If it’s showtime, it’s Trajan.

Go to the movies, and there’s usually one typeface getting more than its share of screentime. The folks at Goodiebag put the Trajan mania in perspective.
However, if this year’s crop of best picture nominees for an Oscar are any indication, the tide may be turning. Juno uses hand-drawn lettering that matches its animated title sequence. There Will Be Blood features a calligraphic font that, well, bleeds. The original theatrical poster for Michael Clayton uses Eurostile Bold Extended to spell out the title character’s name. Atonement goes retro with a typewritten font, a generously kerned, all-caps Prestige Elite. The folks at Linotype take a look at other movie fonts here.

It’s a Macworld...

...and we get to live in it. Apple unveiled the ultra-thin MacBook Air at San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Tuesday. Watch the keynote address here. (Or read Engadget’s live play-by-play.) New York Times’ columnist and CNBC contributor David Pogue sums up the major announcements here.

1) A one-terabyte, wireless back-up drive called Time Capsule that sells for $500
2) New software for the iPhone that pinpoints your location using cell towers and wireless hotspots
3) Movie rentals from iTunes for $4; movies last 24 hours but can be started on one platform – such as a laptop – paused and then picked up on another – such as an iPhone
4) A 23% price drop to $230 on Apple TV and software enhancements
5) the three-pound, super-slim $1800 MacBook Air

“One of the most significant things in this MacBook Air was that they’re introducing a lot of gesture-based user interface,” says Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.

“If you have a picture...you can do what they call pinching. You do it on the touch pad, not on the screen...That in some ways may end up being the biggest legacy,” Mossberg adds. ”All thin notebooks have compromises...It only has one way to get on the Internet – wirelessly. It doesn’t have an ethernet jack...Now that may be okay. Sometimes Apple moves ahead of the industry dropping features.”

The slenderella laptop won’t hit the stores for another two weeks. And Mossberg hasn’t taken the laptop for a test drive yet, so it’ll take a few weeks before he writes his first review. But the machine already has one grumbler. A hrrumph from Slate, natch. However, MacBook Air already has some third-party accessories, namely a vinyl laptop sleeve that looks just like an inter-office envelope.

Pogue further reports on the hypnotic charms of a Steve Jobs keynote here. (Sorry, the Grey Lady doesn’t do embedable video yet.) But somebody did catch Pogue’s, uh, cabaret act at Macworld, posted above. It’s one part Mark Russell, one part Roberta Flack and two parts Cupertino.

Meanwhile, Gizmodo wonders if design cues to future Apple products can be found in Braun electronics from the ’60s. In a side-by-side comparison of Apple and Braun products, Gizmodo proposes that past performance will predict future results. But one could also argue that Braun’s Dieter Rams and Apple’s Jonathan Ive just share a great eye for clean, simple design with a purpose, no matter the decade. However, everybody can get the signature Steve Jobs look here.

A new museum for the New Museum

“[T]he New Museum of Contemporary Art, on the Bowery at Prince Street on the Lower East Side, is the kind of building that renews your faith in New York as a place where culture is lived, not just bought and sold,” writes Nicolai Ouroussoff in The New York Times. The (recently renewed) critic points out a few architectural highlights in an interactive piece here.

The architects behind the space are Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA. “The Bowery was very gritty when we first visited it,” the architects explain. “We were a bit shocked, but we were also impressed that a contemporary art museum wanted to be there...The New Museum is a combination of elegant and urban. We were determined to make a building that felt like that.”

Paul Goldberger of The New Yorker hearts the building, too – for the structure and how it relates to its location. “Sejima and Nishizawa have designed a building that is just right for this moment of the Bowery’s existence. It is a pile of six boxes, stacked unevenly, like a child’s blocks. Sometimes the blocks mount up in a pattern of setbacks like that of a traditional New York building; sometimes they jut out over open space in a way that suggests the architects had something more radical in mind. The building is original, but doesn’t strain to reinvent the idea of a museum.”

For this blogger, one of the most striking features was the glass curtainwall at the street level. It allows the sidewalk to extend into the museum, and outside foot traffic is visible even all the way back in the rear gallery, near the café. The narrow staircase that connects the third and fourth floors is an intriguing passageway between galleries, and even affords room for a confessional-like exhibition space. And of course the building’s stacked-box silhouette lends itself to becoming an icon, like Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling ramp for the Guggenheim. In fact, advertising created by Droga5 for the New Museum already uses the New Museum’s distinctive profile.

