We’ve seen some small-scale examples of art direction on the web, but this seems to me to be something in the ‘medium’-scale range – I really love this stuff, hopefully they can keep it fresh.

Also, I can’t wait for the day when ad budgets and tools are at the point where designers can art direct on the article-level, as opposed to just designing templates and frameworks. Maybe this gets us an inch closer to that goal.

In a recent broadcast, the resident propagandist at Fox News takes Rockefeller Center’s vintage public art and architecture to task for promoting Communism and Fascism through murals, friezes, and engravings bearing symbols that subliminally project vile values.

Politics aside, just watching the video, what is Beck’s point? That oil money funds communist revolution? That he is as good a propagandist as the communists?

The mind reels at his delusions.

I’ve been neglecting the blog lately, though I am tentatively sketching out big plans for its future… some day, (probably in the fall), I’ll get back to this.

But, in way of an update, Lisa finally posted all of her photos from our little European adventure a couple of weeks ago, see below. 10 days with Jason and Cristen in Paris, Amsterdam, the Rhineland, Bavaria and Berlin.

Berlin is an amazingly weird place — I feel like we only scratched the surface, I must go back.

My iPhone-only photos are on flickr »

‘Buttermilk’, from Jessica Hische.

Illustrator/Designer Jessica Hische released her first typeface today, and it looks gorgeous. Buttermilk is a “bold script that would be just perfect for magazine headlines, book title type, holiday cards, initial caps, you name it.”

The numerals are especially beautiful, and she promises a “huge array of ligatures to help you set it beautifully and easily.”

I worked with Jessica last fall on a nice retro logo for the Pogue-o-matic. Be sure to check out Jessica’s work, (I’m particularly fond of her letterpress stuff.)

…‘horizontal sites’ build a new kind of importance hierarchy. Designers don’t realize it, but unaligned vertical stacks are a remnant of the way that newspapers were designed—in columns, up and down. These new layouts are more like movie screens and wide monitors, with action moving left and right.

A very simple, but potentially evolutionary step in our understanding of how readers can best scan and make sense of content.

London Calling, cassette tape on canvas, 2009 — By Erika Iris Simmons

Two things that I really love about this illustration by Erika Iris Simmons:

1. It’s the iconic image from the cover of The Clash’s masterpiece London Calling.
2. It’s rendered with casette tape!

View it at the largest size to see the detail.

I haven’t yet sprung for a license, (mostly because there isn’t any offline caching so that I can read on the subway). But, there is a lovely looking iPhone-optimized site, and it looks as thoughtfully and lovingly designed as his web analytics product, Mint.

Be sure to watch the video demo, and note that Fever is not a hosted service—you have to install it on your own server.

From NY Mag’s Vulture Blog:

On Saturday, before an audience of 150, Blur played its first concert as a four-piece in a decade, at Essex, England’s East Anglian Railway Museum (it’s where they performed one of their earliest gigs) — and some wonderful person has uploaded video of practically the entire show.

Video of Blur performing ‘There’s no Other Way’ on June 13th.

More Coverage:

• YouTube: joejoejoehearn’s Blur Videos »
• NME: Blur Make Live Comeback in Essex Museum »
• NYMag.com Vulture: Blur Reunion Show Predictably Terrific »

[Via HalfAlien]

We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.

Soon enough, @font-face CSS at-rule support will come to all major browsers, so use of non-traditional web fonts will increase. If this catches on, the web in 2010 might look a lot different than it does now—I wonder who will be the first major online content provider to use it?

Looking north at 42nd Street, in Times Square.

A few colleagues and I walked over to Times Square at lunch to check out the new Broadway—now shut off to cars, it’s another attempt by the city and the Bloomberg administration to reclaim the streets for pedestrians.

The Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff says:

Now, standing in the middle of Broadway, you have the sense of being in a big public room, the towering billboards and digital screens pressing in on all sides.

