The seats of the old Yankee Stadium were hard, the floors sticky, and the way-finding signs confusing, but it was the perfect place to watch baseball, drink a cold one, and munch on deep-fried savories. The new Yankee stadium, however, like most retro stadiums, bears the burden of being faux, a recreation, like a Disney version of reality. It works and it doesn’t.



It’s every author’s dream to introduce a term into the mainstream lexicon, to condense a mountain of innovative research into a cultural catchphrase. Yet pervasiveness and longevity are also mixed blessings. Just as an idea is promoted to a slogan, it loses important nuances in its original meaning: “famous for fifteen minutes” and “form follows function” come to mind.    







Tickets: the most ephemeral of all ephemera, the rarest category of paper collectibles. Designed to be temporary stand-ins for a box at the opera or seat on the train, they were never meant to have any real permanence. After all, the conductor or person taking the tickets at the gate rips them in half. (Until recently, that is, when admission is determined by simply pointing a laser scanner at the bar code printed on an e-ticket.) Throughout history, tickets have been made of everything from ivory to semiprecious metals, to paper or card stock, to the bits and bytes of their current digital format. Even now, every journey still begins, literally or virtually, at the ticket window — an always-recognizable point of reference in unfamiliar surroundings. Tickets endure despite their temporal quality because they provide a way to orient ourselves logically and precisely on the giant invisible grid of daily life. 



In 1962, I spent hours listening to Mad magazine’s first LP (Big Top Records), Mad “Twists” Rock ‘N’ Roll. Playing it over and over, I learned every inane lyric by heart. When My Pimples Turned to Dimples (That Say I Love You), Please Betty Jane (Shave Your Legs) and the existential (She’s Got A) Nose Job, with the refrain “now she’s the prettiest gal in town,” were imbedded in that part of my cortex that surprisingly even today is sent a twitter when I am idly waiting for take-out food or a prescription to be filled. (And if asked nicely I will gladly belt out each tune in two-part harmony.) So worn out was the vinyl of my first copy of Twists (it was the era of the twist), I bought two additional copies, which probably sent the record straight to #102 on the Billboard Charts (without the proverbial bullet).



Warning: the following article contains spoilers for the plots of Citizen Kane (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Stalag 17 (1953), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Longest Day (1962), and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). Also, it is not, strictly speaking, about design. 

Play Slideshow >>

A site like Design Observer is filled with words, words, words. We like to talk about design, and that talk contributes to an ever expanding global conversation that continues in other blogs and in all matter of social media. But while so many of us are talking, someone has to actually keep on doing the work. Seymour Chwast is one of the best of those someones. Normally taciturn, he takes a break for a rare conversation tomorrow night for the New York Chapter of the AIGA. 



Over the last several weeks, in preparation for an office move, I've been weeding out books from my over-filled shelves. We all know what a pain moving is, and so the question I asked everyday was: “Do I really need this?” 



Adam Harrison Levy: Another Side of War: The Photographs of Manuel Bromberg
Guest Observer: Jason Grant: Cultured Graphic Hygiene
The Editors: Books Received: Summer 2009
Eric Baker: Today, 06.06.09
Jessica Helfand: An Open Letter to Design Students Everywhere
William Drenttel: Once Out of Chaos
Guest Observer: John Cantwell: Trump, The Logo
Eric Baker: Today, 05.30.09
Guest Observer: Ellen Lupton: A Conversation With David Barringer
Steven Heller: How Much Is That Artifact in the Window?