In adapting new mediums, there is always a period where the shape of the old form is mirrored in the new form's space. For example, an early television ad looked like this. Radio had simply repositioned itself in front of a camera. It took years for advertisers to fully realize what could be achieved on the small screen. Nearly half a century later, the highly polished 30 second spot that those early sponsor announcements had evolved into would make the jump online with little change –aside from a taking advantage of more lenient regulations– when internet video came of age. Even today, the "best" viral ads still follow the tried and true format.
In a similar pattern, the online newspaper has always adapted the traditional layout of its printed cousin. The better rags have introduced interactive components and with the onset of blogging, there has been, for better or worse , the ability for reader comments. But the overall structure has remained intact. Meanwhile, sites such as Facebook, Friend Feed, Twitter and, of course, the all-powerful RSS feed have turned our mode of consuming information from categorized columns into a constantly updating flow.
Today, the New York Times, in what is being heralded by the likes of Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) and Dave Winer (@davewiner) as a watershed moment, introduces the Times Wire, an at-a-glance view of the paper's latest content, in reverse chronological order without any other weighting or sorting. As Winer states, "They're now presenting their news flow as a flow. Gone is the pretense that news on the Internet works like news on paper. Welcome to the NY Times river of news".
RSS has been with us for 10 years now. And unlike a number of other trends and technologies, it has survived and thrived and essentially become the backbone for the current information revolution. After a decade, one might ask of the NY Times shift in format "So what?" or "Why did it take so long?". Or, to the more discerning observer, it is a moment to make note: of both the validation of the new form and the prevailing relevance of one of the older forms' greatest champions.
Labels: NY Times, Signs of Our Time
Monday, February 16, 2009
The No Stats All Star
This weekend's NY Times magazine features a brilliant article by Michael Lewis that takes a look at the career of NBA forward Shane Battier, a player who on paper appears unremarkable: a low scorer with few rebounds or blocks to his name. But upon deeper investigation, by stepping outside of the normal stats and figures and looking at more abstract reports on player performance, what becomes remarkably clear is this one indisputable fact: when Battier is on the court, not only does his team play much better, but the opposing team plays much worse.
What Lewis determines through his article is that Battier is an unselfish player in a game that creates endless opportunities for selfish behaviour. He compares the game of basketball to that of baseball where, in contrast, the decision that is best for the single player is almost always best for the team. In basketball however, there is a far less defined path en route to scoring points. Decisions are made constantly fed more by ego than by strategy, more by contractual expectations than by rationale.
Battier plays a different game, one based on a sharp attention to detail, a cerebral understanding of opponents' behavior and a strict adherence to process. His decisions on the court are not influenced by anything outside of this process. He will ask not to start if it means that he will be on court more often against the player that he most needs to guard. The blocks he makes happen before the player he is guarding raises the ball above his shoulders and therefore do not statistically count. He will work tirelessly to keep a superstar like Kobe Bryant out of his shooting zone all evening with the knowledge that when the game is over, all his work will be lost in the statistics: Bryant will still be the game's leading scorer; but it will have taken him twice at many shots to get there.
This all got me thinking about how such a process could benefit the way that the teams that I work with interact. How many decisions are made every day in the design world for reasons outside of that strict adherence to process? How does ego or the simple need to "be billable" affect our behaviour? More importantly, how can I as an individual act unselfishly in order to improve the overall performance of my team?
This weekend's NY Times magazine features a brilliant article by Michael Lewis that takes a look at the career of NBA forward Shane Battier, a player who on paper appears unremarkable: a low scorer with few rebounds or blocks to his name. But upon deeper investigation, by stepping outside of the normal stats and figures and looking at more abstract reports on player performance, what becomes remarkably clear is this one indisputable fact: when Battier is on the court, not only does his team play much better, but the opposing team plays much worse.
What Lewis determines through his article is that Battier is an unselfish player in a game that creates endless opportunities for selfish behaviour. He compares the game of basketball to that of baseball where, in contrast, the decision that is best for the single player is almost always best for the team. In basketball however, there is a far less defined path en route to scoring points. Decisions are made constantly fed more by ego than by strategy, more by contractual expectations than by rationale.
