Soilax with Germisol, originally uploaded by saltycotton.

Another example of commercial marketing and social benefit: Soilax, a household cleaner from the 1950s that billed itself as an "important new contribution to family health."

Tornado Alley, originally uploaded by paul.malon.

Easy to ridicule as retro kitsch, but quite revealing. The American ideal in 1952: mobile and not working. No longer bound to a piece of land; liberated from having to earn money to survive.

Before then, you're the walking dead.

Alan Light with Shel Dorf, originally uploaded by Alan Light.

Earlier today I posted an image from an interesting set of storyboards for a charitable venture. Teasing aside re the bingo, if you've read my work for a while you no doubt guessed that I find storyboarding to be essential for any enterprise--nonprofit or for-profit. Ventures aren't just products and profit; they're interfaces, experiences and, yes, stories. Pictures can be far more effective the spreadsheets in making the whole thing work.

On a related front, today I also have been thinking a lot about this post on the passing of Shel Dorf, founder of the San Diego Comic Con. I've written before about how Comic-Con--a 501(c)(3) organization--blends commerce, charity and community, but as Mark Evanier observes the organization has also had a substantial impact on the revitalization of San Diego itself:

One point I forgot to mention in my piece and which I've included in all the interviews I've given is that it isn't just the comic book community that owes a debt to Shel. It's the city of San Diego, as well. You'd think that the world's largest comic convention would be established in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. Why is it in San Diego? Because Shel Dorf was in San Diego.

And because the con was in San Diego, San Diego changed for the better. San Diego in 1970 was not the kind of town that attracted national conventions. It attracted some tourists because of the zoo and climate. It attracted a lot of sailors on shore leave because of the Naval Stations. But when, for example, the major political parties were considering where to gather to nominate their presidential candidates, San Diego was not even in the running. It didn't have the facilities or the hotels. Now, it has enough of both to lure major conventions and to warrant the building of huge Hiltons and Marriotts. The convention trade has meant a lot of urban renewal to San Diego and the Comic-Con was a major catalyst and inspiration.

So a city was transformed and in many ways reborn...and all because Shel's parents moved there for their retirements and Shel followed.

Yankees Ticker Tape Parade 4, originally uploaded by Daniella Zalcman.

As you can see from the above picture, today's version of ticker tape includes whole pages of paper flung from office windows. I noticed that pages floating around me during my short drop-by at the Yankees parade in the Financial District looked like pages from a law reference binder, so I checkout out the text:

The law regarding judicial administration of corporate bankruptcy. At the same time, the crowd was shouting "Wall Street sucks!"

The experience of hundreds of people pressed together in a small alley was for the most part Hobbesian, but I gotta admit I laughed when the little kids standing next to me heartily joined in that chant.

sarah's drawings, originally uploaded by rufflemuffin.

Storyboards--a direct descendant of the cartone and modern cartoon--are a staple of films, plays & commercials. Above: design collective Getgo uses the medium to plan a new social venture that apparently involves flying bingo balls.

More at sustainournation.ning.com.

In the immortal words of Dorothy Parker, Tonstant Weader twowed up.

The United Nations today named the Disney animated character Tinker Bell an “Honorary Ambassador of Green” to help promote environmental awareness among children.

The announcement came just prior to a screening at UN Headquarters in New York of the world premiere of the Walt Disney animated film, “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure.”

“We're delighted Tinker Bell has agreed to be our Honorary Ambassador of Green,” said Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. “This beloved animated character can help us inspire kids and their parents to nurture nature and do what they can to take care of the environment.”

In the midst of rubber conservation during WWII, Bendix marketed its bike brakes as a means of conserving the valuable resource & thereby serving the public good.

"The Way to Drink Your Vitamins", originally uploaded by bayswater97.

Light posting, obviously, as I focus on work in the life that's allegedly more real! In the meantime, here's a vintage ad that perhaps tries a little to hard to leverage the rhetoric of virtue--however effective this vitamin-enriched chocolate milk may have been in improving kids' circulatory systems, calling it Hemo--with a red logo at that--makes it seem better suited for the Children of the Night.

Via Jezebel, a sign that environmentalism has become too trendy for its own good: a new line of eco-sexy costumes. From the ad copy:

This costume is perfect for the eco friendly consumer. Help spread the eco friendly message! Go Green Girl - includes green pleated mini dress featuring recycling badge, white lace and ribbon embellishments, and GO GREEN! Screen print on the butt removable Recyclers Do It Twice pin and earth bag. Costume is packaged in recyclable paper bag. Please note does not include stockings or shoes. This eco-friendly costume is Available in Adult Sizes X-Small, Small, Medium, and Large.

Made of 100% Organic Cotton.

We are doomed.

Omar Effendi ad 1946, originally uploaded by Kodak Agfa.

Tom's Shoes has received a lot of well-deserved attention for its buy-one-give-one strategy, but it's far from the first store to use charity as a branding strategy.

Above: an ad for the Omar Effendi department store from 1946. I'll let the original uploader and a commenter explain what's up:

Kodak Agfa, uploader: An old [ad] for Omar Effendi department store in 1946, praising King Farouk and the Bare feet project, where the rich launced a compagin to gather donation to the low classes in Egypt , it took that name , because some of these classes then did not afford buy something to wear in their feet and thus the name.

I think it was a stupid provoking name.

Commenter: No it is a proof that they were sensitive about the human condition by that time after 1952 they made us eat our shoes.

Today was one of those days where I had old media on my mind, so I took my camera and tracked the dotted lines to snap images of things I'd noticed on my daily walks.

The video above is something I've wanted to try for a while. On the repurposed Hudson River pier just south of Pier 54, there are some old installed binoculars with dusty interior lenses. I noticed that the my camera would fit in an eyepiece, and I thought the resulting image just might look like some of the old photos & films I've seen from the nineteenth & early twentieth centuries.

Et voila. Circular diffusion, gauzy images, faded color and harsh sound--it's several decades of early photographic experimentation distilled into one thirty-five second movie.

Below: a look back at the City from the Hudson in 1903. The piers below--those that survive--have been or will be remade into recreational areas, with playgrounds, greenspace, seating or entertainment complexes.

Here's a fascinating set of photos documenting Asgarda, a group of women who have formed their own alternate society "based on the the tribal traditions of the Scythian Amazons of ancient Greek mythology."

Jezebel has an excellent roundup of information regarding Asgarda, including this excellent first-person account from the photographer.

Melies Moon Fence, originally uploaded by trexfiles23.

An iron fence on W. 21st St. in New York depicts the classic image of a rocket crashing into the Man in the Moon from Melies' 1902 pioneering science fiction film, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).

The fence is across from the Clinton School of the Arts, and I happened to snap this photo during lunch break. After I was done shooting about 10 or so photos, I noticed that a crowd of kids had surrounded me and continued talking about the image as I walked away.

Soooo, educator that I am, I went back and asked if any of them knew what it was. None of them did, but they agreed that it was "awesome" and wondered if the thing in his eye might be a bullet. I explained about the Melies film, its history, and what the image was supposed to be, all of which the kids said was even more awesome, so they asked me to repeat the title so they could watch the film on Youtube.

Highlight of my day, that.

Dancing for charity, originally uploaded by pinklilyblossom.

Barclays Bank is a multibillion dollar multinational financial institution. Above: a group of employees dance on the streets to raise money for charity.