2blowhards.com: Category Archives

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Icon World
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Before the first Macintosh went on sale in 1984, I don't think I'd ever heard the word "icon" used to describe a stick-figure "graphical" visual before. Come to think of it, I don't think I'd ever heard the word "graphical" before either. But all of a sudden it seemed that everyone had an opinion about "graphical interfaces." Here's a shot of the original Mac 128k screen: It seemed a like foreign (if appealing) universe. Outlines? Impersonal lines? Hyper-simplification? Pictographs? It seemed more like ancient Egypt than modern America. In America circa 1980 you might occasionally run across schematic drawings by engineers and architects: Those male and female outline-drawings that pointed you to men's and women's toilets were a staple of international airports. But -- strange though it can seem today -- the arrival of pictographs seemed pretty damned exotic. The world simply hadn't been heavily decorated and punctuated with hyper-simplified symbolic line images. These days, by contrast, it can seem as though icons (like tags) aren't just everywhere, they're a defining characteristic of modernity. What's a button, or a screen, or even a thought, without its own icon? I'm OK with this in a general sense, not that my opinion should matter. Eye-candy? -- I often like it, especially when the eye-candy serves a usability purpose as well as a delight purpose. I'm reminded that, back in the early '80s, I knew a writer who was struggling unsuccessfully with adapting to computers. Publications were demanding that writing be delivered in computer form, and -- as brilliant as he genuinely was -- the poor guy simply didn't have a computer-compatible brain. The screens presented by early-'80s PCs (green letters on black) put him off. File systems baffled him, and having to memorize basic computer commands ... It all made him just about weep with frustration. I don't mock this, by the way. People who don't happen to have brains that synch up well with computers are at a serious disadvantage these days. Come to think of it, one of the biggest changes I've witnessed in my lifetime is the development of a general expectation that everyone should be able to manage computers. It's a strange expectation, when you think of it. I work in an arty-media field, for example, yet it's all now based on computers. How bizarre that English majors -- English majors!! -- are expected to be competent with computers. Hey, IT people: There are perfectly decent and intelligent people out here whose brains just don't do the computer thing very well. Yet here we are today, nearly all of us spending our professional days serving the great computer god. There are moments when it all seems like nothing more than a naked power-grab by the geek class, doesn't it? Anyway, as of 1983 my writer-friend was in despair. His brain just didn't -- and really couldn't -- work the command-line way. Then, in 1984, he bought a Mac, and his problem was... posted by Michael at April 29, 2008 | perma-link | (15) comments

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Propaganda Misfire?
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I was leafing through a book about the history of posters and happened upon this: "What England Wants!" - Egon Tschirch, 1918 It was inspired by a 3 January 1918 Daily Telegraph article quoting Labour party member Johnson-Hicks (I can't find more detailed information on him) as saying "One must bomb the Rhine industrial area day by day with hundreds of airplanes, until the cure has occurred." -- the "cure" being destruction of the German armaments industry. A German translation is at the bottom of the poster. The intended message was probably something like "Those evil Englishmen are out to destroy us!" To me, looking at that huge swarm of bombers, the unintended message is "Holy s**t! Those Limeys have a gazillion bombers to throw at us! We're DOOMED!!!" I'm not sure why, but my distant cousins from along the Rhine never quite get public relations right. Later, Donald... posted by Donald at April 27, 2008 | perma-link | (7) comments

Friday, April 4, 2008

Magazine Design
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- MagCulture's interview with British magazine-design legend David Hillman supplies lots of info and context. Hard to believe that not all that long ago magazines had the kind of excitement and buzz about them that web-products do today, isn't it? One especially nice stretch: For me the best magazines are the ones where you can sense the enjoyment of the people who made it. Exactly. They are few and far between these days ... One thing I found difficult was the a period ten years or so ago when photographers like Jurgen Teller and Terry Richardson were shooting pictures of girls that looked like they were about three minutes away from dying. And I remember being in Paris with Harry Peccinotti and I happened to have a magazine with some of these pictures in it, and I said to him, what happened to the days when you used to go through a model’s book and think, who do I want to fuck? Not that we went around fucking models all the time… …that was my next question… …but models were real people. I used to fall in love every day. I’ve done a few photographic sessions recently and a lot of these girls you can’t even have a conversation with. We used to all go out to dinner together after a shoot and have a really fun evening. Most models now I can only just about bear being in the studio with them. That’s not being snobbish, they’re just so young and un-worldly. Link thanks to Michael Bierut. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at April 4, 2008 | perma-link | (3) comments

Monday, March 31, 2008

More Newsweekly Troubles
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- From time to time I've wondered about the state and fate of news weeklies -- here, for instance I dealt with Time. Today's Drudge Report offered this link relating that Newsweek is undergoing a significant staff reduction in the form of early retirement buyouts. Names are named, including some whose bylines are widely recognized. I used to subscribe to Newsweek in the 1970s, but haven't paid much attention to it in recent years; I mostly skim a copy while waiting for a dental or medical appointment. My impression is that weekly news magazines (with the exception of the Economist) have been evolving away from the format that served so well up until, say, the 90s. The impact of the Internet has been negative for most magazines that I am familiar with including the car buff mags I read, and a good deal of scrambling and format-tinkering has been underway. Unfortunately -- and I do like magazines and printed stuff in general -- most of this fiddling doesn't seem to be working. Certainly the Newsweek bombshell adds credence to this notion. And an economic recession isn't likely to help. I hate to say it, but Time, Newsweek and U.S. News seem to be in the same spiral I saw back around 1960 for the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Look. Can anyone come up with an optimistic scenario for the news weeklies? Later, Donald... posted by Donald at March 31, 2008 | perma-link | (13) comments

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Private Parts
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Helen Gurley Brown's version of Cosmopolitan magazine was frankly what it was: a sexed-up, land-a-man publication for working-class gals. (Brown -- famous as well for the bestseller "Sex and the Single Girl" -- edited Cosmo for 32 years, beginning in 1965.) But despite the brassiness, heartiness, and materialism of the magazine, there was also something likable about it. (IMHO, of course.) Flipping through an issue was like hanging out with your favorite secretary at work, the one who wears long polished nails, who knows everyone's secrets, and yet who also has some real loyalty and sweetness. But Helen Gurley Brown was deposed at Cosmo in 1997. Since then a new version of the magazine has emerged, sleeker and louder, and full of up-to-date attitude. While the volume and shininess levels have skyrocketed, the likableness of the magazine has plummetted. I used to get a kick out of leafing through Cosmo for a few minutes once or twice a year. These days when I run across the magazine I gasp, wince, and recoil. I'm horrified not by the R-ratedness of the publication -- hey, I like sexy entertainments -- but at the harsh, unimaginative belligerance of it. Here's the cover of a recent Cosmo: In some ways it's just a pumpier, more jangly version of the old Cosmo. The following attraction, for instance, is just a revved-up version of the traditional Cosmo thang: Look a little closer, though, and you enter a whole new world: Note to self: Write a blogposting marveling over the way pop culture has lost track of the real glories of sex. Hey world: Sex with another person can be a whole lot more rewarding than getting yourself off is. Hint to the confused: Really good sex with a partner isn't just a better way to jerk off. Further note to self: Draw connection between the capitalist love of pleasing-the-self and the emphasis put by '70s feminism on women masturbating. Funny how both of these forces promote a me-first / me-always-first atttitude, isn't it? At one point feminism and capitalism were understood to be forces in conflict. Today ... Anyway: Who's going to stand up and say, "Far be it from me to get in the way of anyone having a good time getting him/herself off. But self-pleasure isn't all there is to life, you know, not by a long shot." It seems to me that the model's facial expression synchs up perfectly with the general me-first / screw-you tone of the whole package: Smug, mocking, out-for-#-1 ... Whose idea of sexy, let alone appealing, is that? For a little contrast, here's a cover from an issue of Cosmo from 1979. The model is Christie Brinkley, the photographer was a Helen Gurley Brown fave, the genius glamor-schlockmeister Francesco Scavullo. Apologies for the lousy quality: Yes, sure, it's kitsch. But it's calm kitsch, warm kitsch, approachable kitsch. Where the new Cosmo is glass, fiber-optics, and whirling computer graphics, the old Cosmo was... posted by Michael at March 11, 2008 | perma-link | (13) comments