Battier plays a different game, one based on a sharp attention to detail, a cerebral understanding of opponents' behavior and a strict adherence to process. His decisions on the court are not influenced by anything outside of this process. He will ask not to start if it means that he will be on court more often against the player that he most needs to guard. The blocks he makes happen before the player he is guarding raises the ball above his shoulders and therefore do not statistically count. He will work tirelessly to keep a superstar like Kobe Bryant out of his shooting zone all evening with the knowledge that when the game is over, all his work will be lost in the statistics: Bryant will still be the game's leading scorer; but it will have taken him twice at many shots to get there.
This all got me thinking about how such a process could benefit the way that the teams that I work with interact. How many decisions are made every day in the design world for reasons outside of that strict adherence to process? How does ego or the simple need to "be billable" affect our behaviour? More importantly, how can I as an individual act unselfishly in order to improve the overall performance of my team?
Labels: Great Thinking, NY Times
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
On The New City..
"The amount of building becomes obscene without a blueprint. Each time you ask yourself, Do you have the right to do this much work on this scale if you don't have an opinion about what the world should be like? We really feel that. But is there time for a manifesto? I don't know."
--Rem Koolhaas
--Rem Koolhaas
Labels: Architecture, NY Times, Signs of Our Time
Sunday, April 06, 2008
"No global reasons.."
It was only after seeing the rendering for the Hines tower next to a photo of the Institut du Monde Arabe in today's NY Times Magazine article that I made the connection and realized, holy shit, Jean Nouvel is hands down my favourite architect. Then I got lost in his website for about 3 hours...
It was only after seeing the rendering for the Hines tower next to a photo of the Institut du Monde Arabe in today's NY Times Magazine article that I made the connection and realized, holy shit, Jean Nouvel is hands down my favourite architect. Then I got lost in his website for about 3 hours...
Labels: Architecture, NY Times
Thursday, February 07, 2008
That Screaming Orange Logo
"[J. Duncan Berry of Applied Iconology] noted the effectiveness of the original Tide package, which communicated “cyclone in a box,” he says. “There’s this great dynamic tension there. The word ‘Tide’ is bursting out of the circle, and the circle is standing out of the box. It’s almost a baroque composition; it’s like what Steven Spielberg would do if he were designing a brand.” The idea was that Tide is “a force of nature — it’s a phase shift.” After all, an effective synthetic detergent was a real innovation in 1947, a result of years of expensive research and development. The bull’s-eye look was actually borrowed from earlier P.&G. products, Dash and Oxydol. But in his memorable culture and design book, “The Total Package,” Thomas Hine noted that “some sophisticated color research” — involving a psychologist who specialized in such things — went into selecting a bright scheme that would suggest “sufficient power,” tempered with the “likable” blue that had a more “sensitive” connotation. Reaching the market just as automatic washing machines were catching on, Tide was a sensation; anecdotal accounts from the time suggest people lined up to get hold of the stuff — as if it were an iPhone."
From NY Times Magazine's "Consumed" by Rob Walker
"[J. Duncan Berry of Applied Iconology] noted the effectiveness of the original Tide package, which communicated “cyclone in a box,” he says. “There’s this great dynamic tension there. The word ‘Tide’ is bursting out of the circle, and the circle is standing out of the box. It’s almost a baroque composition; it’s like what Steven Spielberg would do if he were designing a brand.” The idea was that Tide is “a force of nature — it’s a phase shift.” After all, an effective synthetic detergent was a real innovation in 1947, a result of years of expensive research and development. The bull’s-eye look was actually borrowed from earlier P.&G. products, Dash and Oxydol. But in his memorable culture and design book, “The Total Package,” Thomas Hine noted that “some sophisticated color research” — involving a psychologist who specialized in such things — went into selecting a bright scheme that would suggest “sufficient power,” tempered with the “likable” blue that had a more “sensitive” connotation. Reaching the market just as automatic washing machines were catching on, Tide was a sensation; anecdotal accounts from the time suggest people lined up to get hold of the stuff — as if it were an iPhone."