UPDATE: Nishizawa and Sejima give The Japan Times an interview here. They talk about how their partnership started – at first he (Nishizawa) was working for her (Sejima). And they elaborate on how the building got its distinctive shape. “First, with a plot of land as small as that 740 sq. meters, there was no alternative but to stack the galleries on top of each other. But when you put galleries on top of each other, you end up with a high-rise building, right? ...[A]ll the floors end up the same and...the building ends up looking more like an office tower than a museum. So we decided that each floor needed to look different from the others, and to achieve that we needed to vary their sizes,” says Nishizawa.

Konichiwa, Muji

Japanese retailer Muji opened its first U.S. store yesterday, bringing its practical yet well-designed line of housewares, stationery and clothing to New York City. The first store is in SoHo on Broadway, just a few blocks away from another Japanese retailer, Uniqlo. A second Muji store reportedly opens next month in the office tower Renzo Piano designed for the New York Times. Gothamist and Racked weigh in with their takes on – and pics of – the downtown outpost.

Muji’s products are free of logos; the company’s name is a shortened version of “mujirushi ryohin” which translates as no-brand, quality goods. Catering to a well-traveled, international crowd, the store has just about every size of vial for all your emollients, collapsable travel bags, slippers as well as shirts and socks made of recycled yarn. (It’s not as gross as it sounds. They’re made from scraps.)

Prices on dishes, kitchen utensils and paper goods were reasonable while clothing seemed more expensive than what one would expect. (Perhaps a result of the weak dollar?) One curious item: a pair of men’s corduroy pants that seemed perfectly normal, except around the waist. Where beltloops would normally be, there was a large piece – about three inches tall – of forgiving elastic, like you’d find in a pair of pregnancy jeans. The price for these “Thanksgiving Dinner” pants? $89.50. (Write your own MasterCard “priceless” punchline in the comment section.) They’re probably just some comfortable pants for a long-haul flight.

Philanthropnology

Last year, this blog covered the expected specs for the XO computer developed by the One Laptop Per Child foundation. Well, the price has gone up a little, and it's not solely for export anymore. This week the XO hit the U.S. and Canadian markets in a special give-one-get-one offer that runs through November 26.

“For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution,” according to OLPC's web site. And for the laptop you keep, T-Mobile is providing free wi-fi service at its HotSpots for a year. Or, if you'd prefer to just make a donation, $200 will pay for one laptop.

Check out Leslie Stahl's excellent 60 Minutes interview with OLPC’s Nicholas Negroponte and visits to children using the laptop here. (Sorry, there's pre-roll and CBS doesn't release embedable code. But the piece is good, so hang in there.) Masi Oka of Heroes introduces the reverse B.O.G.O. offer in this commercial that's on the air now. Watch it here.

Best Inventions of 2007

The Halloween candy isn't even stale yet, and Time has already published a “Best of 2007” list. The magazine ranks the best inventions of the past, er, current year, and at the top is the iPhone. (Yes, it's an obvious pick, but thankfully less quirky than last year's choice for Person of the Year.) Staff writer Lev Grossman explains how the magazine makes its selects in this video.

Not so surprisingly, many of the innovations involve transportation and ways to make it more efficient and eco-friendly. The Venturi Electric car runs on sun and wind power, while MIT's electric City Car stacks up like luggage carts at the airport. A gas-steam hybrid engine, which makes use of the heat it generates, improves fuel economy 40%. A dual-mode vehicle from HJR Hokkaido Railway Company runs on rails to the end of the line and then the tires take over. A bioethanol concept car from Sweden doesn't have doors but does have a 3-D dash.

French and Indian companies have teamed up to build a car that runs on compressed air. (The same Indian company is also launching a $2,500 car that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman predicts will wreak even more havoc on infrastructure and the environment. So – just thinking aloud here – how about working on dropping the price of the compressed-air model?) Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which uses composite materials to lighten its load, also made the list.











Elsewhere on the newsstand, I.D. magazine included the iPhone in its current New + Noteworthy issue. (Sorry, no link available yet.) Other highlights include: some fancy New Balance kicks designed by DDC; Catherine Hammerton's ginko-inspired wallpaper; and Sebastian Wrong's font clocks from Established & Sons. The magazine is also giving away 19 of their picks in a very classy sweepstakes.