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Mad Gone Wrong?
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- My name is Donald. I am a packrat. But I'm doing better. Honest, I am. We finally got around to unboxing stuff that had been piled up in the basement rec room since we moved to Seattle. I weeded out a fair amount of books and other items, though what remains is still formidable. Among the things I still have is the last issue of Mad while it was a comic book. And I have the very next issue, its first as a magazine, along with a half dozen other early magazine copies. Besides those, I have a copy of Humbug, a magazine started by Harvey Kurtzman after he left his editor job at Mad and, later, Trump, a humor magazine that was briefly part of Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire. I don't have more copies of Humbug because it only lasted one issue. Trump didn't last long either, but I don't know how many issues were published. My collection includes two of them, so it went at least that far. But back to Mad. Gallery Cover of first issue of Mad comics, 1952 The artwork is by early mainstay Will Elder. Superduperman, from Mad comics This is the opening panel of the Superman satire drawn by ace cartoonist Wally Wood. Note the detail and micro-humor such as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on Superduperman's chest and the "super" signs in the background. The stacked babe at the right is "Lois" (no last name provided) who looks like a Will Eisner sexpot raised to the third power. Wood's style here is pretty much extreme-Eisner with the addition of the detail byplay and Duotone shading. Jack Davis artwork: bottom panel from Mad Jack Davis was my next-favorite Mad artist after Wood. He was prolific, and eventually even did covers for Time magazine. Cover of first issue of Mad magazine, 1955 Besides Superduperman, satires in Mad comics included Starchie (Archie), Flesh Garden (Flash Gordon), Lone Stranger (Lone Ranger), Prince Violent (Prince Valiant), Gopo Gosson (Pogo Possum), Poopeye (Popeye the Sailor), Teddy and the Pirates! (Terry and the Pirates) and Manduck the Magician (Mandrake the Magician). Needless to say, I found most of these hysterically funny, being 13-15 years old at the time. In its comic book guise Mad also satirized the Captain Video, Dragnet and What's My Line television shows, cowboy movies, print advertising and other subjects. When Mad went to magazine format, it drifted over to satirizing movies and television, abandoning targets from comics. And it is this, I contend, that marked the demise of the publication in my esteem. This is heresy for many of you, no doubt. And I can't argue that Mad has been anything but commercially successful enough to survive for more than half a century as a magazine. But still ... I say Mad was at its peak when it was a comic book because it was essentially the same medium as the main targets of its satire -- comic... posted by Donald at March 1, 2008 | perma-link | (9) comments

Friday, February 22, 2008

Magazines
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- * Seth Roberts makes a supersmart point about what makes magazines such a great form. God, I do love a good magazine. * Jessica Helfand reviews the history of the design of poultry-industry trade magazines. These days, with so many of the mainstream magazines given over to trends, glitz, celebs, and kapow, I often prefer to leaf through trade magazines. They can be a little dowdy, but at least there's usually some substance there. Best Michael... posted by Michael at February 22, 2008 | perma-link | (2) comments

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Tele-Diversity
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I'm probably getting this all wrong. After all, I hardly watch television any more. And I wasn't particularly paying attention when Super Bowl ads came on. I was fixing dinner so that Nancy could watch the halftime show. Otherwise I was wandering back and forth to the room where the TV was. Despite the distractions, I thought I noticed something I hadn't seen before. It happened on some of those beer ads, as best I recall. For years now, such ads often have a bunch of guys hanging out, having a good time implicitly fueled by the sponsoring beverage. Way back when, they might have been all white. Then, for quite a few years it was white guys and some black guys. This year (and maybe earlier for all that TV-phobic je know), the white guys and black guys were joined by East Asian guys and what seemed to be guys from India! Not that there's anything wrong with this, mind you. I have nothing against a society that's truly color-blind from an opportunity standpoint. And when I was in the Army, the Some Of My Best Friends Are situation applied. Moreover, the sponsoring beer companies Have Their Hearts In The Right Place, wanting to Do The Right Thing and Fight For Social Justice. And yes, the scenes these commercials portray can be construed as an ideal situation towards which America is striving. But right now, I find them not quite believable. Where, in the real world, is one likely to find a bunch of white, black, East Asian and Indian guys hangin' out and swilling beer? The most plausible setting I can come up with would be a Friday afternoon decompression party at a Silicon Valley firm. Except there would be gals present as well. What we have seems to be a replay of those old World War 2 army movies where the platoon is filled with Iowa farm boys, an Italian guy from South Philly and a Jewish kid from Brooklyn. Except the movie had 90 minutes for character development and the ads only get 30 seconds. Now I'm wondering what race/ethnic groups will be added for next year's Super Bowl ad-athon. Later, Donald... posted by Donald at February 13, 2008 | perma-link | (12) comments

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Newspapers, R.I.P.?
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- * The New York Times reports on the shakey state of the newspaper business. Nifty/scarey passage: “I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,” said Brian P. Tierney, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News. “The next few years are transitional, and I think some papers aren’t going to make it.” * Marc Andreessen inaugurates a New York Times Deathwatch. Funny bit: "Sometimes it's darkest right before it goes pitch black." Best, Michael... posted by Michael at February 7, 2008 | perma-link | (4) comments

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Banks As Graphic Design
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Another gargantuan blockbuster from that unstoppable movie-production titan ... Well, I blush. You do know to be kind, don't you? Previous efforts can be watched here, here, here, and here. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at February 3, 2008 | perma-link | (4) comments

Friday, December 21, 2007

Hot, Commercial, Public
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Get your sizzling and controversial ad campaigns here. Are you as much of a fan as I am of the current American Apparel ads? They often strike me as startling and brilliant. Ad people, stylists, and clothing designers, eh? -- forever finding new ways to shock us, scandalize us, and make us feel titillated. How do they manage it? The American Apparel ads strike me as amazingly evocative of being 14 and finding everything that's happening to your body (and to your friends' bodies) momentous and hot -- about messing around with undies, belts, a mirror, and a digital camera while Mom and Dad are out of the home. And, hey: What would it be like to be a model? Or maybe the star of your very own porn movie? These are questions that must be on a lot of teenage minds these days. What do I think (and how do I feel) about the fact that this kind of material is widespread, that children aren't protected against it, and that its subject matter routinely plays with illicit behavior? Pleased you asked, but I'll save my no doubt uninteresting answers for another day. Generally speaking, though, I feel about these ads the same way I feel about online porn: Since it isn't as if tut-tutting is going to make this material go away, why get hung up on the moral angle? No one has to find any of these developments interesting, let alone attractive, of course. Tuning out is always an option. But at the same time, what could be the harm in taking note of what's going on in the world? These days, when I go to the movies, it's usually not to see a specific movie; it's to see what movies these days are like. Curiosity can be a strong motivator. Nothing wrong with arguing over morality, of course -- it just isn't a conversation I'm often eager to take part in. Besides, practically speaking, it would take a lot to persuade me that a few minutes spent surfing through the American Apparel website contributes -- or contributes much, anyway -- to the moral rot of the world. Semi-related: I wrote about "Havoc," a misbehaving- overprivileged- teens movie by Barbara Kopple here, and about a movie by Larry ("Teenage Lust," "Kids") Clark here. I wondered how and why thongs had become such a big part of contempo culture here. If you want to eyeball examples of the work of one of the photographers who established the contemporary wood-paneled-basement, glaring-flash, almost-but-not-quite kiddie-porn style, do a Google Image search on "Terry Richardson." Small suggestion: Turn "SafeSearch" to "Off." Best, Michael... posted by Michael at December 21, 2007 | perma-link | (16) comments

