Writer Connie Bruck wrote this piece that ran a few weeks ago in The New Yorker about the men behind a plan to build a new NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. One of them, Phillip Anschutz, is a politically conservative billionaire seven times over, who made his fortune in oil and gas, real estate, railroads, telecommunications, and sports and entertainment. It’s a fascinating article, even though I’m not particularly sympathetic to his agenda or that of his compatriots. But I did really like this quote from him:

“It helps to have your back against the wall. Adversity is a huge advantage — as long as you think of it as an advantage — because it helps you do things you never thought you were capable of doing.”

Words to remember. You can read the full article here — but unfortunately, only if you’re a subscriber.

This Madrid-based designer has a stunning portfolio that uses a contemporary, intricate take on modernism. He’s also apparently a collage artist, as suggested in this poster he designed for what looks like a show of his collage works.

He seems like someone I would like to meet. Visit his site here.

Architect and designer Jerome Daksiewicz of Nomo Design has produced these beautifully matter-of-fact poster designs that capture the runway designs of various American airports.

You can see them in more detail at this link, or buy prints at their shop.

Riffing on a post I wrote a year ago called “The Sad Story of Illustration on the Web,” the always-incisive Paul Carr writes in the recently launched Pando Daily that, just as illustration has suffered because of the Web, so too has the rich tradition of punning at news publications been in decline since the advent of blogging.

“Here in the blogosphere [there’s] little-to-no place for editorial cleverness in headlines. Search engine optimization of headlines and a relentless drive for clickthroughs means that headlines must either be absolutely direct……or infuriatingly opaque.”

While Subtraction.com is not a serious news source or a significant publication, Carr’s lament has been my experience here too. I used to really enjoy writing mildly clever headlines for my posts, making frequent and at least passable use of puns. I gave up on that a while back, though, realizing that it wasn’t doing me any good in terms of maximizing the reach of what I write. I changed over to the more direct approach with great reluctance; it felt a lot like giving up something meaningfully human in order to more efficiently appeal to the machines. But hey, they’re going to rule us one day soon anyway, so may as well make nice sooner rather than later. Read Paul’s full post here.

It won’t be long before podcasting is a whole decade old, which I find amazing because I remember sampling my first podcasts when the medium was still brand new, even before they’d been rolled into iTunes. For almost the entirety of that almost-decade, I’ve been listening to podcasting impresario extraordinaire Leo Laporte, whose This Week in Tech (TWiT) empire has been one of the form’s biggest successes.

That’s why I was so flattered when I was invited to appear on one of Leo’s new shows, TWiT Photo, which he co-hosts with the amazing photographer Catherine Hall. The episode was recorded live on Tuesday and you can download it here.

Truth be told, I was a little nervous about appearing on TWiT Photo because, if you peruse the show’s already deep archives, they typically feature lots of really talented professional photographers. By contrast, I regard myself as nothing more than a lucky amateur, but Catherine and Leo structured a great discussion about the intersection of design and photography, where the two disciplines overlap and how they can each complement the other. And, of course, we got a chance to talk about Mixel, too. It was loads of fun. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast here.

Designer, illustrator and artist Stephen Wildish made these poster-like film graphics that, to my mind, are much cleverer than the standard film poster er-imaginings that designers often create these days to promote themselves. Each graphic is a visual quiz in which you try to identify a notable film title that corresponds to each letter of the alphabet. Here’s the one from the 2000s:

For film buffs, these are quite entertaining and surprisingly challenging (to his credit it’s not the accuracy of the illustrations that makes them tough). Wildish has also created one each for the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. See them all at his blog and visit his portfolio site.

Come see me next Fri 20 Jan at the WebVisions conference when it rolls into New York City. I’ll be appearing on stage with my good friend Alice Twemlow, chairperson of D-Crit, the Masters Program in Design Criticism at The the School of Visual Arts. Our session is called “Design + Entrepreneurship,” and we’ll be talking about the unique opportunity that designers have today to create the kinds of new businesses that only designers can imagine. This, of course, will cover Mixel, and I’ll talk about the genesis of that product and how we turned it into a company.

Here’s an added bonus: if you use this link you can get 40% off the cost of the conference as well as a free pass to Kevin Hoyt’s “Web Standards Playground” workshop. Register here.

I wrote about Ariel Aberg-Riger, one of my favorite up and coming artists, back in September. Since then she’s become both a friend and an incredibly prolific user of Mixel (and even a curator of standout mixels by others).

Ariel’s first gallery exhibition is opening this Friday at TODA in Brooklyn. It will showcase many of her wonderful drawings and, as an added bonus, she’ll be drawing portraits of visitors to the gallery from 4 to 6:00p that afternoon. More info here.

A roundup of sequels, prequels and franchise extensions that will make their appearance at a multiplex near you in the next twelve months. Also included for good measure in the second part of this article is a survey of the wannabe franchises debuting in 2012.

It’s probably not necessary to lament the preponderance of these kinds of movies relative to the number of original ideas in movies today, but jeez, some of these get me depressed just reading their descriptions. Anyway, it all makes for fascinating reading, which is par for the course for the excellent Box Office Mojo. Read the post here.