Grant McCracken's Blog, page 19

Minerva winner (2)

This is a second winner of the Minerva contest.

Congratulations to Guy Lanoue. There is some wonderful writing here.

Gue Lanoue,

Département d’anthropologie, Université de Montréal

Apparently, there could not be two more different women claiming to represent young, hip urban women swimming in the rapid currents of pop culture: one, a gifted actress, film maker, advocate (same-sex marriage); the other a style entreprenista catering to, well, I’m not sure: a media-whoring heiress: ‘leaked’ sex tape; ‘reality’ shows where no amount of staging can ramp up the drama factor; possibly faked marriage; chemically-derived scents that fuel her fashion motor. Kim comes by this naturally, with owl-faced dad babysitting friend O.J. Simpson, and prototypical social climbing mother Kris pushing Kim and her sisters into the limelight since forever. Queen of the double play, Kim exploits the California-bling card to the hilt while calling for moral reparation for the genocide perpetrated on her father’s Armenian ancestors. Even here, that’s just on the edge of authentic as one can possibly get. It’s a safe call; far away, long ago, and nobody really cares (except Armenians).

By contrast, Lena wins the pop authenticity sweepstakes hands down: New York pop-artist father, designer and photographer mom, growing up in chic and hip TriBeCa loft – slash – movie set. Retro-tweeting about a 2002 incident involving a cheese doodle and a (her) bellybutton, Lena seems to have the avant-garde, bohemian and ironically self-referential side of pop culture sewed up. Girls (a.k.a Sex and the City 3.0, after the book and the series) combines self-absorption with hipster aggressiveness. Its protagonists’ total inability to connect with others roots them to an eternal, adolescent now. Watching this, I get nostalgic for the time when The System’s rigidity only provoked an existential life crisis after one had in fact grown up.

These successful embodiments of pop-ness have both basked beside Letterman, yet seemingly for very different reasons: Kim glories in self-parody as long as the money comes in and the cameras roll, while Lena is a mistress of the pseudo-philosophical sound bite and bare-all tattooed angst-as-armour who’s in it for the real, as long as the real is Me. Yet both in their own way are mining the same ore. In the nearly 60 years pop culture has been with us, the Beat – slash – bohemian self-doubter motif (Lena) is just as vintage as the shameless sell-out Sammy Glick trope (Kim).

Kim and Lena both cause me to question the line between persona and authenticity, even though Kim is ‘real’ and Lena is not necessarily Hannah. They are both numb: Kim is apparently completely impermeable to criticism and avoids (but invites) criticism by the uber-cool by blurring the line between artifice and real; even her pregnancy-induced weight gain was tweeted as a Disturbance in the Force that threatened her crafted faux-ista image; no Christina Aguilera you-loved-me-thin-now-love-me-fat Appeal To The Inner Me here. Lena’s inside-out combination of psychic prickliness is no less effective in shutting out the world, in creating a hermetic and eminently sellable brand to young hip wannabes who are just savvy enough to disarm criticism from the ultra-hip by putting their chameleon-like Who-Shall-I-Be-Today uncertainty out there first. The psychic body armour constructed around spinning one’s psychic wheels makes Lena her generation’s Janeane Garofalo or, depending on how much hardness you like to dial in, Sandra Bernhard. It’s easy to say Kim has got brass balls the size of Kentucky that makes her a standout in a sea of shopping channel pseudo-style, while Lena’s self-advertised emotional confusion in ballsy New York is her winning ticket, but maybe that’s all there is to it. They both seemingly put everything out there, but the trick is that what’s ‘out there’ is shallow, vain and self-centered.

This is their craft: making us suspect there’s some deep inner core inside. Lena/Hannah is only angs-itive to suburban wannabes; even her TV parents show the audience they see through her pose, just enough to suggest Lena/Hannah the screenwriter is winking at her audience. In her own way, Kim also refrains from being completely Out There; SoCal is full of swag-masters much more addicted to money and media fame than she is, though maybe not as smart or as lucky as Kim. In the end, both embody old and tired poses of flirting but never fully embracing either thesis or antithesis.