Monday, November 12, 2007

Best Line of the Day
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- "Where would our newspapers be without hysteria?" -- David Chute. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at November 12, 2007 | perma-link | (1) comments

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Missed Opportunities
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- For an arty guy with no technical gifts or interests, I smacked into the computer world at a relatively early stage. I don't mean "the computer world" in the absolute sense, by the way. When I was in high school back in 1970, for instance, computers were certainly around. But at that point they weren't of much interest (let alone of much use) to anyone other than extreme geeks. In 1970, the idea of computers seemed futuristic in appealing ways. But the reality of computers was much less attractive. In the case of the high school I attended, for instance: Computing meant one small, airless room with a keyboard and punchcards, and a connection to what was mysteriously referred to as "the Dartmouth computer." I poked my head into that computer room one time and one time only. Not pleasant: bad lighting, and full of geek b.o. and giggly social ineptitude. And why on earth would anyone think it was a big deal to be playing playing tic-tac-toe "with Dartmouth"? Since what I wanted from life was girls, movies, art, physical activity, and sunshine, computers in 1970 seemed like the opposite of everything I valued. They seemed like the antithesis of what I then thought of as "aesthetics." No, for the sake of this posting anyway, what I mean by "computers" is computers in a somewhat later sense: computers at the time videogames and personal computers were starting to make a more-than-a-novelty kind of impact -- the early-to-mid '80s, roughly. By then, computers and aesthetic matters didn't seem to occupy quite such opposite poles. Pong had long since given way to more complex games. Hard drives were beginning to seem like a plausible part of everyday reality. And when the original Macs came along -- in early 1984 -- the machines started to speak directly to the arty set. Right about then was when I woke up to the cultural implications of computing. I found myself on BBS's, for instance, caught up in debates about the impact of word processing. For those who haven't encountered the philosophy-of- word-processing field: The advent of word processing hit a handful of culture-types very hard. Nearly all writers were delighted by the way the new tools enabled them to get their writing down so easily, of course. But a small band of culture-fiends also found themselves looking at the phenomenon from a longer point of view, and musing, "Hmm, you know, this word-processing thing might really change the whole 'writing' game at a very deep level ..." It was a tiny world, this musing-over-the-aesthetic / cultural-implications-of-computers world. But for some reason I really zero'd in on it. For instance, I didn't just read Jay David Bolter and Michael Heim -- the philosophers of what word processing might mean in the big sense. I met and chatted with them. In 1987, Apple's HyperCard gave non-techies a chance to mess with databases and programming. By the late 1980s, software created... posted by Michael at October 18, 2007 | perma-link | (10) comments

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Fact for the Day
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Another bulletin from our changing media environment: The average [newspaper] reader spends more time with a print edition on a single day than the average visitor to a paper's Web site spends in an entire month. Source. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at October 16, 2007 | perma-link | (4) comments

Headline for the Day
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Punchline: This is the headline of an Editor's Note in AARP Magazine -- that's right, the publication that used to be known as Modern Maturity. Sensible response, or so it seems to me: Well, if cotton-tops and retirees don't know what it is to be a grownup, then who does? Hey, if grown-up-titude has genuinely become such a perplexing puzzle, maybe that's a sign that the time has come to abandon the idea. Why agonize over maturity and responsibility? Let's all be kids forever. BTW, if you haven't yet had the pleasure: Modern Maturity hasn't undergone an overhaul merely where its name is concerned. It's now full of catchy themes, sassy boxes, and punchy graphics. It features celebrity confessionals; seniors who are cheery, active, and dynamic; and one of the zaniest of the bizarro new Tables of Contents that I've taken note of several times. (Here, here.) It has been transformed, in other words, into a magazine for the crowd that used to subscribe to Rolling Stone. Joking about Boomers, their Peter Pan ways, and how they've ruined our culture generally, can now commence. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at October 16, 2007 | perma-link | (9) comments

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

This Airport Is Sponsored By ...
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- During a recent bout of air travel I amused myself by keeping track of the ads I ran into -- more particularly, where they were physically placed. Microsoft, for example, had a big production number happenin' all around a lengthy stretch of moving sidewalk. No way for the air traveler to avoid a pretty intense encounter with that particular ad campaign. Out at the gates, Sprint's message was a lot louder than the gate information. My favorite -- "favorite" as in "Come on, enough's enough" -- ad-placement, though, was this one: That's an ad in the bottom of the tray used at the security and metal-detection bottleneck -- the tray you dump your change and shoes into before being scanned for liquids and pointy objects. Can you imagine being the person whose job it is to sell airport ad space? "Hey Eliza, it's Blake. Look, I want to let you in on a special promotion we're offering this week. We've finally got the go-ahead to sell ads on the customers' luggage. If your bosses pull the trigger in the next 24 hours, I'll give you an exclusive on the porcelain in the urinals too. I'll get back to you next week on that secret thing I'm working on. What? OK, but keep it just between us: What I'm angling to do is sell ad space on the backsides of the pilots' pants." How do you feel (and what do you think, of course) about the way ads seem to show up in more and more places? As for me, well, 2Blowhards deliberately doesn't run any ads. This is partly a matter of principle, I suppose, though we certainly have nothing against anyone else running them, particularly people who can genuinely use the money. (Not that any of this is any of our business, of course.) Mainly, though, and at least for me, it's an aesthetic judgment -- we do take aesthetics pretty seriously around here. For one thing: Aren't there enough ads around already? For another: Ads create clutter. And, especially when indulging in aesthetic and intellectual reflection, isn't it far nicer to do so in a classy and calm environment? Values other than money, efficiency, and convenience sometimes really do need to prevail. The whole debate about where ads can go is one that interests me a lot, not that I have much to add to it. Generally speaking I wish people would show more taste and restraint than they often do. All that said ... Lordy, give 'em the smallest opening, and commercial forces will weasel their way in everywhere. Besides, what's a free-wheeling yet aesthetics-oriented person to make of this perennial conundrum: Strict zoning and tight regulations can be an oppressive drag, yet complete free-for-alls quickly turn ugly. (Hey, did you know that Sao Paulo recently placed a wide-ranging ban on outdoor advertising? I wonder how it will work out.) The gray zone between public and private is an interesting one... posted by Michael at September 4, 2007 | perma-link | (18) comments

