I’ve recently started writing for Smithsonian’s Design Decoded blog, which explores a new topic every few weeks through a series of interlocking posts that will, we hope, offer a new lens for viewing the familiar. Our current series takes a look at Design and Sherlock Holmes. A brief excerpt from the introductory post follows, investigating […]
Tag: Pop culture
[The cover to Batman: Death by Design] What if Bruce Wayne wanted to demolish Penn Station in order to surreptitiously construct an auxiliary Batcave beneath the new building? That, in essence, is the plot of Chip Kidd’s new graphic novel Batman: Death by Design. Though a few familiar faces –and grins– make an appearance, Death by […]
[Michelangelo’s David being scanned by The Digital Michelangelo Project] Last week a crotch-shot appeared in my twitter stream. Now, this isn’t normally the type of thing I’d write about but this particular crotch belonged to Michelangelo’s David, the sculpture that wikipedia tells us, has “become iconic shorthand for ‘culture’” ( and if wikipedia’s validation isn’t […]
[Robert W. Tebbs, photographic survey of a Louisiana Plantation (1926); via] I’m currently reading William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! It’s a incredible book. A visceral portrait of a haunted, Civil War era American South. I haven’t finished it yet, so this post is pretty much spoiler-free, but I was so impressed with the depictions of the […]
[still from Groundhog Day, dir. Harold Ramis (1993)] The same things happen. The spray-painted tag was written on a crumbling wall in New Orleans and it immediately struck a dissonant chord in me. I kept walking, staring down at the fractured sidewalk pavement. I kept walking and when I looked up, I saw a nearly […]