Category Archives: New York Times

Popularity Contest

Webby AwardsNominations for this year’s Webby Awards are out, and I’m here to shamelessly plug a couple of favorites. First off, NYTimes.com is up for an award in the somewhat odd category of Best Home/Welcome Page. Suffice it to say, I’d encourage everyone to vote for everything Times-related, including our excellently written The Caucus, up for Best Political Blog; DealBook, our indispensable breaking news outlet covering the world of high finance; NYTimes.com Real Estate, our highly addictive index and marketplace for homes you can and can’t afford; and These Times Demand the Times, the companion site to our marketing campaign that debuted last year, which is up for an award in the category of Best Copy/Writing.

But that first award I mentioned for Best Home/Welcome page is the one I’ve got my eye focused on most keenly. It would be a very satisfying affirmation of the work we all do at NYTimes.com to have our front door, so to speak, recognized for all the hard management, debate and tireless tweaking that goes into it; it would be nice to get it, is all I’m sayin’. So please go cast your vote.

Also, I want to cite Design Observer, up for for best Culture/Personal Blog, as another nominee that I think deserves special attention. (It has no affiliation with The New York Times.) Though not without its flaws — I sometimes take issue with its reserved embrace of the conventions of online publishing — it’s nevertheless a remarkable site. The fact that this kind of critical design thinking is published regularly and for free is still hard to believe even though the site is in its fourth year of publishing. Over that time, it’s come to occupy a unique and indispensable position in the blogosphere as a platform for some of the most engaging, most provocative and, crucially, most accessible serious design discourse around. They have my vote.

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Apple’s Unnecessary Objects

In last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Pamela Paul reviewed “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole,” a new book by the political theorist Benjamin R. Barber. (It has a very good cover.) In reading it, I was struck by one phrase she wrote:

“Children’s lives are reduced to shopping excursions in which their identities are subsumed by brands — they’re the Nike generation, Abercrombie kids, iPod addicts.”

Hold up, “iPod addicts”? I haven’t read Barber’s book yet, so I don’t know if he in fact includes Apple and its ubiquitous iPod among his list of corrupting, infantalizing and, ahem, swallowing culprits. But the mention of everyone’s favorite fruit company alongside what I consider to be less seemly brands — Nike and Abercrombie are two of my least favorite companies anywhere — was a surprise.

In reading this, I was also reminded of a scene from “Fight Club,” an admittedly much less serious critique of modern capitalism, in which the characters embarked on a casual vandalism spree, targeting various consumer brands. For a very brief moment, an old-style Apple logo is displayed prominently in one of the targeted window displays. It’s not a flattering guest appearance for a logo, as the message is clear: Apple is an enemy.

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Illustrate Me for February

Illustrate Me for FebruaryOne of the advantages of being employed at The New York Times is that I get access to some of the best design minds out there. And by access, I mean I can walk right up to them (if they’re not busy) and talk to them, and they’ll actually talk back to me. It’s pretty awesome. If they’re a talented designer working in publishing, at some point or other, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll come work at The Times, at least for a spell.

With a little bit of cajoling, once in a while I somehow manage to get a few of these designers to contribute to Illustrate Me, my ongoing project where I invite outside contributors to create illustrations for Subtraction.com’s monthly archives pages. It’s a kind of windfall when I pull it off, sort of like getting a Major League ballplayer to join you for a game of stickball.

Last year, Op-Ed art director Brian Rea turned in a fantastic piece for the June 2006 archives. This time out, I’m lucky enough to have a brand new piece for the February 2007 archives from none other than Nicholas Blechman. See it for yourself on the archive page.

In addition to being the Art Director for The New York Times Book Review, Nicholas is one of the most prolific and talented young art directors and illustrators out there. He’s amassed an impressive body of work in design and illustration, some of which you can see at Knickerbockerdesign.com. I’ve long been a fan of his spare, exceedingly intelligent and yet satisfyingly simple approach to visual communication, and as ever, I feel very fortunate he was able to create something typically splendid for display here.

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Illustrate Me for June

Illustrate MeThe June entry for Illustrate Me — the ongoing project where I invite designers and illustrators to create artwork for the archive pages of Subtraction.com — is now posted and available for your perusal. This month’s illustration was created by Brian Rea, an extremely talented freelance artist and designer who also happens to work with me at The New York Times.

Brian is the Art Director for the paper’s Op-Ed page, where he adds a visual wallop to our daily menu of opinion articles and editorials by coaching an eclectic array of other prolific illustrators — in effect, Illustrate Me is my minor league attempt to be the art director that Brian actually is. I’m a big fan of Brian’s work, and the illustration he created for June 2006 is a beauty — exactly the kind of work that I was hoping to generate when I started this project.

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