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Annals of Illegibility 2 -- TOCs
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- As far as I'm concerned, the way that computers have altered the balance of power between words and visuals is usually for the better. Still, there are times when the egos and values of the design crowd get a wee bit out of hand -- and ain't it fun to take note of these times. An earlier entry in this series is here. In today's installment, I revisit a topic I originally looked at back here: the Tables of Contents of magazines. Have you been following the evolution of TOCs? It's remarkable how different they are these days than what one might think of as the classic TOC. In the pre-digital days, a Table of Contents was generally a straightforward guide to the contents of a magazine. It was nearly always presented in a linear way -- from beginning to end. (In other words, the magazine in hand was conceived-of as something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.) Visuals were subdued, except perhaps in flashy publications like fashion mags. In any case, the general understanding was that a TOC should present essential help and information in an easy-to-understand way. The new TOC is a very different experience. For one thing: Visuals! Color! Graphics! Pop goes the layout. For another, the front-to-back way of organizing information (subject matter, page number, authors' names, etc) has in many cases been thrown out entirely. The new basis for organizing the TOC is thematic and / or conceptual. The new pattern is that the big, long articles ("Features") are grouped together; the magazine's regular columns and such are grouped together, often under the rubric "Departments"; and the junkfoody stuff that usually runs at the front and the back of the magazine is grouped together in one way or another. Another thing that's remarkable about the new TOC is how settled a form it has become. That has been the big change since the last time I visited the topic four years ago: Nearly all magazines are now using close variations on what I'm describing. In my earlier posting about TOCs, I was taking a snapshot of a form in the process of being born. These days, the new TOC is simply what a TOC has become. Funny, isn't it, the way that what a magazine is can seem like a completely settled thing? During a period when nearly all magazines feature celebs on the cover, it can seem like a god-given fact that a magazine is a publication that has a celeb on the cover. Publications seem to cohere around certain templates. Then something comes along -- an innovation, a change in technology -- and it's all up for grabs. Everyone scrambles and experiments furiously, and then everyone settles on a new template. By the way: As far as I've been able to tell, this is often done without any reference to the customers or audience at all. (Where TOCs are concerned: Were readers consulted about how... posted by Michael at August 7, 2007 | perma-link | (10) comments

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Times and Journal Price Hikes
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I somehow missed the June announcement and entered a state of shock yesterday when I discovered that the news stand price of The Wall Street Journal went up 50%, from a dollar to $1.50. The New York Times went from a dollar to $1.25, a mere 25% increase. That doesn't affect me personally because my love affair with the Times ended 15 or 20 years ago. Now that I'm retired and several years away from running a demographics data business, business news isn't the necessity it once was. Plus, as I posted here, the Journal's editorial page slipped in quality markedly when Paul Gigot took the baton from the great (but, sadly, now late) Robert Bartley. Nevertheless, I was still buying the paper at the rate of three or four copies per week. And now? I think I'll fork over the buck-fifty for the Friday edition. That's because I enjoy the big arts / culture / etcetera Weekend section. I'll miss the reviews from the Tuesday-through-Thursday Personal section. Ditto Walter Mossberg's Thursday computer column. That's life. Will I subscribe to the on-line WSJ? Perhaps, but it's not likely. I truly enjoy scanning newspapers and picking out stuff to dip into or read entirely, and that's still not conveniently done on the Web. I read someplace that WSJ news stand and paper-box sales are less than seven percent of total paid circulation. So if the 50% price hike translates into a 50% sales loss in that segment, then the WSJ will lose three percent overall circulation. (From what I read, subscription prices have yet to change. Moreover, that circulation hit at boxes and stands won't be nearly as much as 50%. Even so, total circulation might take a one percent decline.) What does this mean? Thomas Lifson speculated on The New York Times here. He concludes that the paper is shrinking by almost any important measure: read his article to see how he builds his case. The WSJ situation is harder to figure out. Traditional circulation and advertising sales aren't going as badly as at the Times, and the WSJ presence on the Web has decent paid circulation. The major uncertainty for the short run is whether or not the Bancroft family will sell to Rupert Murdoch; a sale might well mean a new business strategy. It's a commonplace in the newspaper industry that paid circulation revenues don't cover production and distribution costs -- advertising is what opens the possibility for black ink on the ledger. Some observers mention that printing and distribution costs can be huge, and reducing a "newspaper" to a Web-only presence might be viable economically because only reporters, editors and support staff would be necessary. Assuming, of course, that enough advertising can be sold. At any rate, I find the 50% price rise hard to take. I might have tolerated a 15 or 25 cent hike, but 50 cents drops me to one paper per week. My best hope is that... posted by Donald at July 18, 2007 | perma-link | (4) comments

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Edible Magazines
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Today's Seattle Times business section has an article about a group of magazines devoted to locally-grown food. The article defines "local" as being within a day's drive (by truck, presumably) -- about 250 miles, it says. The local food fad has been around for a while, but I hadn't realized that it had generated magazines. The magazines are franchised and each has a title starting with the word "Edible." Examples include Edible Portland, Edible Hawaiian Islands, Edible Ojai (the original version) and, coming next spring, Edible Seattle. Oh yes, there's also an Edible Brooklyn. My take from the article is that the mags offer info fodder for foodies along with cheerleading for local family farmers and damning those eeevil corporate farms. Apparently Edible Communities (the name of the umbrella-franchiser firm based in Santa Fe) has a good thing going. They claim average reader household income to be $110,000. New magazines are said to become profitable after the first year. And overall circulation is 2.5 million copies per year. With 30 titles at four issues per year, this comes to about 21,000 average circulation per issue. Annual subscription is $28 a year, but the magazines are give-aways at upscale food stores. This demonstrates that there is still room for new niche magazines in this on-line, digital age. And if they are successful, that's fine by me even though I don't much care who grows my food or where it comes from. (I'm a foodie of the Time Magazine fonder Henry Luce persuasion: "Food is fuel.") Later, Donald... posted by Donald at July 4, 2007 | perma-link | (15) comments

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Weak Newspaper Ad Sales?
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- What follows is anecdotal, not statistical, even though some numbers are involved. But hey, this is about newspapers, and that biz thrives on the personal, the anecdotal. (I'm excepting the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily and their ilk, natch.) Circulations have been falling at big city dailies for a while now. And it's known that classified ad lineage is getting hit hard by Internet-based classifieds. Moreover, I'm pretty sure there are real statistics out there regarding ad lineage in general. I won't let that stop me from tossing your way a few numbers I collected. Lately I've been noticing how anemic the Seattle Times -- largest circulation in Washington state -- has seemed. Some sections didn't appear to have many advertisements at all. So I tallied the Business and Sports sections for four days this week, starting Monday. Institutional and public service ads were not counted. The Sports section had 650 column inches of paid advertising out of a potential 5,544 inches -- 11.7 percent. Nearly half of that was on Monday, a big sports news reporting day. The average for Tuesday through Thursday was 8.9 percent. The Business page had 132 ad inches out of 2,112 -- 6.3 percent. About half of that was due to a full backpage ad that appeared Tuesday. If I were the paper's publisher, I'd be breaking out in a sweat over this sales performance. Later, Donald... posted by Donald at May 3, 2007 | perma-link | (4) comments