This adds to the intimacy of the plaza itself, which, however undefined, can now function as a genuine social space: people can mill around, ogle one another and gaze up at the city around them without the fear of being caught under the wheels of a cab.

There’s a couple of great slideshows, too. And, don’t miss Michael Crowley’s New York Magazine profile of the woman behind it all, NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

Photo by Soraya.

The New York Times, my employer, won 5 Pulitzer Prizes today, “for work on subjects as varied as America’s wars in Asia, the sudden downfall of a political titan, art from ancient to modern, and a history-making presidential campaign.”

The interesting one, from my point of view, is the award for breaking the Gov. Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. No, not because it’s salacious or bawdy, but because the exclusive wasn’t held for the next morning’s paper – it was put up online, on NYTimes.com, in the middle of the day. I think that this will be an important milestone in the evolution of quality journalism.

The Nieman Lab points to a funny anecdote that ran in the NY Observer last year:

Back in the day — you know, five years ago — when a big news story had been written, edited, fact-checked, vetted, proofread, and anguished over one last time, an adrenaline-pumped editor would cry out, “Run it!” As in, the presses.

When The New York Times was ready to report that Eliot Spitzer, then governor of New York, had been implicated in a prostitution ring, managing editor Jill Abramson yelled 20 feet across the newsroom, “O.K., hit it!” As in, the button to publish the story on NYTimes.com.

I love that. Congrats to my colleagues in the news room, and let’s keep it up!

Victoria Bergsman, DJing at The Bell House in Brooklyn.

Nedward: Victoria Bergsman (formerly of The Concretes) is DJing at The Bell House, much to my delight. Waiting for Camera Obscura!

As big a fan of Camera Obscura as I am, the more interesting bit Tuesday night was a special guest DJ, Victoria Bergsman. A lot of people know her voice as the female counterpoint in Young Folks, the Peter Bjorn and John sing-along hit from a couple of years ago. But she was also the singer in one of my favorite bands, The Concretes. (Camera Obscura fans should check out their eponymous debut album.) She has since left the band, and formed a solo project under the name Taken By Trees, (also a great debut).

Anyhow, I might have been the only person in the crowd that had any idea who she was – or cared – so Lisa encouraged me to say hello. But, I’m just not one of those people who walks up to a famous person, and just gushes in their face. Call it shyness, call it fear of disappointment… the bottom line is that I chickened out.

To make matters worse, Lisa went over to the DJ booth without me, and told Ms. Bergsman that “her friend was a big fan,” but that he “didn’t want to bother her.” Nice. So now I’m shy, and embarrassed.

I don’t really regret it that much, but I would’ve liked to show off some dance moves from The Concretes’ On The Radio video. I’d like to think that she would’ve laughed.

Nedward is digging into the new MoMA.org… so far, very intriguing. Fixed nav bars are the new hottness.

I just sent the tweet above a few minutes ago, but wanted to post some more context about it here. MoMA launched a revamped web site today, with a lot of hook-ins to social networking sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. But, one of the more compelling changes is the addition of a Facebook-style fixed nav bar, at the bottom:

The new MoMA.org, with its fixed navigation bar.

NYTimes.com uses something very similar for TimesPeople, as does Google with their Social Bar. So, this seems to be an emerging trend – and though some point out that it’s not much different of a concept as old HTML framesets, I kind of dig it. Websites have come a long way towards feeling like desktop apps, and this is a good implementation.

The museum’s twitter feed credits MoMA’s internal Digital Media Team and forofficeuseonly.com with the design. Also, for more information on the relaunch, check out the Times article that ran yesterday:

MoMA’s new site, which makes its debut on Friday, is an almost complete reconstruction of how the museum presents itself online. It features livelier images from its collection and exhibitions, increased use of video and the new interactive calendars and maps. But more important, the museum wants the site to transform how the public interacts with an institution that can sometimes seem forbidding and monolithic.

Recovery.gov

The stimulus package is now law, so there are going to be a lot of public works projects in need of a logo, right?

