Hot off the Silkscreen Presses

The Shirt ProjectA plug for a nice project from some friends: The Shirt Project is a collaboration between Louise Ma (who works in the design group at NYTimes.com) and Rich Watts. It’s a not-for-profit experiment funded by a fellowship that the two recent graduates received from the Cooper Union School of Art.

The idea is to design, print and sell a series of tee-shirts featuring topical, news-driven graphics. Though customers can buy the garments on à la carte, The Shirt Project is most interesting as a subscription. For US$75, customers get five shirts, sent one at a time, every four weeks — or roughly on that schedule. There will be ten in total.

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Conscientiously Objecting to the Living Room War

Apple TVTime was, you’d buy a TV, bring it home and plant it in your living room. Then you’d watch it. For like a decade. And when the picture started failing, you’d go and buy another and do it all over again.

Nowadays, television is more than a piece of furniture, it’s an experience. It’s multi-sourced, time-shifted, narrow-casted, and/or delivered on-demand. Digital, in short. Like all experiences in the digital age, television now requires the support of a full complement of systems — a peripheral army of boxes, wires and software — to make it happen. You can’t experience digital television, really, with just one of anything.

This is why, I think, I’m an unlikely customer for Apple TV, Steve Jobs’ set-top contender in the living room war. To be honest, the couch potato in me is intrigued by its ability to access Internet video, which I’m sure I’d watch more of were it made as convenient as Apple TV promises. And last week’s announcement that Apple will rent movies on demand through the device, too, is intriguing.

But I just can’t imagine myself buying one anytime soon. It’s not only that I would be adding another box to my living room (though I’m certainly not eager to take on that added complexity), it’s also how much the digital television experience demands of us.

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