Kim in her own way is the more honest of the two: It’s About the Economy, Stupid worked for Bill Clinton and it works for her. Lena’s out-there-ism is a harder game to play, since the antithesis has to emerge from endless self-referencing; in other words, eat the heart to feed the skin. After Françoise Sagan bared her soul in Bonjour Tristesse, she had nothing left to feed the next cohort of disaffected jeunesse dorée wannabes, condemning herself to another fifty years of just hanging around: the Wallis Simpson syndrome. Just how much post-adolescent anguish can Lena generate, and for how long? Kim only has to put up with facile attacks on her gold digging image, which she easily shrugs off by a) making heaps of money, and b) winking at the culture apparatchiks to let us know that she’s an internet troll IRL: she carefully turns the criticism into gold. She may be as emotionally shallow as Lena, but she’s on the yellow brick road to riches. Unabashedly making money is a much more powerful and comforting trope than Making It By Working On Yourself. It’s ageless. If you fail, you can blame the economy.

Kim is successfully swimming in the heavily chummed currents of pop-culture commerce. Lena, however, is still splashing in a bathtub, and even her fellow walking wounded water-wing friends won’t keep her Hannah quasi-persona afloat forever. Both play on pop culture’s superficiality, but their goals are different: Money or Me. The latter is a semiotic dead end. Pop culture’s unstoppable recycling enriches our world, but an endlessly recursive self soon runs out of steam. Both now-credible, both vulnerable enough to be likeable, both able pop culture doyennes who serve up yesterday’s stale goods in a new wrapping, but my money’s on Kim for the long run.

Minerva winner (1)

We have four winners (4!) of the recent Minerva contest that asked entrants to compare Kim Kardashian and Lena Denham (see the post below). We are not ranking the winners. We found virtue in them all.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, both the entrants and the judges. Hats off once more to Caley Cantrell, Noah Cruickshank, Ruby Karelia, Janet Kestin, Leora Kornfeld, Adrian Ho, and Nancy Vonk for their judging work.

Here is one of the winners. (We will post the remaining three essays over the remainder of the week.)

KIM KARDASHIAN AND LENA DUNHAM: COMPARE, CONTRAST, EXPLAIN.

Ali Tilling, strategy planner at BMF Advertising in Sydney.  @hamsterwish

Once upon a time there were two women wearing two different floral dresses on two different red carpets.

We start at New York’s flashy Met Gala, May 2013. A seven-months pregnant Kim Kardashian fronts the paparazzi in a floral Givenchy number to near-universal horror.

Cut to the Emmys, September 2013. Lena Dunham (nominated in three categories) makes more noise for her teal-green floral Prada creation. Though it makes the Vogue best-dressed list, it’s reviled almost everywhere else.

The sub-text to the outcry against each dress reveals something of the complexity of these two characters.

Kardashian’s dress proved to the masses that while Kanye can get her into the Gala, he can’t buy her class; and Dunham’s that there’s a limit to hipster irony (even with her self-aware tweet of her sister’s snidely-sweet comment the day before the event, that the dress looked “like the Delia’s catalogue made a red carpet dress”).

In other words, neither woman was embracing society’s ideal of how femininity should look. Which is odd because in everyday life, that’s precisely why society embraces them. So what’s going on?

Both Kardashian and Dunham have become caricatures of often opposing cultural movements. There are the obvious clashes: east versus west coast, intellectual versus entrepreneurial, and clashes of social class. Dunham is all hipster, liberal arts graduate, filmmaking, over-mentored whiner who is wondering whether it’s cooler to acknowledge all the ways she’s typical or try to escape them.

Kardashian on the other hand has morphed from 2008’s get-rich-quick endorser of anything to 2013’s slightly classier, hip-hop groupie fashion front-row mom, She is one of Lorde’s “Royals” in money and excess, if not in coolness.

Because they are effects of different cultural milieu, each represents a different way in to ‘feminism’.

Dunham is one of very few successful TV writers, which one might imagine is the strongest of her feminist credentials: actually it’s her non-societally perfect body type that’s grabbing the headlines. Dunham is one cause among many of a key response to the west’s obesity epidemic: becoming increasingly accepting of our increasing average weight. She’s certainly a cause of its accelerating its transition from ‘ok for the rest of us’ to ‘ok for the celebrities’ – even while the equal and opposite response, of ultra-health, gathers pace and flows in the other direction.

