Magazine designer and enthusiast Jeremy Leslie is pessimistic about the iPad’s prospects for reviving the magazine form:

“The main issue is that readers — paying or not — aren’t engaging with overtly magazine-like apps. There’s a simple reason for this: printed magazines work better in every way. They are a simple one-off purchase that can be used (both in a navigating and reading sense) anywhere. They are lightweight, easily shared and disposable. You’ve heard the arguments plenty of times but this first year of apps have done nothing to weaken them. Why would you buy an app when it only repeats the printed magazine?”

Obviously, I agree.

Music writer Steven Hyden muses on his experience reviewing Radiohead’s latest album, especially with regard to how long and how often a reviewer should spend with each record. It’s a really thoughtful rumination on how we experience music and how that can make writing about it difficult:

“But the tricky thing about music writing — and part of what makes it the trickiest form of arts writing, in my opinion — is that a good piece of music should elicit varying responses over spans of time and in all sorts of environments. Unlike books, movies, or TV shows, songs are supposed to be experienced many, many times… Music by nature is a slow burn, parsing out its charms in small increments over the course of weeks, years, even decades. Music can be the focus of your attention, but it often fades into the background, only to re-emerge when you least expect it and reveal a whole other dimension. No other art form weaves its way into the fabric of your life like music, and this inevitably shapes our feelings about it.”

Hyden’s point, in part, is that “The King of Limbs” demands at least several listens, but that imperative of sustained experience makes it so subjective to write about — the opinions he formed just before writing his review may not be accurate based on another week or two of listening. And besides, who has the room in their life to spend so much time with an album, anyway? Read his complete, very thoughtful essay here.

For my part I’ve been listening to “The King of Limbs” regularly since its release and have come to the conclusion that it’s not their best work by a long shot. It’s a bit disjointed: the most interesting parts aren’t as good as the best Radiohead, and the most typically Radiohead parts aren’t very interesting.

The site HiLobrow is running a series on seminal comic book artist Jack Kirby. Each installment examines one panel — not one issue, but a single panel — from Kirby’s body of work and discusses it in detail. Essayists include Douglas Rushkoff and Mark Frauenfelder. This series runs in conjunction with “Cosmic Debris: Kirby in the 70’s,” an exhibition of enlarged Kirby art over at 4CP, which I wrote about last August.

There are nineteen installments so far. Read them all here.

For the fifth year in a row, this virtual awards ceremony, which plays out across several blog posts over two and a half weeks, tallies the collective wisdom of a loose-knit band of cinephiles and critics to honor the best in film. In addition to the expected “best of” categories, The Muriels make note of several interesting superlatives, including the year’s best body of work and the best film from a decade ago. More awards will be announced until 06 Mar, helping to fortify you with some thoughtful criticism and film writing until the Oscars comes along and spoils your appetite.

An amazing dissertation on one of the most important genres of American film, written by the legendary screenwriter of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull.” Not for everybody, but worth it for those willing to take the time to read it in full.

A beautiful collection of intricately designed “title pages, headings and letterforms clipped, cropped and isolated from maps and map publications issued between about 1880 and 1920.”

See all of them here.

Boutique design publisher Unit Editions have announced their latest book: “TD 63-73: Total Design and Its Pioneering Role in Graphic Design.” An “insider’s account” of one of the more influential design studios from the height of mid-century graphic design.

“Written by Ben Bos, a key member of the studio, the book describes how a group of idealistic Dutch designers came together to form a multidisciplinary design studio that helped shape the future of graphic design. Total Design began in Amsterdam in 1963. Ben Bos joined the founders (Wim Crouwel, Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer and the Schwarz Brothers) from the outset. Together, and individually, they set new benchmarks for identity design, cultural design, exhibition design and product design.”

Preview images look very promising, and the cover is gorgeous.

Pre-orders will receive free international shipping (the book is sold from the U.K., where Unit is based). Of course, ordering means figuring out the company’s Web site, which is just good enough that it really should be much more usable and better designed than it is. Start deciphering the ordering process here.

Apple and Ikea demonstrate that user-centric design is a fallacy, argues this opinion column by design professional Jens Martin Skibsted. He insists that “user insights can’t predict future demand,” “user-centered processes stifles creativity,” and that “user focus makes companies miss out on disruptive innovations.” He also (anonymously) quotes members of the Apple design team regarding their view of user-centric design:

“It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love.”

This is a healthy debate within the design profession. I hope it becomes a bigger and bigger debate, too. Read the full piece here.

Depending on whether you think a stylus tool would make for a much needed complement to your iPad or a heretical corruption of its original idea, you may or may not like industrial designer Don Lehman’s new Kickstarter project: The MORE/REAL Stylus Cap attaches to either end of standard-issue Sharpie markers, Bic ballpoints or Pilot Fineliner pens, giving users greater precision for sketching and drawing.

Find out more and pledge at the Kickstarter page.

Aristic duo Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, working with local youths, repainted the buildings surrounding a square in this poor Rio de Janeiro neighborhood with a striking, multi-color ray design. The project took a month, with the local workers receiving an education in painting craft (“As every wall, every house needs another solution, the painters learn to work with all kinds of material.”) as well as a paycheck.

Read more about the project here. Via Claire Desjardins.