From NY Times Magazine's "Consumed" by Rob Walker
Labels: NY Times
Monday, December 17, 2007
Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated
"In the form of cached Web sites, evacuated blogs, forgotten MySpace pages and abandoned Flickr feeds, ghosts frolic, beeping and flashing on autopilot. The jolly online zombies look the way they did the day they died, but the light left their eyes the last day their souls logged in."
--Virginia Hefferman, The Medium
"ok so this is my page for me and all the spooky things that happen to me don't think Iam crazy and don't think that I am makenig things up but for the true believers you can find alot of things here that you might find reasoureful of what not.so if your ready you can read my page and chill out...feel free to look around and have fun. "
--first and last entry on iamaloser.blogspot.com, June 18, 2002
"If you like a certain blog, make friends with the blogger, and then later they abandon their blog, and do not respond to emails, should you be worried? Contact the police? Make a missing persons report? Google their name and search for an obituary? What are you ethically obligated to do in this situation?"
from Dropping out of the blogosphere
"Most of these screenshots (many of which are annotated) were collected during the dotcom bust of 1999-2001, but I continue to add new victims to the rolls as they succomb to the forces of cyber-entropy."
-- Steve Baldwin, The Museum of Interactive Failure
"What would cause people to leave such a beautiful place?"
-- WebUrbanists.com's Urban Abandonments Parts I & II
"In the form of cached Web sites, evacuated blogs, forgotten MySpace pages and abandoned Flickr feeds, ghosts frolic, beeping and flashing on autopilot. The jolly online zombies look the way they did the day they died, but the light left their eyes the last day their souls logged in."
--Virginia Hefferman, The Medium
"ok so this is my page for me and all the spooky things that happen to me don't think Iam crazy and don't think that I am makenig things up but for the true believers you can find alot of things here that you might find reasoureful of what not.so if your ready you can read my page and chill out...feel free to look around and have fun. "
--first and last entry on iamaloser.blogspot.com, June 18, 2002
"If you like a certain blog, make friends with the blogger, and then later they abandon their blog, and do not respond to emails, should you be worried? Contact the police? Make a missing persons report? Google their name and search for an obituary? What are you ethically obligated to do in this situation?"
from Dropping out of the blogosphere
"Most of these screenshots (many of which are annotated) were collected during the dotcom bust of 1999-2001, but I continue to add new victims to the rolls as they succomb to the forces of cyber-entropy."
-- Steve Baldwin, The Museum of Interactive Failure
"What would cause people to leave such a beautiful place?"
-- WebUrbanists.com's Urban Abandonments Parts I & II
Labels: NY Times, Signs of Our Time
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Visualizing Data for the Masses
Searching for examples of info graphics from the New York Times, I found this great collection of work by Megan Jaegerman (on Tufte's site no less). Also worth checking out: Matthew Ericson, the Deputy Graphics Director at the NY Times, recently gave the keynote at an info graphics conference in California. You can download the slides (pdf) for this presentation titled “Visualizing Data for the Masses: Information Graphics at The New York Times”. (all of this via: db79.com)
Searching for examples of info graphics from the New York Times, I found this great collection of work by Megan Jaegerman (on Tufte's site no less). Also worth checking out: Matthew Ericson, the Deputy Graphics Director at the NY Times, recently gave the keynote at an info graphics conference in California. You can download the slides (pdf) for this presentation titled “Visualizing Data for the Masses: Information Graphics at The New York Times”. (all of this via: db79.com)
Labels: Design, Edge of Chaos, NY Times
Monday, October 08, 2007
Dylan is not there
In a recent interview with indieWire, director Todd Haynes states that the notion of a fixed personal identity is a lie; that "it is something that we are always working on and abridging and using outside influences to keep changing." No where is this theory better exemplified than in his new movie, I'm Not There, in which his subject, Bob Dylan is played by six different actors including Cate Blanchett and 13-year-old African-American actor, Marcus Carl Franklin. Ultimately, the movie becomes as much a study of identity for the filmmaker himself -- of all of us for that matter -- as it is of one of America's greatest songwriters. As Robert Sullivan writes in his cover article in yesterday's New York Times' Magazine:
"Todd Haynes’s Dylan film isn’t about Dylan. That’s what’s going to be so difficult for people to understand. That’s what’s going to make “I’m Not There” so trying for the really diehard Dylanists. That’s what might upset the non-Dylanists, who may find it hard to figure out why he bothered to make it at all. And that’s why it took Haynes so long to get it made. Haynes was trying to make a Dylan film that is, instead, what Dylan is all about, as he sees it, which is changing, transforming, killing off one Dylan and moving to the next, shedding his artistic skin to stay alive."