Kardashian’s feminism on the other hand feels like an effect of the post-recession focus on entrepreneurialism and the idea that everyone can be a maker. Hers is the American Dream 3.0. Her specific talents (writing, or acting, or singing, or designing) are not obvious; her relentless hard work, self-belief and business focus are. She’s an effect of the way the early 00’s reality TV ‘everyone’s life is interesting’ experiment morphed into post-recession ‘anyone can make a go of anything.’ The Kardashian family started with some material advantages, sure, but not to the extent some celebrities are born into wealth; Kim has made the best of her opportunities, and indeed has displayed what to many is a decidedly unfeminine thirst for success, whatever the cost.

In this she is, with Dunham, an unexpected cause of a trend that’s beginning to emerge: they both encourage our slowly-growing discomfort with the notion that the hard work of feminism has been done, that equality has been achieved. Even in the entrepreneurial, maker trend there’s a decided inequality: only 7.5% of patent-holders worldwide are female , and for every 10 male entrepreneurs there are only 8 female . In Dunham’s sphere, most TV writing is done by men, and celebrated by men – leading to books like “Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution”, celebrating male writers of the 2000’s. The world continues to be designed and written by men, but the very different actions taken by Kardashian and Dunham are starting to coax us out of our apparent apathy. Of course there are more extreme examples of this emerging trend, like Pussy Riot: but Kardashian and Dunham are more relatable examples.

Kardashian and Dunham are both effects of post-GFC narcissism. Both mine their own lives and themselves for material, though as Katherine Boyle has pointed out in the Washington Post, one is more upfront about it than the other . Girls, particularly in Series 2, sometimes comes across as an extended-play selfie, and “Keeping up with the Kardashians” is confected reality at its finest. And both Dunham and Kardashian are lucky enough to have an alter ego on whom to blame the worst excesses, though. In Girls, Hannah can explore things on Dunham’s behalf and even in Keeping up with the Kardashians, a ‘purer’ reality show, Kim and family get to decide which side of themselves they present to the camera, and especially how ‘business Kim’ is portrayed.

Dunham, Kardashian and their alter egos have focused more, in the balance of their careers, on the truths behind women’s relationships with other women. That’s then been used that as the prism through which to view women’s relationships with men. Of course with motherhood and her relationship with West, Kardashian’s focus has now shifted somewhat; but her courtship and short-lived marriage to Kris Humphries, for example, was brought to life more effectively through her sisters’ and her mother’s views on it, rather than interaction between the couple themselves. Dunham’s show is at its acerbic best in its brutal honesty about female friendship and, well, girls.

They’ve moved on the work started by Sex and the City: in its TV form, that was a predominantly male-written sisterhood united, while Dunham and Kardashian at their best represent a truer, no-holds-barred look at female friendship. As Hannah writes in Girls 2, “A friendship between college girls is grander and more dramatic than any romance” . For all their differences, the most important cultural effect that Kardashian and Dunham might leave behind is this recognition of the power, grandness and lasting interest of female relationships.

References:

Articles referenced above

Lots of copies of OK and Who magazines

Twitter

Chats with friends and some strangers in a café, to check impressions

Inspiration

Where does inspiration happen? For lots of people, it happens in the shower. Yes, it’s soapy and sensual. Yes, it’s a break from the pressure of the day. But the real reason the shower is inspirational is all that water and all that sound.

The shower gives us a screen, a medium that’s message free, a perfect place on which to project and discover the ideas in our heads. Brainstorm? Sometimes a shower is plenty!

For the rest of this post, please go to MISC magazine.

Thanks to King and Blade for the image (see bottom of image for full details.)

The office party: a bad idea we cannot live without

Office holiday parties are a wreck we can’t resist. Talk about asking for trouble. And, yes, joy.

We spend all year in captivity and on our best behavior, proceeding diplomatically, saying and doing the right thing. No one doubts that this protocol is necessary. This is not the burden of our conformity or a failure of the imagination. Something as complicated and fraught as an office can’t run without drama that is tightly written, exquisitely acted and fastidiously dispatched. Shonda Rhimes, eat your heart out.

