Speaking of Fonts
Here's an interview I did with CBC radio on the subject. And look for their "font, coffee, or baby name" game coming soon. (I"ll post a link.)
UPDATE: The game is here.
Dynamist Blog
Typesetting the Candidates
Steve Heller rounds up design stars to comment on John McCain's choice of typeface. Those who can keep their politics in check have some interesting comments, with Michael Bierut and Ellen Lupton picking up a Vietnam resonance and Paula Antonelli a generational note. Matthew Carter uses the font to test vice presidential possibilities: "In the end, however, my research suggests that the optimal running mate — so long as you don't have to typeset her first name — is RICE." [Via Design Observer.]
In an earlier post, Heller talked with branding consultant Brian Collins about Barack Obama's typographical identity. He also examined the DIY graphics of Ron Paul supporters. The Obama campaign's graphic design is coherent and sophisticated, while the Paul campaign's is wildly individualized and gritty. Each in its own way represents a major departure from the generic design of most presidential campaigns.
There's No Such Thing as a Free Carbon Cap
It's infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline. The candidates treat CO2 emissions as a social issue like gay marriage, with no economic ramifications. In the real world, barring a massive buildup of nuclear plants, reducing carbon dioxide emissions means consuming less energy and that means raising prices a lot, either directly with a tax or indirectly with a cap-and-trade permitting system. (Alternatively, the government could just ration energy, but fortunately we aren't going in that direction.) The last thing you'd want to do is reduce gas taxes during the summer, as John McCain has proposed. That would just encourage people to burn more gas on extra vacation trips--as any straight talker would admit.
The connection between higher prices for energy and reduced carbon dioxide emissions may not have hit the national consciousness yet, but the LAT's Margo Roosevelt reports that California utilities--and eventually their customers--are beginning to realize this isn't just a symbolic issue.
Fighting global warming is the feel-good cause of the moment.
But in California, the self-congratulation that followed the 2006 passage of the nation's first comprehensive law to curb emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases is fast turning to acrimony.
A ferocious behind-the-scenes brawl over how to regulate electricity plants, the biggest source of carbon dioxide after motor vehicles, has pitted Southern California's public power generators against its for-profit utilities.
Why? Because some taxpayer-owned utilities, such as Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power, get close to half their electricity from the nation's dirtiest energy source: coal.
The DWP, to whom I pay my electric bills, wants out of the carbon dioxide caps. It apparently thinks the law shouldn't apply to socialist enterprises.
UPDATE: If you haven't read it already, check out my favorite economist's analysis of carbon taxes vs. cap-and-trade.
Health Care Design Cont'd
In response to my column on the generally sad state of health-care aesthetics, reader Stephen Rauch sends a link to this trade journal article on "Beautifying Without Breaking the Bank."
With competition growing fiercer in the marketplace, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are upgrading their looks to draw healthcare consumers into a welcoming, less sterile-looking environment. However, cost is a significant consideration when determining what changes can fit into the facility budget.
"The owner's desire to limit the overall 'front-end' capital costs of a project usually result in high-end finishes being limited to the waiting room and reception desk areas and possibly the hotel-room-like extended recovery rooms (if they're a part of the project's program)," says William R. Massingill, AIA, chief operating officer at Polkinghorn Group Architects. "In the waiting and reception desk areas, carpet flooring, stained wood base and crown moldings, rich wall coverings, decorative light fixtures and integrated furnishings can create an ambience that is often more attractive and comfortable for patients and family members than the traditional hospital or physician office environment."
Massingill continues, "In patient care areas where more clinical surfaces are necessary (such as vinyl flooring, cleanable painted wall surfaces, and sturdy cabinetry), color selection can go a long ways towards creating an ambience where patients feel less uncomfortable and staff feel better equipped to providing better care towards those patients. Effective color and pattern selections for cubicle curtains, laminates on cabinetry, and even staff uniforms can contribute to an overall environment of efficient and patient-oriented delivery of a facility's services."
Too many medical facilities dismiss aesthetics on the grounds that attractive environments cost too much, but cheap doesn't necessarily mean ugly. Good paint colors, for instance, go a long way. The real issue is not cost, however, but competition. Restaurants, shops, and hotels would rather spend less on their decor, but they're in intensely competitive markets and can't get away with slighting aesthetics. Medical centers are feeling some pressure, but not enough.
Along with my column, The Atlantic's website now features a slide show of good and not-so-good hospital design, narrated by interior designer Jain Malkin.
The Queen of Weak Ties
I finally broke down and set up a Facebook page. One of the friends I invited was Joel Garreau, who concidentally enough published an article in Saturday's WaPost on the very subject now weighing on my mind: the expanded, and sometimes awkward, definition of friendship in the era of social networking sites.
By the definitions Joel suggests at the end of the piece, I can't say I have many friends--certainly nobody I'd ask to drive me to the airport. Facebook may suit me, however, since I am, as Professor Postrel says, the Queen of Weak Ties. (See this article for what that means.) But should I let all my weak ties, or the weak ties of my weak ties, be Facebook friends?
The Rather Difficult Font Game
Demonstrating that I know a little about fonts and a lot about taking multiple choice tests, I managed a 24 out of 34. Take it here.
Good Question
"Do Democrats--whether in the rank and file or in the egghead brigades--really think that Pennsylvania's (or Ohio's, of Michigan's) lack of industrial jobs has anything to do with Colombia? Or even NAFTA for that matter? For starters, manufacturing employment peaked in the U.S. in 1979."
That's Nick Gillespie in a detailed post on the Dems' depressing embrace of anti-trade demagoguery. The comments suggest that Hit & Run readers are just as susceptible as Clinton and Obama, and more passionate.
UPDATE: This WaPost editorial points to a pattern: "Yet another Democratic adviser is in trouble for having more common sense that his candidate -- or at least, more than his candidate has the courage to admit having."
Obama's Smoking
If you read Dreams from My Father
For the presidential campaign, he supposedly quit, but ABC's Jake Tapper recounts how he caught him backsliding (or smelling like he had), only to have the campaign categorically deny the candidate's cigarette habit. Now, however, Obama has 'fessed up, sort of. Not much of a scandal, if you ask me, but it does emphasize how public figures risk trouble if they try to carve out a backstage life that contradicts their public image. Once upon a time, Jackie Kennedy could be a chain smoker (and a fingernail-biter) and prevent anyone from catching her on film. And don't get me started on her glamorous husband's off-stage activities.
Creeping Censorship and the Superpowered Elite
I'm reading The Ten-Cent Plague
It's hard now to imagine how seriously mid-century intellectual elites took anti-comics arguments, but the NYTBR's Dwight Garner has dug up a great artifact to prove the point: a glowing review of Seduction of the Innocent, published in the NYTBR and written by none other than heavy-hitting sociologist C. Wright Mills, one of left's leading intellectual lights.
Warning: Cloying But Catchy Song
Disneyland is revamping the "It's a Small World" ride to accommodate today's fatter passengers on its boats and, more controversially, to include Disney characters among the anonymous dancing dolls. Here's my response to charges that Disney characters represent "gross desecration of the ride's original theme" (or, more accurately, my response to the theme itself).
And, for those who can stand it, here's Walt's TV tour of the original ride.