Archives

Desktop Clutter

HP DesktopJust for posterity’s sake, I wanted to publish these two screen shots we took of a brand new Hewlett Packard computer we bought at Behavior. It’s a true eyesore — nearly half of this virgin desktop is littered with advertisements and junkware. The second screen shot is a look at some sort of umbrella program that HP includes with the machine, probably intended to help new users make their way through the confusing mess of meaningless icons.

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Crazy Old Wizard

Saddam KenobiThere’s something pathetic and familiar about the way Saddam Hussein looked when he was captured this weekend by coalition troops. It took me all day to figure it out, but I finally realized that, in that gray beard, nappy hairdo and especially those disheveled robes, he reminds me of ‘old Ben Kenobi,’ living like a hermit somewhere in the treacherous, dry hills of Tatooine. There’s nothing nearly as benign about this murderous former dictator, though, and for the fact that his capture will provide a more definitive kind of closure to Iraqis, this turn of events strikes me as significant, and in a storybook fashion, a real triumph of justice. On the other hand, I am bracing myself for the political ramifications, the trickery that the Bush administration will undoubtedly employ in order to reap the benefits of this big win, and the confused, panicked scurrying among Democratic contenders for the Presidential nomination as they try to make sense of their diminishing chances in 2004.

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December Days

Right after Thanksgiving, I took a good hard look at December and even then I knew it would be a terrible month for regular posts to my blog. There’s just too much stuff to do during the last month of the year, from year-end purchasing and finances at Behavior to finishing up RFPs in the hope of lining up at least some new business for January, to say nothing of all the holiday commitments with empty checkboxes next to them. I wanted to do all of my shopping online this year because I will have virtually zero opportunity to go out into the real world for it, but even so, I’m finding that, today, I’m running right up against the absolute deadline for shipping in time for Christmas delivery. December is made of more impatient, entirely unaccommodating days.

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The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker

Al GoreBefore I learned to like baseball, the race for the Presidency of the United States was all the baseball I needed: an intensive, protracted race that changed daily, full of odd twists and turns and intricate, obscure statistical bellwethers. The news that former Vice President Al Gore will endorse Howard Dean tomorrow is exactly the kind of grand, highly dramatic turn of events that makes this race so compelling, at least to me.

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Twelve Inches of Fun

We are under a blizzard of snow here in New York City. It’s not exactly twelve inches, but it’s a more significant amount of snowfall than the mid-Atlantic has become accustomed to getting this early in the season. I, for one, am not particularly excited by the sudden transition to sub-freezing temperatures, slush-filled sidewalks and skin-chapping, chilling winds, but I admit it was a lot of fun watching the dog frolic in the snowdrifts this morning — and yet another reminder of his recent anniversary in our household.

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I Found Summer

Donna SummerAs a know-nothing, seventeen year old snob with an ill-informed set of rules for the way art and music should be made, I wouldn’t have given a second thought to completely passing by and paying no attention to a Donna Summer album. But after reading a recent interview with her, my thirtysomething curiosity was provoked, and I bought myself a copy of her disco-era classic “Love to Love You Baby” today. First of all, this cover is remarkable, a gloriously posed expression of emerging sexuality. And second, this music is beautiful, a lush and lilting dance-floor reverie. I regret how long it took me to open up to it.

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Posters for President

PostersIt was a charming idea for The New York Times Magazine to commission nine prominent graphic designers to design posters for one of the nine Democratic candidates vying for the presidential nomination, but charming is exactly the problem. Each designer drew a candidate’s name from a hat, so there was no deliberate synergy in politics or artistic temperament, which may explain why most all of these posters are so flat and lifeless, but it doesn’t explain why, first of all, almost none of these designers really bothered to address the central challenge of the exercise, and second, why a disproportionately high number are all drawn from the same source.

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The Road Runner Ahead

Road RunnerWhen the first previews of Mac OS X’s “Aqua” interface made their way around the Web, I remember a designer friend of mine pronounced them to be “ass.” This was in the midst of a rage for a pixel-based aesthetic that fetishized jaggy fonts and graphics tied intimately to the display limitations of computer monitors.

Many designers then looked down upon any design element that was anti-aliased, shaded or that cast a shadow of any sort, and yet it’s since become apparent that this is the future of interface design. Soon afterwards, Windows XP copied much of the same aesthetic, and Windows applications like the recent version of AOL and new programs like Picasa have whole-heartedly embraced this direction.

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