For the rest of this post, go to the New York Times here, please.

Strategies of self presentation in a digital age

Cynically speaking, the way we describe ourselves on Twitter is self aggrandizing (“self-branding” in the language of Tom Peters), but I prefer to think of it as an opportunity for endearment.  I love these people.

Mike Duda ‏ @MikeDuda  Co-founder | Consigliere Brand Capital * Marketer * Investor * Rabble-rouser * Orange Fanatic * Barely lost NYC Marathon to 34,566 runners

nick sherrard @nicksherrard as seen on CCTV

Philippa Dunjay ‏ @PhilippaDunjay  likes short walks on the beach before getting out of breath, complaining about all the sand, why is the water so salty, did you just step on a hermit crab?

Geeka ‏ @Geeka   I used to work w/ things that would kill me eventually, now I work w/ things that can kill me immediately.

CHERYL ‏ @CHERYLDANCE  CHERYL is a four-member, semi-anonymous, often cat-masked artist collective based in Brooklyn that throws life-ending dance parties.

@JonesthePoet Gary Jones  BBQ operator, poet, teacher, shaman, dog’s best friend, feeder of critters, seeker of truth, follow my poetry blog, it don’t cost nothin.

@Rick_Hewett Rick Hewett  I run a press/picture agency. Other than that you’ll find me preparing trainee Vikings (my sons) for life or out running.

Andrew Czydel  @AndrewCzydel  Indie Author and Artist. To write is human, to edit divine and to sell is the work of foul creatures that inhabit dark places hence I self publish!

Roberto Greco  @rogre  Polysomething-or-other

Matt Jacobs @mattjacobs5  Director of Integrated Marketing at AMP Agency. Hoping all of my 140 characters get offered spin-off TV shows.

Kevin Schummer @kevinschummer  There is no correct answer, just my answer.

Patricia Verdolino @BRANDQBORO  Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment. – Rumi

Peter Zapf @fogpilot

Mary Wynne Wynter ‏ @mwyn Paradox Huntress. Flower Whisperer. Certified by The Field. Self-wired for Intimacy. Poised for Matriarchy Rising. I Row. I Tango.

Moury Minhaz @MouryM I will do almost anything for a good laugh. I like sarcasm, I have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a side of slice and dice.

A.J. Somerset ‏ @ajsomerset Blurter of obnoxious things. Novelist (Combat Camera). Sometime outdoor writer. Sometime photographer. Shooter of clay targets. Washer of dishes. I do it all.

Mark Holden ‏ @holdenmw  Explorer, wanderer, philosopher, philanderer, creative, mystic, entrepreneur, digital native, speculator, adventurer, dreamer. Over-claimer.

Gavin Donovan Social Media guy @RegusUSA, @Arsenal fan and the greatest wedding dancer of all time. Tweets are my own.

Eric Soderlund ‏ @equalitytime  Post-Mormon Pastafarian Secular Humanist Music-Loving Pontificating Sports Fan

Katie Guiney ‏ @KTG4  gangly, gregarious girl whose ga-ga about alliteration, audrey, art, books, music, marketing, newfoundland, roger ebert, rom-coms, and the three L’s.

LorettaLightningbolt ‏ @LorettaLB  Just another singer/songwriter and promotion/ marketing manager, fighting evil with her cat.

Charlotte Hillenbrand ‏ @crashtherocks One of the Many @madebymany; 70% cocoa solids: 30% mum

Cindy Gallop  @cindygallop  I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.

Sean McGarry  Baltimore; Charleston Expat; Georgia Bulldog; ENTP; Gentleman Scholar; Semi Colon Aficionado.

Jeremiah Orosco  Runner, Gambler, Ultimate Piggie, Money Activator, Part-time Lion Tamer. Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together.

Nick Maschmeyer ‏ @636e6d Digital  Strategist at Droga 5. Will endorse any product.

Jenn ‏ @ONoesUDidnt  Currently at that awkward stage between birth and death.

Eszter Fehér ‏ @efeher  Local foreigner, marketer, namer, linguister, blogger… Hungarian.