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Craft of Interviewing
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- I'm all in favor of holding the feet of the mainstream media to the fire, and god bless the blogosphere for being there to keep pro journalism more honest than it would otherwise be. That said ... Well, as someone who's worked in the media for decades I'm sometimes struck by how much civilians take for granted. Where design is concerned, for instance: Whether or not you like the end products, the people who sling together magazines, newspapers, and TV keep the glitzy graphics and the splashy designs comin' at you at a truly amazing clip. In my experience, the people creating these layouts, photos, infographics, and spinning whizzinesses are often as talented as the fine-art crowd, and are often ten times harder-working. If you don't think their work is impressive (like it or not), well, try keeping up with them. And where the people who bring us our foreign news go ... They're often criticized (as they should be) for their politics, or are dumped-on for being lousy thinkers. No harm in that, of course. But why not give them their due too? These are people who lead seriously oddball lives. They travel more than investment bankers do, they work on impossible deadlines, and they're tossed into stories with little but notebooks, tape recorders, and guts to rely on. The ones who cover danger zones amaze me the most. If I were to get a call from my boss in the middle of the night saying, "There's been an outbreak of guerilla fighting!", my response would be along the lines of, "Thanks for the warning! I'm locking myself in my basement!" Foreign correspondents aren't like that. Instead they respond by saying, "I'm on my way!" I've known a number of foreign correspondents, and though I wouldn't pay a lot of attention to the thinking or to the politics of more than a couple of them they've all been remarkable creatures -- daring, crusty, full of bravado, and not unshrewd about human nature. Plus they all have great stories to tell. It seems to me that another media type who doesn't get the respect he / she deserves is the interviewer. Lordy, I do love a good interview. Is there a more efficient way to convey the gist of someone's thinking, research, and personality? A well-done interview can inform, enlighten, and entertain; it can be charming or brain-opening or both. The idea that interviewing is easy to do seems to me naive. Of course interviewing isn't brain surgery or bridge-building. Still, it isn't nothing either. I say this, by the way, as someone 1) who has done some professional interviewing, 2) who wasn't initially any good at it, and 3) who has learned a bit about how to be a better interviewer than I once was. I make no huge claims for myself, merely: I been there, I stank, and eventually I got less-bad. One of the things I've learned is that there are... posted by Michael at February 28, 2007 | perma-link | (17) comments

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Elsewhere
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- * Alice thinks that the time has come for people in marriages to pay better attention to each other. * What on earth is going on in Austria? * Alan Sullivan has never understood the fuss people make about blonde bombshells. * Allan Mott fondly remembers some books that defy movie adaptation. * Maxwell Goss recommends Russell Kirk's collection of ghost stories, "Ancestral Shadows." * Searchie goes into business for herself and has her first-ever meeting with a CPA. * Ross Douthat wonders if "The Wire" is peddling any anti-Semitism. * Ootje Oxenaar talks about what it was like designing the Netherlands' very beautiful currency. Ootje is a man who has enjoyed his work: "You're making something that lasts for decades and is in everyone's pockets, every shop; it's a fantastic feeling." * Lynn Sislo has some advice for those Treasury Dept. types who are hoping to make dollar coins a going thing. * Batons! Flames! Burlesque! Why not hire Fire Groove to liven up your next party? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at February 15, 2007 | perma-link | (7) comments

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Steven Heller
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- I've just awakened to the fact that the designer and writer Steven Heller has a website. Heller is a super-bright, civilized, talented, generous, and creative guy, and anyone interested in visuals, the media, and design should enjoy a visit with him. He's also staggeringly productive -- a genuine "Where does he get the energy?!!!" phenomenon. He operates in many different dimensions and in many different capacities: as a designer, as a book author, as a curator, as an editor, as a teacher, and as an interviewer of other figures in the field. He and his wife, Louise Fili, have often worked with the brilliant San Francisco-based publisher Chronicle Books. You'll run into a lot of Heller's journalism at AIGA Voice, which he edits. (I especially enjoyed this interview with Eye magazine's John Walters.) I own a dozen books that Heller has written, co-written, or edited and I've enjoyed them all. While I've learned a lot about the visual universe from a lot of different people, I've probably learned more from Heller than from anyone else. Where Steven Heller is concerned, I'm always eager to read and look at more of his work. But what I'd really, really like him to do is give a seminar on energy and productivity. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at January 23, 2007 | perma-link | (1) comments

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Time Running Out?
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Wither Time magazine? And Newsweek and U.S. News. Last May I wrote a post titled Saving Time that used the hook of the magazine getting a new editor to mention why I used to like it and to offer some advice to the new hand on the helm. Eight months later it's beginning to look like the helm with the new hand is attached to a sinking ship. Today (I'm writing this on 18 January) Time Inc. announced that it was axing 289 positions, more than half in the editorial domain and 40 of those in Time magazine itself. Bureaus in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta are to be closed, according the the Advertising Age link above. Although Time has a ways to go before finally folding, I think it might be interesting to re-evaluate prospects for the weekly newsmagazine segment. Before offering my feeble advice to the new editor in the May post, I stated These admittedly personal observations lead me to suspect that Time is doomed no matter what Stengel tries in his rejuvenation effort. My "personal" position was that of a news-junkie growing up in the (comparative) sticks who gradually needed newsmagazines less and less as new media proliferated. Let me add that even at the height of my Time-adoration, I tended to pay more attention to the (cultural) back of the book than to the (hard news) front. Okay, one justification for newsmags is that they provide a useful service for folks too busy during the week to keep up with the daily press and TV news. And there are lots of people in that position today, just as there were when Time was gleaming in the eyes of Harry Luce and Britt Hadden. How well are the newsmags serving this sort of customer? Not as well as they once did, judging by their addiction to feature articles. My "solution" was a return to serious news-summarizing at the cost of a big circulation-drop. But, truth is, a Web-based summary system likely would do that job better than print. If that's so, then is there any commercially viable role for a weekly general-news publication? I can't think of one. Can you? UPDATE: For Jeff Jarvis' take, click here. Later, Donald... posted by Donald at January 18, 2007 | perma-link | (15) comments

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Annals of Illegibility 1
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- One of the widely-noted effects of the digitization of the media is that writing has been knocked off its perch as the premier, culture-defining medium. After all, when everything has been turned into pixels, why not treat yourself to color, images, movement, and sounds too? In the electronic world, it seems that the natural mode of expression is multimedia. Confining yourself to mere writing can seem perverse. Although I'm a happy reader and writer myself, this is a trend I applaud. Lordy, the way the word-thang used to be held above everyone. And, double Lordy, the way writers used to carry on! A PBS documentary about Gore Vidal that I recently watched was full of footage from the '50s and '60s. Were those writers ever puffed-up and pompous things. And why not? They were celebrated as giants not just by their own egos but by the culture generally. Why did anyone ever think that writers had a privileged kind of insight into life? And what's so special about writing anyway? So I'm thrilled that writing has taken its place among the rest of the media, no more or less important than any other. At the same time ... Well, I'm not so keen on it when the other media make power grabs at the expense of reading, writing, and comprehensibility either. Designers, for example. By comparison to what they once were, magazines today are certainly far more colorful and visually-interesting (or at least dazzling) things. That's thanks to a long-overdue shift in the status of designers. But isn't what's being said in a verbal sense all too often being overwhelmed by design ambitions? A few examples from a recent issue of the American Airlines magazine: Fun-looking pages! But ... In the first example: Are you even tempted to try to read the text that's been presented as a disk of horizontal lines? I look at that page and I feel for the writer, none of whose words will be consumed or enjoyed by anyone. In the second example: How about that for a great idea -- floating info-text over a herringbone pattern? Boingggggggggg go the eyeballs. "Huh?" goes the inquiring mind. FWIW, I've hung around designers and watched them evaluate magazines. They consume them in exactly the way you might expect: leafing through pages one after another, evaluating how visually poppy and visually tied-together the package is. I don't think I've ever seen one pause to sink into the text, which they seem to consider it their professional duty to view as rivers of dull gray stuff badly in need of visual redemption. Do you have the impression that magazines today are more quickly-gone-through things than they once were? Perhaps that's because that's what designers think a magazine ought to be: something you flip through in the quest for eyeball-highs. Designers today: Has their new-found power gone to their heads? Or are they talented innocents who simply don't know what it is to read?... posted by Michael at December 6, 2006 | perma-link | (9) comments

