PUBLIC SCHOOL

The Nostalgia Era

I took my girlfriend to see the new Harry Potter movie this past weekend and two trailers rolled in succession that caught my attention. The two were for TRON Legacy and the upcoming Smurfs movie. It wasn’t the trailers themselves that interested me, but rather the larger theme.

The Slow Death Of The English Language

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t on my good side today. Aside from the fact that his company is bullying a couple friends of mine, yesterday he mentioned that Facebook was going to revamp the way we communicate because a recent survey of young kids said they didn’t like email. He said “its too formal“. He may just be expressing the views of the majority of his users, but it saddens me none the less considering he is at the helm of a ship that is shaping the way we all communicate with one another.

It saddens me because I don’t understand it. When did communication become too formal for us? When did it begin its slow and painful mutation in to what it is today? Did the internet start this process or has it just amplified it?

Everything Has Been Done, So How Can We Do Anything?

On the left in the image above is a promo piece Keith Davis Young and I did about 3 years ago for a party some folks were throwing at the old PUBLIC SCHOOL studio space. Three days ago I awoke to a few emails letting me know that someone had potentially ripped the image and concept off, which you can see on the right. I removed the identifying information from the top of the promo they did because the situation was solved amicably. This post isn’t about that conflict. It just brings to mind an issue I hear a lot about.

Honestly I really didn’t care that the idea was lifted. Their event was for a good cause as part of the larger Movember movement. What the situation did do was raise an important question. In an age where everything has been done before, how can we do anything new?

Eric Fischer’s Racial Division Maps

Most racial maps lump groups of people in to blobs that make it difficult to see what the real meshing of ethnic groups is like, so inspired by Bill Rankin’s Chicago Map, Eric Fischer created maps of many US cities using a similar methodology. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian and Orange is Hispanic. Gray is other and each dot represents 25 people.

The above map details Austin’s makeup as of the 2000 census, but after the jump we’ve got a few of the bigger cities around the US for your perusal. It’s important to note something something that Andrew Price of GOOD wrote about these maps:

What do we, as a society, want to see in maps like this? I think it’s safe to say that the clear separation of races in Detroit is a symptom (or cause) of serious social problems. At the same time, it seems unrealistic to expect perfect integration and it’s unclear if we should want that anyway. It’s great that our cities have vibrant ethnic neighborhoods.

Levis Go To Work Rebuttal

An interesting point was raised by something Justin read yesterday concerning the new Levi’s Go Work ad. Matt posted the video a few weeks back after showing all of us at the studio and we were all quite moved by it. Along with Wieden + Kennedy’s other great patriotic Dodge ad, felt like the recent slew of pro-American manufacturing commercials (that last one is by GS&P) was a good thing. What Justin read though raised a very valid point about an otherwise fantastic piece of advertising.