Sara McDonald @Serifm8  I would kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Emily Balcetis A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body. pinterest

Martin Weigel @mweigel thief | charlatan | pedant | contrarian | sceptic | amateur | plagiarist | meddler | Head of Planning, Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam http://t.co/wzxRigOnYs

LL COOL J @llcoolj. Still learning. Queens, NY.

Scott Lachut ‏ @scottlachut  Director of Consulting @PSFK. After hours Blue Collar Bon Vivant with these dreams inside my head. I’d rather share them with you.

Natarajan Lalgudi ‏ @NatarajanL Cranially ambidextrous & experientially versatile, equally passionate about social anthropology & applied math, equally excited by cricket stats & great food

Andrew Pieterick ‏ @APieterick Student at Wisconsin. Sometimes offensive, mostly ridiculous, always unnecessary.

And the Minerva goes to:

Philippa Dunjay ‏ @PhilippaDunjay

likes short walks on the beach before getting out of breath, complaining about all the sand, why is the water so salty, did you just step on a hermit crab?

All others, please consider yourselves honorably mentioned.

[I am reposting this because I was unable to insert line breaks in the original post.]

Denial and the new, nimble, agile corporation

Some time in the last year, I spend 40 minutes and 55 slides telling a roomful of senior executives about a trend that was “on approach.”

Trend X emerged sometimes in the 1960s and was now moving towards them with something like the force of a Tsunami.

Trend X was in the process of disrupting the industry, hollowing out the client’s business model and turning their value proposition inside out.

Then something happened.

Denial happened.

For the rest of this post, please go to the HBR blog here.

Kim Kardashian and Lena Dunham: compare, contrast, explain (a Minerva essay contest)

Assignment:

Kim Kardashian and Lena Dunham.  Compare, contrast, explain.

Prize: a Minerva prize and statue

Who may enter: anyone may enter.  Just send us an essay that answers the question.  Send your answers to grant27@gmail.com.

Deadline for submissions: December 10, 2013

Fuller details:

Designers, anthropologists, strategists, ethnographers, writers, artists, activists, musicians, digitists, and other cultural creatives live or die by their knowledge of culture.  The more we know, the more adroitly we know it, the deeper our mastery of this knowledge and the forces that produce it, the more surely we will flourish.

So here’s a test of your knowledge.  Who are Kim Kardashian and Lena Dunham?  As young American celebrities, they are conspicuous parts of popular culture.  They express trends already in motion “out there.”  This makes them cultural “effects.”  But they also shape and clarify things that are beginning to emerge.  This makes them cultural “causes.”

Who are these women and what do they say about our life and times?  What are the causes (trends, events, developments) of which they are effects?  And what are the effects (trends, events, developments) of which they are causes?  What shaped them, what are they shaping?

You’ve got lots to work with.  These women have made many stylistic choices, in voice, language, clothing, emotional style, music, make-up, hair, homes, bars, neighborhoods, restaurants, rituals, ceremonies, friends, boyfriends, husbands, celebrity.  They have fashioned detailed, vivid, public personae.  X-ray these, please.  These are very different public performances.  Review them, please.  At the very least we are looking at very different visions of femaleness.  Give us the what and the how.  And the why.

We are not looking for ridicule.  Kardashian and Dunham are high profile and attract lots of comment and some derision.  That’s not our job.  Nor is this a popularity contest.  We don’t care if you like one of these women more than the other.  Your job is to write a beautifully thoughtful, balanced, dispassionate, detailed, insightful piece that might help someone in the year 2113 figure out who these women were and “what they stood for.”

The differences will be readily apparent.  The similarities perhaps not so much.  But it’s worth remembering that these women come from the same culture, they live in (roughly) the same moment.  Honor the differences but see if you can spot the commonalities.  (And marvel that American culture can produce two entirely credible woman who are so dramatically different.)

We only want 1000 words.  Because if it’s good enough for a Oxbridge college, it’s good enough for us.  The winner will win a Minerva statue and a measure of immortality as a Minerva winner.  (Hey, it will look good on your c.v.)

The Minerva Judges:

Caley Cantrell, BrandCenter, Virginia Commonwealth University

Noah Cruickshank, AV Club

Janet Kestin, Swim

Leora Kornfeld, Harvard

Adrian Ho, Zeus Jones

Ruby Strong, Lord Byng

Nancy Vonk, Swim

Ethnography, a brief description

I just banged out a description of ethnography for a client.