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Newspaper of the Future
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Yes, I sometimes have to whisk off stray bytes and pixels from my sleeve, so no ink-stained wretch am I. My only brush with newspaper-type journalism was from the public relations side. Well, I helped put out the Fort Meade weekly paper and edited the monthly 7th Logistical Command paper while in Korea. But I doubt that those Army experiences count as "real" journalism. Nevertheless, I keep my eye on the field. This is easy to do because newpapering has been really interesting the last few years. And that's because newspapers are going to hell. Circulations are falling. Staffs are getting riffed. The Internet is starting to eat into classified ads, the ultimate cash cow of the industry. A take on the carnage that I especially like can be found on Jeff Jarvis' site, where former print media insider Jarvis offers several posts a day about industry woes and what might be done to salvage the situation. If I understand him correctly, he thinks that papers should stop trying to be general-interest publications. They should strip out features that appeal to small audiences and thereby waste print and ink that might have better uses. Papers should play to their strength -- local news. They should become better integrated with the Internet. Go to Jarvis' blog and scroll / click around through the last month or two of his posts, and you'll probably get a pretty good idea about his positions on media issues. Only the future will reveal whether or not he's on the mark, but what he writes generally seems sensible to me. Critics from the political right (Jarvis is moderately to the left, aside from the Iraq issue) claim that one reason newspapers are losing readers is because their coverage of events is biased. I don't know if this claim has been tested using solid data. But I do believe that most papers claim to be unbiased while definitely slanting news items by commission or omission. And that's one reason I haven't subscribed to newspapers in years -- I feel that I'm being cheated. Enough of my gripes. What about Jeff Jarvis? -- he's the professional. He claims that many publishers and editors are still so stuck in the past that they aren't willing to do what's needed to survive once revenue streams dry to the point where ledger ink turns red. He favors cuts in content. He favors retrenching to local news. He doesn't pay much (or any) attention to the political slant issue. And what do you think about newspapers and their future? Are you satisfied with the paper(s) you read? If not, what improvements do you think will appeal to you and readership in general? Do you think such changes will have a positive impact of profitability? Later, Donald... posted by Donald at November 14, 2006 | perma-link | (19) comments

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Junk Snailmail
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Wasn't the advent of email expected to reduce the quantity of junk snailmail we'd have to deal with? Anything but, reports the New York Times' Louise Story. Last year, more than 114 billion pieces of junk mail were sent, an increase of 15 percent over five years ago. For the first time ever, the volume of "bulk mail" exceeded the volume of first class mail. The explanation: Marketers have found that many people, feeling beleaguered by electronics, actually like junk snailmail. "As the world becomes more digital, there is a need for tangible experiences," one ad exec told Louise Story. Interesting to learn too that, while only 2.15% of mailed ads result in any customer action, that's a good enough batting average to keep the business profitable. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at November 2, 2006 | perma-link | (1) comments

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

[Every : where]
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- A design fad that 2Blowhards visitors may be familiar with has gone global. Mr. Tall sends in this photo he snapped recently in Hong Kong: Dig those ca-razy brackets! But, as Mr. Tall observes, what really puts this particular logo over the top isn't the nonsense brackets, it's the nonsense colon inside the nonsense brackets. Mr. Tall and his partner Mr. Bald do a lot of first-class blogging here. I wrote about nonsense brackets here, here, and here. Punctuation marks: They aren't just about language any longer. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at October 10, 2006 | perma-link | (4) comments

Saturday, October 7, 2006

Leaving Reason Behind
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Big-decision time: I'm letting my subscription to Reason magazine lapse. (The earth trembles ...) Reason can be a provocative publication, god knows, and Cathy Young and Charles Paul Freund are long-time faves of mine. But, whatever Reason's virtues, I've come to dislike it. The magazine annoys me too much, and in bad, not fun, ways. For one thing, its contrarian-ness has become knee-jerk and predicatable. You have reservations about legalized gambling? Hey, gambling is good! Strip malls strike you as ugly? Hey, strip malls are good! The way so many Americans have blimped-up in the last 25 years seems bizarre? Hey, fat is good! For another thing, too many of its articles and reviews, however bright, are completely un-nuanced. I didn't find Reason featureless and unnuanced when Virginia Postrel was editing the magazine, btw. She published a libertarian magazine that didn't feel monomaniacal and dogmatic. It had shading; it felt human. But under Nick Gillespie the magazine has become monotonous. A recent example is a review of Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma." According to Reason's reviewer, Pollan's book fails because it's snobbish. The review fails, according to me, because the reviewer seems completely unwilling to deal with such basic matters as the roles of snobbery, class, and taste in American food-and-eating history. Libertarians may find these facts displeasing, but there they are: Many of the developments that have led to the more rewarding sides of today's eating-and-food worlds originated with socialists, snobs, and cranks. Organic? Local? Fresh? The re-discovery and appreciation of folk cooking and folk eating? The creation of today's stunning and extensive food press? The informal merging of high and low? Sorry to say, but the card-carrying libertarian crowd didn't play much of a role in any of this. Meanwhile Berkeley people, hippies, regionalists, back-to-the-landers, anthropologists, Francophiles, Asia-o-philes, and artsies did. Snobs, to some extent, all of them. What's good about today's food-and-eating world has emerged, more generally, from a complex swirl of home cooks, local farmers and breeders, the Food Network, traditional people, high-end chefs, trade schools, handed-down recipes and techniques, chili virtuosos, editors and publishers, innovative retailers, funky lowdown / chow-down people -- and, of course, an enthusiastic crowd of audience / participants. (I'd love to see the other art worlds follow in the steps of the food world.) Scott Chaffin, for instance, might be a true populist as well as one of the world's most approachable people -- but that doesn't mean he doesn't have very strong opinions about the differences between better and worse barbecue. 2Blowhards lesson for Reason reviewer: Try moving beyond such simplistic ideas as "Snobbery is bad." Play with the idea that there might exist such a thing as "productive and worthwhile snobbery that doesn't sneer and destroy, but that instead contributes to the flourishing of the field in question." Taste-experts can serve the rest of us too. They sometimes don't, but they sometimes do, and it's far more interesting and useful to distinguish between helpful... posted by Michael at October 7, 2006 | perma-link | (22) comments

Thursday, October 5, 2006

"Font" or "Typeface"?
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Allan Haley explains the difference between a "font" and a "typeface." He also argues that we should be more careful in how we use the words. I understand Haley's point and am sympathetic. I have my own streaks of language-usage persnickitiness -- back here, for example, I expressed my exasperation with the common misuse of the phrase "begging the question." But, practically speaking, where "font" and "typeface" are concerned? I suspect that Haley is fighting a language-usage war that was lost several years ago. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at October 5, 2006 | perma-link | (5) comments