Yesterday, the president unveiled 2 such logos – designed by Mode, Aaron Draplin and Chris Glass. The logos will be stamped on public works funded by the economic stimulus package, FDR style. President Obama said that its intent was to remind Americans that:

When you see them on projects that your tax dollars made possible, let it be a reminder that our government – your government – is doing its part to put the economy back on the road of recovery.

One wonders if the Obama team is going to rebrand the entire Federal government, one agency at a time.

The residency is to celebrate the release this week of their twelfth studio record, No Line On The Horizon. And it just so happens that you can grab a copy of it in non-DRM MP3 format for $4 from Amazon. I don’t regularly listen to U2 much any more, but this is a great thing for a major-label artist to do, and I’m more than happy to give it a few listens for that price and format.

UPDATE 3/5: Night two, the boys played Magnificent, which sounds like a classic U2 song. Bono needs to treat his voice with more care, though.

These Brooklynites, most in their 20s and 30s, are hand-making pickles, cheeses and chocolates the way others form bands and artists’ collectives. They have a sense of community and an appreciation for traditional methods and flavors. They also share an aesthetic that’s equal parts 19th and 21st century, with a taste for bold graphics, salvaged wood and, for the men, scruffy beards.

Make sure to check out the interactive map, too.

Also, Frank Bruni reviews one of my favorite new restaurants near our home in Brooklyn, Buttermilk Channel, along with an audio slideshow:

Buttermilk Channel [is] a restaurant of real standards, noteworthy ambition and uncommon slavishness to trends. It’s laudable and predictable in equal measures. And it was packed every time I went…

The look of the restaurant, whose corner location affords it pretty windows on two sides, is on the polished side of homey. There’s nicely buffed wood, a spidery brass lighting fixture and a honeyed glow from it and handsome sconces along the walls.

There’s also ample space between tables: the owner, Doug Crowell, isn’t trying just to jam in as many people as possible. But he does ask you to trade some comfort and convenience for the refreshingly low prices.

These few blocks on Court Street are starting to fill with interesting and tasty culinary operations: Buttermilk Channel, Frankie’s Spuntino, and the newly opened and not-yet-visited soon to open Prime Meats.

UPDATE: The Times posted a Q & A between readers and subjects of the Brooklynite food producers piece.

I’m just catching up on this season now, but episode six has Kristen Wiig from SNL… omgz!

When I Grow Up video from Karin Dreijer Andersson’s solo project, Fever Ray.

Publicity shot of Karin Dreijer Andersson.

Karin Dreijer Andersson has a solo album out now, under the name Fever Ray. She is one-half of the sibling pair that is The Knife, and the solo album is very much a continuation of their moody work on Silent Shout.

This is the second Fever Ray video, and it’s a nice compliment to the gothy/creepy visuals in the first video, If I Had a Heart, which was directed by frequent Knife collaborator Andreas Nilsson. (See the video for Silent Shout, and his visuals for their last tour.)

And no, that’s not Karin in the video – she hasn’t appeared regularly in her videos since her days in the Swedish indie band Honey is Cool, in the 90s. (A few notable exceptions include You Take My Breath Away, a chipper duet with former First Floor Power front-woman Jenny Wilson, and her guest vocals on Röyksopp’s club hit What Else is There? No, she’s not the floating chick, but the one sitting at the table, mid-way through.)

Speaking of that Röyksopp song, this video is directed by the same director, Martin de Thurah, a Danish filmmaker that seems to have a thing for effects and screwing around with the laws of physics – beautiful work.

I warmed to the album almost instantly, but seeing the songs come to life in these videos, they’ve started to take on a cinematic quality inside my head. Like all of Karin’s work, some people might be turned off by her singing style or be too quick to dismiss her as Björk-lite. I like this album, and I like it more and more after each listen.

Purchase & Download Fever Ray »

Interview magazine interview with Karin »