homeworks (nyt)
This story is nearly a year old, so I'm not sure if the Homeworks program has in fact ended, but in any case it's a great example of a government program that worked. Abandoned buildings in Harlem were converted into habitable dwellings, and sold at market rates.
(Saturday, September 28, 2002)

keiko free at last (new yorker)
"'Free Willy,' which was shot on a lean budget of twenty million dollars, had a cast of mostly unknowns, and starred a child actor named Jason James Richter, who was the same age as Keiko: twelve. No one imagined what a success it would become, although Shuler Donner had an inkling when, after an early research screening, a man approached her, held out ten dollars, and said, 'Here, use this money to save the whales.'"
(Sunday, September 22, 2002)

peter saville (nyt)
"Perhaps [Peter] Saville's best-known work is the cover of the New Order album 'Power, Corruption and Lies.' Saville had unsuccessfully trawled London's art galleries for a Renaissance painting of a suitably Machiavellian character. Frustrated, he found himself in the gift shop of the National Gallery buying postcards. 'I pulled out this card of the Fantin-Latour still-life of roses from the shelf,' Saville recalls, 'and my girlfriend at the time just slid alongside me and said, "You're not thinking of using that, are you?" I knew then I had to use it -- it's so much better than the bleeding obvious.'

"The design critic Rick Poynor concurs. 'It's doubtful that many New Order fans would have known much about Fantin-Latour or enjoyed the image as an oil painting,' Poynor says. 'But by recontextualizing the image and contrasting it with the music, Saville achieved the sort of ambiguity and complexity of resonance more usually associated with art.'"
(Sunday, September 22, 2002)

are four tiny homes better than one large one? (nyt)
"In a day when architects and designers routinely aspire to dwellings nearly as grand as their clients', Ms. Allen does without a 2,500-square-foot TriBeCa loft or a six-bedroom East Hampton house. Instead, she has her own small-scale brand of luxury: four houses — in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Duxbury, Mass., near Cape Cod — which collectively amount to only 2,500 square feet. 'Littler is just better,' Ms. Allen said"

I'd agree. Smaller means less waste, less temptation to buy useless stuff, lower bills, and less maintenance. Less is more, as they say.
(Thursday, September 19, 2002)

another site design rip-off
I work for ATG. Visit our site, then FreeSiteSolutions' site. It's amazing that a company purporting to be a full-service web design and hosting shop would rip off somebody's else's design for their home page. I wonder whose designs they steal for their clients.
(Friday, September 13, 2002)

warhol stamps!
I love this, but I think the Post Office kinda blew it. This was the perfect opportunity to do four, or six, or twenty variations on the same self-portrait stamp.
(Thursday, September 12, 2002)

wireless=defenseless? (new architect)
Good back page article describing (in detail) the pitfalls of not implementing encryption on one's wireless network. Since I've been planning on setting one up at home, this comes as a good reminder to set it up correctly.
(Thursday, September 12, 2002)

tibor kalman (wired 12/1996)
"Yeah, but some look at Colors and think: Benetton uses politics the way Nike uses basketball. They see you co-opted, not Benetton.

"Look, if someone is going to permit me to make a publication that is politically and culturally progressive and not tell me to put their favorite movie stars on the cover, if I get to do what I want in an honest way - as I did in the beginning at Colors - then I'm going to do it.
"No one gets to work under ethically pure conditions, and I think if you are in touch with your audience and they think what you are doing is honest and credible, then you're on safe ice."
(Wednesday, September 11, 2002)

a hundred days off
Amazon has a cool promotion, which I think we'll be seeing more often: buy Underworld's new album (which hasn't been released yet) now, and get immediate access to a streaming version of same. Wonderful.
(Monday, September 9, 2002)

naoto fukasawa products
the pebble phone is just lovely. apparently he designed the wall-mounted muji cd player, too.
(Monday, September 9, 2002)

the prelinger archives
mike just sent me this link. it's great to see this sizable archive of american ephemera available online, since i couldn't afford to buy the voyager cd-roms when they came out.
(Monday, September 9, 2002)

hoefler's type resources
for mac users only, unfortunately. includes a free set of screen fonts.
also, check out retina (the new financial listing typeface for the wall street journal).
(Monday, September 9, 2002)