Taxi design, redux

A previous post in this blog discussed the new logo gracing the sides of taxis all over New York City. Well, The New York Times has been moderating a very smart discussion about the merits and weaknesses of the logo in its City Room blog. And in the spirit of "if you don't like it, why don't you do it?" they've asked for alternative ideas from design professionals and readers.

Michael Bierut of Pentagram says, "that attempt to combine the NYC logo which is being used elsewhere with T in a circle (why?) and that (again) bluntly rounded off and oddly-spaced A-X-I just seems a little ham handed. Maybe it looked good on paper, but I don’t find it convincing on the side of a cab."

A graphics editor at The Times, Jonathan Corum, goes for the practical and suggests highlighting “the most important piece of information: the medallion number. Encouraging riders to remember (or at least notice) the number of their cab is a simple and cheap public safety measure, and would likely speed the return of lost property.”

For Oscar Bjarnson of Systm, X marks the spot. He borrows iconography from a treasure map for some of the typography. "I’d go with something simple. Maybe a typographic solution with some hint of the new NYC logo embedded."

Readers are weighing in, too. Scott Schwebel asks: What would the t-shirt look like? Well, it gets the Lady Liberty treatment. "New York City represents to the world all that is America and the dream of a better life...Why not try and have that message reinforced everyday on the street with one of our highest profile city experiences/icons?” says Schwebel. The huddled masses yearning to, er, move crosstown.

And Michael Condouris turns the checker pattern into a piece of type. “Make it easy to read, incorporate the checker pattern into the X for a little designiness, and you’ve got something fun, obvious and clear.”

And the partially anonymous reader Amanda P. succinctly incorporates into the logo the action of hailing a cab. Hmm. Perhaps NYC's Taxi & Limousine Commission should have held a contest for the new logo. Smart Design, which pro bono spearheaded the effort behind the current design, could have set up the parameters and shared some of their insight with potential contestants. And a contest might have even eliminated some of the suggested "tweaks" that probably came from the the Commission.

Moving violation?

You might have seen this on the side of taxis driving around the city: a new logo. While the pattern on the side of the trunk is a nice nod to checkered cabs of the past, you have to wonder what's going on with that type. (What's a t-axi? What's with the superbold heavy treatment on the NYC?) Admittedly, what used to be on the doors was a mishmash of stencils and decals. But you can't help but wonder if a really, really great opportunity was squandered. Just imagine the t-shirt sales. Even the old logo for the TV show Taxi had some style.

Designing with multiple partners is never easy. Like they say, a camel is a horse designed by committee. The boldfaced NYC logo comes from Wolff Olins, the firm that also designed the symbol for London's 2012 Olympic games. Smart Design led a team that included Antenna Design and Birsel + Seck to create the decals for the Taxi & Limousine Commission. To be fair, the project also included some changes inside the cab. Still one can't help but wonder what the logo would have looked like if Pentagram or Milton Glaser had gotten their hands on it. Unbeige weighs in with some criticism here.

And if you recently noticed some flowers on the tops of taxis, they're part of a projects called "Gardens in Transit" which runs through December. Kids from schools, youth programs and hospitals painted the stained-glass looking flowers on decals as a creative and/or therapeutic outlet.

Time for Uniqlo

Japanese retailer Uniqlo is running a contest for bloggers. If you post this clock of theirs, you might win a G-Shock watch. See what happens when you're polite and well-designed? Your advertising is free, and people might even buy a shirt.

Reinventing the wheel. Or the rocking chair.

Stumbled onto the 100% Design show in London, and a few pieces really jumped out as smart, inventive and entertaining. The picture is of a rocker called Ku-Dir-Ka by Lithuanian designer Paulius Vitkauskas. The floor model was bright green, but it's also available in black and red according to its manufacturer, Contraforma. Designer Anthony Dickens takes a whole new look at time with clocks that scroll in a linear fashion while others rotate like a carousel. Andrew Lang has created something that looks like a flower pot screwed to the wall. Instead, you lock your bike to it. No need for big bike racks. A design group called Asobi from Slovenia crushes all sense of scale with their XXL suggestion for public seating, the Isle Lounge. Dead Good brings cool Britannia to a mirror. The London office of ad agency Wieden & Kennedy even got in on the act, sponsoring a design contest for a new product that reprepresents them . It's very democratic. Vote here.