Here it is:

Ethnography

The object of ethnography is to determine how the consumer sees the product, the service, the innovation.  Often, this is obscure to us.  We can’t see into the consumer’s (customer’s, viewer’s, user’s) head and heart because we are, in a sense, captive of our own heads and hearts.  We have our way of seeing and experiencing the world.  This becomes our barrier to entry.  Ethnography is designed to give us a kind of helicopter experience.  It takes up out of what we know and lowers us into the world of the consumer.

Ethnography is a messy method.  In the beginning stages, we don’t know what we don’t know.  We don’t know what we need to ask.  We are walking around the consumer’s world looking for a way in.  Eventually, as we ask a series of questions, we begin to see which ones work.  We begin to collect the language and the logic the consumer uses.  And eventually, we begin to see how they see the world.

The method is designed not to impose a set of questions and terms on the discussion, but to allow these to emerge over the course of the conversation.  We are allowing the consumer to choose a path for the interview.  We are endowing them with a sense that they are the expert.  We are honoring the fact that they know and we don’t.  (Because they do!)

Eventually, we end up with a great mass of data and it is now time to stop the ethnography and start the anthropology.  Now we will use what we know about our culture, this industry, these consumers, this part of America to spot the essential patterns that make these data make sense.  ”Slap your head” insights begin to emerge.  ”Oh, that’s what their world looks like!” “That’w what they care about!”  ”This is what they want!”

And now we begin to look for strategic and tactical recommendations.  Now we can help close the gap between what the consumer wants and what the client makes.

(For a more technical description of the method, please see my The Long Interview. Sage.)

Understanding the Return of Gill Sans (a Minerva winner)

A couple of days ago, I posted this question:

1) Why is Gill Sans winning out over Helvetica? (If it is, and, come on, it is.) Long the visual language of public institutions in the UK (the subway, especially), it looked until recently (to me at least) a little out of touch. But now it seems to be to have all the punchy clarity of the sans-serif regime without giving away the ability to evoke something bigger than the message at hand.

I invited people to submit answers, promising a Minerva to the best essay.

The results are in and the winner is Carlen Lea Lesser. Her answer is below.

Understanding the Return of Gill Sans

by Carlen Lea Lesser

Each era seems to have a font or fonts that define it, and from then on that font carries the weight of history and all the cultural associations that go along with it. While Helvetica seems to have been the font of choice since it’s arrival on the scene in the 1950s, recent years have seen the resurgence of Gill Sans. While it may take a long time for Gill Sans to over take Helvetica — if it ever does — there does seem to be a clear trend. One way to understand interplay between these two fonts is to use the generational/socio-cultural theories of Strauss and Howe. These two historians mapped a pattern of interconnected generational (Generations) and socio-cultural (Turnings) cycles that repeat every 80-100 years and tracked back through all of American history and back through much of British history. By analyzing the times these fonts appeared and re-appeared through the lens of the four turnings, we can see that there are clear cultural reasons behind Gill Sans gaining new popularity.

Helvetica comes out of the late 1950s the end of an era of post-war prosperity and confidence; smack in the middle of the “American High” period in the parlance of Strauss and Howe. Despite being created in Switzerland, it screens the 1950s vision of modern and clean. The lines are strong, bold and clear — the ambivalence and confusion of the Great Depression and WWII are gone. One of the interesting characteristics of Helvetica is its relationship to the Bauhaus movement. Helvetica was designed to take the emotion out of type. It was seen as a “neutral” typeface that would not add any additional mean or emotions. It presents itself as strong, clear, and bold. It is a font that has the promise of this exact moment being right and true.