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Chunky!
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Looking through the cover story in a recent issue of British Esquire, it seemed to me that an important line has been crossed. See if you can guess what it is from these scans. First, the issue's cover: Now, the story itself: Tick, tick, tick ... Time's up. Answers please. Here's what struck me, at least once I was over my initial "Wow, that Gretchen Mol sure is a honey, isn't she?" response: Where's the story? This Esquire package consists entirely -- entirely! -- of photos, graphics, boxes, bits 'n' bytes. The few words that play a role have been punched up with colors and font-games; they seem more about visual punctuation and rhythm than they do about meaning and sense. In any case: I don't know that I've ever before run across a non-tabloid, glossy-magazine cover story that didn't include, as part of the package, an actual article. Is this a good or a bad development? As usual, I'm of several minds. On the one hand: Who really needs yet another actress profile? And how many writers really bring a little something extra to the task? If it's all going to be junk and crap anyway -- sexy and dazzling browsing material -- better that it should be straightforwardly what it is, no? Why pretend to be selling something of substance when all you're doing is throwing around confetti and tinsel? On the other hand: What do editors these days have against the traditional reading experience? And -- while I adore visuals and think that the text-thing can certainly be overdone -- a magazine package like this one can seem like going out for dinner and being served nothing but appetizers and snacks. Where's the meal? Some more general questions: Doesn't it sometimes seem as though media people are determined to turn everything they touch (and peddle, of course) into a highlight? And what becomes of life when everything in it has been pushed to the top -- when everything is clamoring aggressively for attention, and nothing is held in reserve? Don't our quieter, less-pumped-up experiences merit some appreciation too? (I'd love to think that one of the things that 2Blowhards offers is some attention to our shared cultural backdrops ...) * Related: I yakked a bit here about how traditional, old-media, long-flowing-rivers-of-text are being chunked up into grab-bags of headlines, graphics, visuals, and boxes -- and about how this is becoming common practice even in the books world. Is everything being turned into a reference-source / catalogue to be browed and grazed? BTW, British Esquire is a snazzy and enjoyable -- and, despite all the cyber-jazz, literate -- publication. Spending a few hours with it is like attending a fun party: Lots of carefree style and larkiness, minus the stress and franticness that poison so many commercial American magazines. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at September 13, 2006 | perma-link | (16) comments

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Tabbed Browsing
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- I am without a doubt the greatest design critic who has ever lived. Proof of my genius arrives on my doorstep daily. Long ago -- in fact, several times -- I blogged about crazy visual uses of brackets and parentheses. These days: How about parentheses around an entire magazine-article title? Long ago, I wondered what has become of Tables of Contents. Today's TOC's are more nonlinear and bewildering than ever. Click on the image and eyeball the order in which the page-numbers of the stories are listed: Back in the dark ages I discussed what I've called a "scanner aesthetic." In other words, the plane of the page is understood to be a piece of glass, through which you sometimes look but on which things are also piled. These days: Is the scanner-glass thing common or what? I even took early note of a very strange trend: women and their bodies being presented all chopped-off. These days, chopped-off female bodyparts are a standard part of our culture's visual decor: Now that my prescience and infallibility as an observer of graphic-design trends has been established: What's next? Er, OK, well, let me revise my self-evaluation. Like many other people, I like watching movies, TV, and ads, and I like leafing through magazines, books, newspapers, and websites. Occasionally I notice a little something that I haven't yet seen anyone else discuss. Um, that said ... And acknowledging that it's a whole lot easier to rip things out of magazines than to capture passages from movies or TV ... OK, got one: Isn't it interesting how the nouveaux psychedelia and the man-merging-with-the-cybermachine riffs are themes that are happenin' at the exact same time? Here's some contempo psychedelia. I don't know why, but I like to think of ads like these as having a case of the "blooming swirlies." In these ads, man becomes his own portable USB drive: If anyone wants to say "Computers are the new hallucinogens," it's OK by me. But you probably want some trend that's newer ... That's really fresh ... And that we're only going to see more of ... OK, here's a guess. You may have noticed on a lot of websites (and even in browsers themselves) something called "tabbed browsing." File-folder-like tabs at the top of a page that you can click on, and that will take you to another page. At its website, Apple has made a major design commitment to tabs: Here's an example I just noticed this very instant, from the screen of my blogging software. This is what's before my eyes as I type: Hilarious, no? The Movable Type tab -- and then coming down from above it, my Safari browser's tab. Online, it's a tab, tab, tab, tab world, let me tell you. In yet another proof that print design now follows screen design, the latest vogue in commercial magazines and print ads seems to be for tabbed browsing. Which, if you think about it... posted by Michael at August 20, 2006 | perma-link | (4) comments

Monday, August 14, 2006

Design Gripes
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- * Michael Bierut wonders if the availability of ever-more DIY design tools is a good or a bad thing for graphic-design professionals. A fun commentsfest follows. * Lionel Shriver thinks that book jackets would benefit if graphic designers could tear themselves away from their computers and pick up some manual tools for a change. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at August 14, 2006 | perma-link | (2) comments

Friday, July 28, 2006

Mags for Millennials
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- The "Millennials": They're between 14 and 30, and there are as many of them as there are Boomers -- which of course makes them prime targets for the advertising and publishing businesses. So what have these businesses learned about them? In brief, they want things their own way and they have stars in their eyes. According to Myrna Blyth, traditional women's magazines hold little appeal for Millennial females. The only kind of magazine that has been a wild success with this crowd is celebrity weeklies. Bonnie Fuller, an editor who has recently had a magic commerical touch, says that young women today are "practically obsessed" with celebrities and all aspects of their lives. "Nowadays there is a fine line between real life and being the star of a reality show," says Fuller. Another nice passage comes from mag-biz analyst Samir Husni: "Young women talk about celebrities like they are members of their family ... There is nothing iconic about celebrities anymore. They went from the big screen to television, and now we hold them on our laps in a magazine. Young women can laugh about them. They even feel they can bully them." One distinctive characteristic of the new Millennial-targeted celeb mags is that they offer no traditional advice columns. "Frankly, young women today don't want that much advice," says one pollster, who also notices that "this generation has a split-second attention span." Let's see: no patience ... strong preferences ... full of themselves ... living in their fantasies ... May I be permitted to say Eek! and Yikes!? Best, Michael... posted by Michael at July 28, 2006 | perma-link | (11) comments