More from Haynes on the making of "I'm Not There" can be found here and here and here.
In a recent interview with indieWire, director Todd Haynes states that the notion of a fixed personal identity is a lie; that "it is something that we are always working on and abridging and using outside influences to keep changing." No where is this theory better exemplified than in his new movie, I'm Not There, in which his subject, Bob Dylan is played by six different actors including Cate Blanchett and 13-year-old African-American actor, Marcus Carl Franklin. Ultimately, the movie becomes as much a study of identity for the filmmaker himself -- of all of us for that matter -- as it is of one of America's greatest songwriters. As Robert Sullivan writes in his cover article in yesterday's New York Times' Magazine:
"Todd Haynes’s Dylan film isn’t about Dylan. That’s what’s going to be so difficult for people to understand. That’s what’s going to make “I’m Not There” so trying for the really diehard Dylanists. That’s what might upset the non-Dylanists, who may find it hard to figure out why he bothered to make it at all. And that’s why it took Haynes so long to get it made. Haynes was trying to make a Dylan film that is, instead, what Dylan is all about, as he sees it, which is changing, transforming, killing off one Dylan and moving to the next, shedding his artistic skin to stay alive."
More from Haynes on the making of "I'm Not There" can be found here and here and here.
Labels: Auteurs on YouTube, Film, Music, NY Times
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Signs of Our Time
"The first video news I watched on a cellphone was a smoke signal. I saw it in the back of a cab. The Pope had died, and CNN had its cameras trained on the chimney over St. Peter’s Square. Viewers were told to expect white smoke when the cardinals had elected his replacement.
The sight of this primitive signal on a screen the size of a Saltine in a taxi in New York City was mind-blowing. I peered into the machine in my hand. I could make out the image. I could understand it. It needed no translation."
– Virginia Hefferman, Screens
The sight of this primitive signal on a screen the size of a Saltine in a taxi in New York City was mind-blowing. I peered into the machine in my hand. I could make out the image. I could understand it. It needed no translation."
– Virginia Hefferman, Screens
Labels: NY Times, Signs of Our Time, World at Large, YouTube
Sunday, February 04, 2007
31 Days in Iraq
From this morning's New York Times, graphic designer Alicia Cheng's gut-churning visual depiction of the reported 1900+ deaths in Iraq during the first month of 2007, a toll that has markedly increased from 800 in January 2006.
From this morning's New York Times, graphic designer Alicia Cheng's gut-churning visual depiction of the reported 1900+ deaths in Iraq during the first month of 2007, a toll that has markedly increased from 800 in January 2006.
Labels: Design Can Change the World, NY Times, World at Large
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Silence has a funny sound
"Something had gentled the rain, taking the madness out of it."
From today's New York Times: the "unmistakable prose" of Micket Spillane (1918-2006).
"Something had gentled the rain, taking the madness out of it."
From today's New York Times: the "unmistakable prose" of Micket Spillane (1918-2006).
Labels: Literature, NY Times
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Frank Gehry raises the bar in Brooklyn
Always inspiring, Frank Gehry reveals his proposed design for the Brooklyn Nets arena and its surrounding 21 acre corridor. The Times architectural critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff proclaims "If it is approved, it will radically alter the Brooklyn skyline, reaffirming the borough's emergence as a legitimate cultural rival to Manhattan."
Always inspiring, Frank Gehry reveals his proposed design for the Brooklyn Nets arena and its surrounding 21 acre corridor. The Times architectural critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff proclaims "If it is approved, it will radically alter the Brooklyn skyline, reaffirming the borough's emergence as a legitimate cultural rival to Manhattan."
Labels: Architecture, NY Times