It is both surprising and unsurprising that Helvetica held on through the 1960s and all the way into the 2000s. No one ever really wants to let go of a High Period, especially those who were raised in one like the Baby Boomers. High Periods, like the idyllic 1950s and early-1960s of the Boomers’ childhood, are times of great security and public confidence in institutions, and lacking in individualism. In the Awakening of the 1960-1970s, Helvetica would have represented a calm center in the storm for those tossed about by the counter-culture revolution. It was the font of IBM, American Airlines, and Bell Atlantic; solid, stable companies that represented the best of America. As we moved to the Unraveling of the 1980s-1990s, those same people who needed the stability of Helvetica in the counter-culture of 1960s needed it even more, and the former Hippies turned into the Yuppies of the 1980s. Needless to say the promise of economic growth of IBM, Mattel, and General Motors was appealing to the Yuppies of the 1980s.

Then there is Gill Sans, a product of the late 1920s England. The font it a derivative of “humanist” sans-serif category of san-serif fonts, but with more line variation and legibility of many sans-serifs. It’s considered to be the most “calligraphic” of the sans-serif, which I take to mean the one you can that most lets the humanity through. It’s a font that seems to have one foot in the past and one foot in the future. It promises a future more interesting than clean, clear, and strong. It moves away from the curly-cued serifs of the Art Nouveau era and foreshadows the “Great Gatsby” era deco lines that would follow in the years to come. But it doesn’t really evoke either era. Gill Sans is really a font about hope — hope of moving out of the Crisis of the Great Depression and into that beautiful American High period.

While designed just before the Great Depression, Gill Sans really hit its peak when Penguin books adopted it for its cover fonts in 1935. By most measures the USA and the world began to recover from the Depression around 1933. It was hardly a boom time, but signs of improvement were beginning. 1935 was the height of the Art Deco era, and Gill Sans — a font developed just a few years after the Art Deco aesthetic was introduced to the world became the font of choice for what was to become of the world’s biggest publishers. Edward Tufte puts it best when he describes it is a classic and elegant looking font. It is a font that evokes the best of what the Art Deco movement was about: faith in social and technological progress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco). A believe that the Crisis will end and not only will everything be okay again — but better than before.

While Helvetica may have persisted because it subconsciously reminded Baby Boomers of their childhood in the 1950s, a time idealized as having been when all was right and good with the world, Gill Sans is a font of faith in progress. Which do we really need right now? As we are in the heart of the current Crisis period, it is not a shock that we are seeing a resurgence of Gill Sans. Will it surpass Helvetica? Who knows. Most likely it will serve it’s purpose to act as a sign of hope that we are moving forward and then we will transition back to a Realist-style sans serif like Helvetica during the next High Period.

Bibilography:

http://typophile.com/node/30970

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica

http://www.linotype.com/798-12627/the...

http://www.linotype.com/798/typograph...

http://www.tug.org/docs/html/fontfaq/...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_De...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco

http://bnmhistoryofdesign.blogspot.co...

http://www.signweb.com/content/bauhau...

http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type...

http://athertonlin.blogspot.com/2011/...

http://www.prepressure.com/fonts/inte...

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-a...

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/...

http://www.helium.com/items/1336072-h...

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3...

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/b...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/...

http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Ar-Bo/B...

http://www.seniorcorrespondent.com/ar...

Faint signals, emerging trends?

An anthropologist looks for puzzles. This is, after all, the way the future often makes a first appearance.

Two puzzles have crossed my path this week:

1) Why is Gill Sans winning out over Helvetica?  (If it is, and, come on, it is.)   Long the visual language of public institutions in the UK (the subway, especially), it looked until recently (to me at least) a little out of touch.  But now it seems to be to have all the punchy clarity of the sans-serif regime without giving away the ability to evoke something bigger than the message at hand.

There is a follow up question: will Gary Hustwit ever make a documentary about it of the kind he made for Helvetica?  I would so love to see this documentary.  The Helvetica doc is a thing of wonder.  ”Gill Sans” as a follow-up doc would have lots more historical depth and charm.  No modernist hoodlum this.

2) Why is that in at least two instances in popular culture, the role of the guardian angel is occupied by a psychopath.  I refer to Dexter and the BBC show Luther, and in the case of Luther specifically to the character Alice Morgan. Strictly speaking, the last person who should serve in this capacity is a psychopath, but somehow in our culture right now, the notion is not implausible.

Anyone want to write fewer-than-a-thousand words on either topic (or for the very daring both at once) should send it to me and if it’s really good, you will win a Minerva.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Wikipedia for the Gill Sans Demo.