Whitehouse & Company

OK you guys, as an expatriate Brit I listen every year to all this independence stuff with resigned stoicism. But dare I say we’re not the only country with an embarrassment called George. Barking madness is not confined to the UK, even mad cow disease has now been confirmed beneath these spacious skies. The thing that really gets me is that each year National Public Radio recites the Declaration and ends up sniggeringly with ‘on that day, George III entered into his diary, “nothing of importance happened today“‘. While we are on the subject of self-evident truths, how the hell did you expect poor old George to know that you lot had suddenly got all uppity. An MSN newsfeed? In fact he did not learn of it for several weeks until the first ship returned with the news. What he in fact wrote in his diary on that day was “Shit. I guess we screwed that one up royally”. What the hell. Happy birthday America. They can’t stay in power for ever.

Wednesday night. A screech of brakes, a thud, and then a young woman screaming. A yellow cab had struck her baby stroller in the crosswalk. A small boy, maybe three or four years old, naked other than for a diaper, was thrown over a hundred feet or so along Amsterdam Avenue to end up lying motionless in the gutter immediately below our living room window. Within ninety seconds, thanks to dozens of cell phone calls, three police cars and two ambulances had arrived. After about five minutes the paramedics revived the child whose cries were chilling but reassuring (although he did not appear to be able to move). Ten minutes later the vehicles sped off with sirens howling, leaving us and the assembled group of bystanders below wondering how tragedies like this come about.

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Target

Medicine bottles are stupid and dumb. So are regulatory traffic signs, remote controls, cell phone interfaces, and the flushing mechanisms in toilets. Occasionally designers are hired to make them beautiful and dumb. Once in a blue moon, designers get it right. The new Target medicine bottle is one of those brilliant designs which make so much sense everyone must now be wondering why medicine bottles weren’t always like that. It is also great-looking; not through styling but as a result of good old form-follows-function clarity. Designed by Deborah Adler, an SVA student (who now works for Milton Glaser), as her thesis project, the new bottle sits cap downward to provide a large flat surface for clear graphics, features a pull-out card for personal and cautionary information, and is provided with changeable color-coded neck rings to distinguish drugs intended for different family members. Why is it so difficult for manufacturers to apply this kind of common-sense good design to all of those other infuriating objects that constantly frustrate us. (see the very nicely done Target flash movie)

The Post Office have just released this series of Masterworks of American Architecture stamps, which is nice, although the cropping of most of the images leaves little of the architecture to appreciate. Particularly egregious is the fact that they cropped out our graphics for Richard Meier’s High Museum. We have solved that by redesigning that particular stamp for you (go on, you can see our graphics if you look hard enough). If you want to see more…

A participant, and a traditionally shaped New York City cop (I didn’t know there were any of these left), festooned with genuine good old-fashioned cop paraphernalia. Taken during today’s gay pride parade just along from our studio, at Fifth Avenue and 16th Street. Hillary Clinton got the biggest applause.

Louis Kahn at the AA.

I discovered this while rummaging through my computer this morning. I think I must have taken the photo in 1962 or thereabouts, when Kahn visited the Architectural Association and reviewed our fifth year projects. I can’t remember now what he said about my particular attempt (a utopian and megalomaniacal redevelopment of the South Bank in London), but I recollect it did go on to be ‘stored’, which meant it was put into the AA archives. In any event it was a wonderful experience to have been able to meet the author of some of the most sensitive and significant examples of modern architecture. He was a certainly a profound influence on my architectural work (before I defected into graphic design).

I have since donated the negatives of this and a companion shot to the Penn Architecture Archives in Philadelphia.

Four years ago, a German high school graduate with no previous experience but with an avid passion for design knocked on our door looking for an internship for the Summer. Her prodigious talent was immediately apparent, and in the few months she was with us we were glad to be able to help a little with her application to design school in Berlin. Now she has graduated with this accomplished monothematic magazine about funerals as her Thesis. Congratulations again Jasmin Mueller-Stoy, Diplom Designer.

Her website www.muellerundstoy.de.

An egret wading in the shallows with the historic Dakota apartment building on Central Park West reflected behind (oops, sorry, that’s not the Dakota, that’s the building immediately north of it). Taken during our morning walk to work today. I love New York.