those select few: I’ve met a handful of the cream of the crop, those who practice design in a manner that might be described as ‘with impunity.’ To be sure, arrogance is well represented among them, but there are some stellar folks who happen to be extremely approachable, friendly and level-headed — and some of these folks happen at the very top of the industry. If these designers can bother to maintain humility even at those great heights, some of these lesser gods among us surely can too. I look up to the ones that can. Fuck the others.

Thanks to James G. Robinson for the link.

Shiny new device meets the blades of a blender.

Practices for iPhone battery care and usage between charges and before a replacement is necessary.

Via Very Short List.

“A company that unlocks cell phones in Europe said it is close to having an application that will allow customers to unlock their Apple iPhones so they can use SIM cards from carriers other than AT&T Inc. to activate the phones.”

I’m back from my miniature sabbatical and rested up. What did I do on my time off? I took a lot of walks with Mister President, hung out a lot in my new neighborhood with various friends, and managed to catch a movie or two, including one that was on my list.

Here’s my advice on seeing “Transformers”: if you find yourself falling asleep in the middle of its two-plus hours running time due to the movie’s crushingly dull story line, monotonously unrewarding visual pyrotechnics, and director Michael Bay’s apparent disinterest in characters, don’t fight the feeling. Instead, just do I what I did and let yourself nod off. You won’t miss a thing.

“Imagine walking to a sidewalk corner and finding a public bicycle. With a cell phone call or swipe of a card, you unlock it from its bike rack and ride it across town. Once at your destination, you steer to the closest bike rack and, with one more call or card swipe, return the bike to the public network. You pay less than US$0.50 for the trip, and the bike is once again available for the taking.” Via City Room.

Via City Room.

Documentary about three kids who remake “Raiders of the Lost Ark&#8221 shot by shot.

Really nice write-up proving that two New York publications can indeed play nice together in the sandbox. Be sure to watch the video over at NYTimes.com, too.

This week I extended my Fourth of July holiday by taking today, Thursday and tomorrow, Friday, off from work. The idea is that I’ll stay home and do nothing. It’s the vacation that most people, myself included, never allow themselves: luxuriating in an uninterrupted stretch of free time, without the hassle of travel, packing, site seeing and social commitments, and in the comfort of their own home.

I’ve been kind of burnt out for a few months, so I’ve been looking forward to this with great anticipation. So far I’m just hanging out, doing whatever I want to do, whether it’s watching television, or catching up on my reading, or hanging out with Mister President or fooling around on the Internet. It’s terrific; I’m letting myself off the hook for stuff I don’t feel like doing, and crossing off long-procrastinated items off of my list of things I’ve been wanting to do. I recommend it.

Unfortunately, the agenda for this miniature sabbatical does not include a heck of a lot of blogging. It just takes too much time to write these posts, and for this five-day weekend, anyway, I’d rather be doing other things. I’m not saying I’m not going to be blogging at all (or posting links to Elsewhere). I’m just saying the posts may be short. Like, this short.

Google hacks for iPhone.

Writer Emily Gordon looks at recent online iterations of various print magazines, including interviews Winterhouse Studio, Harper’s, The Nation, and Scientific American.

“Megan Jaegerman produced some of the best news graphics ever while working at The New York Times from 1990 to 1998.” Via Kottke.

“There is no mistaking that this is a first-release phone, both in the hardware and software. However, it is an Apple first release, equivalent in many respects to the fifth or sixth release quality we have come to expect from other major computer technology players.”

Subscription service makes historical documents available online with community-powered, collaborative annotation.

Here’s an update: my iPhone is now working after a rather tortuous weekend in which I was barely able to use it for anything. It wasn’t until Sunday night that my account was activated, allowing me to actually use the features on the phone at all. But even then, the telephone coverage wasn’t working (it was able to access Wi-Fi networks, though), and only this morning was I able to place a phone call with it. All told, that was some sixty hours or so after I originally bought it. Nicely done, Team AT&T, nicely done.

There’s so much iPhone coverage out there that I fear I won’t be able to add much of a unique perspective here, at least not today. I’m compiling a list of review points in my head, but here are my immediate take-aways.

Also be sure to read part two.