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Looking Through The New Yorker
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- After about six months of never once looking at it, I just spent a couple of hours grazing my way through a half a dozen recent issues of The New Yorker. How remote, underlit, unpressing, and unnecesary the magazine felt. Whether you loved or hated The New Yorker of previous decades, it was a distinctive (and maybe great) American-culture achievement. Under Harold Ross and his successor William Shawn, The New Yorker was sui generis, as well as genuinely eccentric and unpredictable. A bizarre combo of the sophisticated and the completely out-of-it, it was unlike any other magazine, and its arrival in the mailbox every week was a genuine cultural event. The magazine these days seems to me completely skippable. Why? It seems to me that two key things have changed since the old days. One has to do with the magazine itself. The old guard -- the people who really created The New Yorker -- is now almost completely gone. The magazine today, edited by David Remnick, is now populated by pro journalists, Boomers and Xers, many of them ambitious Ivy League brats of the "we must occupy the offices of the people we grew up admiring" sort. Smart and talented though many of them are, they're anything but originals. They don't even offer much of an alternative to the cast and voices at Slate and The New Republic. The other Thing That Has Changed has to do with media life outside the magazine -- and that, of course, is the advent of the web. Back in the days before online publishing, magazines, books, and writers often served as intellectual friends. Although you could of course hang out with, write letters to, and yak on the phone with your actual friends, what could you do about your cultural and intellectual interests? And how could you expand your horizons? For such functions, you often turned to writers. You looked forward to visits with them. You carried on long conversations with them in your mind. With the web, you no longer have no choice but to commune with writers in your head. Online, you can find kindred spirits and really commune with them, and in near-real time. People online are speaking about things they've noticed, and things that matter to them. They're bringing expertise and life-experience to bear. They're finding subjects months before the mainstream media do, and they're yakking about them in more open, freewheeling, and honest ways than pro journalists often can. Bloggers get too much credit for this, it seems to me; as far as I can tell, our most important function is as conversation-starters. In any case, the ongoing conversations are the point -- and links, commenters, and interview subjects all play important roles in keeping these conversations alive and rolling. In the to-and-fro of comparing notes and making connections, who has time to care about mere "articles," let alone bigshot magazine writers? Even so far as journalism goes, online journalism (and... posted by Michael at July 1, 2006 | perma-link | (33) comments

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Fact for the Day
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Magazines are experimenting with new kinds of digital platforms, reports USA Today's Laura Petrecca. Which makes sense: As more and more advertising action moves online, magazine managers are following the money. The fact I found most interesting in Petrucca's very interesting piece (emphasis mine): U.S. Internet advertising will boom 27% this year to $14.5 billion, while spending in consumer print magazines will grow 3% to $13.2 billion, Merrill Lynch forecasts. It would be the first time that Web ad spending beat magazines. Merrill sees Internet ad spending at $17.7 billion next year, and magazines nearly flat at $13.4 billion. Interesting -- and make that interesting-scary -- times in the mediabiz! Best, Michael... posted by Michael at June 27, 2006 | perma-link | (4) comments

Monday, May 22, 2006

Saving Time
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I see that Time magazine has a new hand on its helm. Richard Stengel has been appointed Managing Editor, the new top-dog position. For all I know, Stengel is the perfect man for the job and that within a few years every issue will be packed with ad pages commensurate with its fat circulation figures. But I'm doubtful. Back in the 1950s teenager me eagerly awaited the mailman to arrive on Thursday, the ETA for Time to get from the Chicago printing plant to Seattle, way out on a remote corner of the country. When it arrived, I'd plow through it before other family members could get to it. And having finished, I had the satisfaction of feeling plugged into the news as interpreted by the sophisticated geniuses inhabiting New York City, nexus of information. Yes, it was a hix-in-the-stix taking cues from the Giant Metropolis thing. I somehow felt more "in the know" than the Seattle folks who relied only on broadcast media and local newspapers for news. Now, I'm sure Harry Luce's PR guys would never have put it quite so bluntly when away from their favorite Radio City area watering hole, but I think aspirational, middle-brow people in the provinces were an important target for Time. You really need to understand that media based in New York (especially), Chicago, Los Angeles and perhaps Washington, D.C. had immense prestige in the 1950s and early 60s compared to media based elsewhere. Go back another 20 or 30 years and LA didn't count much if entertainment was set aside while Washington's prestige was largely as a dateline location. Today the news/culture scene in the United States is far more dispersed. Important blogs, to take the most extreme example, are based in such (formerly) unlikely places as the Minneapolis area and Knoxville, Tennessee. I essentially stopped reading Time by the early 1980s. Even given cheap subscription rates, I simply wasn't getting enough value to make it cost- and time-effective. Worse from Time's standpoint, I find it hard to imagine any circumstance that would have me regularly reading it in the future. And I doubt that I'm alone, notwithstanding those high circulation numbers. These admittedly personal observations lead me to suspect that Time is doomed no matter what Stengel tries in his rejuvenation effort. For what it's worth, if I were in Stengel's shoes (and without benefit of focus group and other marketing research data he has available) I'd be inclined to go back to Time's roots as a news summary for people who are too busy to pay much attention to events on a daily basis. I would greatly increase the ratio of word-space to photo-space. I would eliminate feature articles -- even the cover story. Facts would be salient and opinion segregated to sections where opposing views would be presented, along with short rebuttals. Given the tendency for news media to ignore inconvenient (from their perspective) information, I'd include short facts-rebuttal sections in the... posted by Donald at May 22, 2006 | perma-link | (9) comments

Monday, May 15, 2006

Mistaken Identity
Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Blowhards -- Given the amount of material that the media generate every day, I'm surprised that this kind of thing doesn't happen a lot more often than it does. Here's the BBC's own account of the snafu. Best, Michael... posted by Michael at May 15, 2006 | perma-link | (3) comments

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Liz and Dick and Eddie and Liz and ...
Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Ever notice that those tabloids and celebrity mags on the display racks near the supermarket checkout seem to mention the same people week after week in the headlines? That's nothing new. My initiation to celeb-hed journalism took place during the winter and early spring of 1962, back when New York boasted seven daily newspapers. Seven dailies? Yep. Count 'em: The New York Times and the Herald-Tribune were the quality morning broadsheets. Hearst's Journal-American was an afternoon broadsheet, but hardly "quality" (aside from in the imagination of Hearst management). The World-Telegram was another afternoon broadsheet. There were two morning tabloids, the Daily News and the Mirror. Finally there was the Post, a flaming-liberal afternoon tabloid that proudly proclaimed it had been founded by Alexander Hamilton, of all people. By the end of the Sixties only the Times, Daily News and Post remained. I was stationed at Fort Slocum (site of the Army Information School) from mid-January 1962 till mid-May. Fort Slocum (closed in 1965) was situated on David's Island in Long Island Sound. To get there one had to take an Army-operated ferry from New Rochelle. Good soldier that I was, I got a pass every weekend I was stationed there. Of course I went straight to New York City every time I hit shore. There were two reliable ways an automobile-less G.I. could get to Manhattan in those days. One option was to ride the bus to the north end of the Lexington Avenue subway line at 241st Street in The Bronx (it was an elevated line through much of The Bronx, going subway before reaching Manhattan if I recall correctly). The other option was to take the bus to the New Rochelle train station and catch a New Haven train (the Stamford Local). If you got the timing right, the train was faster. But the subway was cheaper and ran more frequently, so I suppose I mostly took it. Regardless of transportation mode, I always wound up in the same place: Grand Central Terminal. And I usually exited Grand Central onto the 42nd Street sidewalk, where I would confront a news stand or racks with Friday's newspapers. And Friday evening after Friday evening, nearly every paper save the Times, Herald-Tribune and perhaps the World-Telegram had a headline dealing with Liz, Dick, and Eddie. This went on for months! Liz? Dick? Eddie? Who were they? I'm referring to actress Elizabeth ("Liz") Taylor, actor Richard ("Dick") Burton and crooner Eddie Fisher. Eddie and Liz were married. Liz and Dick were filming the hyper-expensive eventual box-office disappointment "Cleopatra." Oh, and they were carrying on a torrid affair while Eddie was left twisting in the off-stage wind. The permutations of this love triangle kept New York headline writers on aspirin trying to avoid repeating themselves as the weeks rolled on. Since I basically saw this only on Fridays, I've always wondered what the headlines were about during the rest of the workweek. My best guess is --... posted by Donald at March 21, 2006 | perma-link | (8) comments