David Lidsky's Blog, page 4877

The Tech of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

The Vancouver Olympics is especially exciting because it combines all of our favorite things: Twitter, Facebook, Google Street View, recycled computer guts, iPhone apps, and mind-controlled light shows. Oh, right, and sports, I guess.

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Google Loves the Olympics

Google has unveiled a few new timewasters for the Olympics, way beyond the by-now expected Google logo redesign. They've sent the first Google Street View Snowmobile up into the mountains of Whistler to capture the slopes, so you can...

Rinspeed UC: Want to Get More Miles Out of Your Electric Car? Take It on a Train

Last time we wrote about Rinspeed it was to talk about their dual power-capable E2 concept vehicle, and the gorgeous iChange. Now the company's revealing its UC? (Urban Commuter) concept that marries electric cars and public transport in an effort to save the environment.

The UC? is due to get a public outing at the Geneva Motor Show in March, where you'll actually be able to see it in action, but Rinspeed's revealing the concept now, probably to stir up a public debate about the unusual...

Milan to Venice: Bring It. A Throw-Down With Apps and Fancy Furniture

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Despite lingering malaise in the furniture industry, the organizers of the annual Milan Furniture Fair, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, have good reason to ramp up their festival's firepower this year: they feel the hot breath of their rival city-state, Venice, on their necks.

The battle for Italian design supremacy burst unexpectedly into view last week as Carlo Guglielmi, the president of Cosmit, which runs the Milan fair, told a group of foreign journalists, most of whom had no idea...

Americans Raising Roofs, Getting Their Coupon

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Debt. It really sucks and it is a big reason we got in such a gigantic (extra dill) financial pickle. For too long we were a nation of debtors not savers but all that is changing. As the above graphic makes clear, 2009 was a very good year for coupon clipping in this country. That might seem like a modest means of saving, but it adds up fast. How fast? Somewhere around $100,000 fast. That's a lot of Skippy. Now, some will argue that coupons are nothing more than a smarmy way for retailers...

Woodward in Boston: Where Ben Franklin Meets Supermodels

Recession? What recession? Some brave restaurateurs are defying the economic gloom and doom and opening new places. We take a look at the design behind a select few. Today, Woodward in Boston--where a hip colonial might take his wench.

When it comes to strange bedfellows of design, combining the cutting-edge aesthetic of Morgans Hotel Group and the historic architecture of Boston is like imagining Snoop Dogg at the bar with Abigail Adams. It's easy to look ridiculous, tough to get right.

Who's the Biggest Scorer in the New York City Condom Contest?

Trains in tunnels, manhole covers, and top hats: the city's condom contest is a study in euphemistic creativity.

It's the oldest metaphor in the book: the train in the tunnel. Hitchcock used it, and so did New York City's Department of Health, wrapping their free condoms in a subtle play on the NYC subway system. The first wrapper design was released in 2007, and famously redesigned--without a subway metaphor--by Yves Béhar in 2008.

Now, euphemisms are back. The city held a contest for a...

What Oompa Loompas Can Teach Us About Color

Last week, I was working on an identity system's color palette. I was quite taken with my solution, and the client liked and approved it, but they kept saying how "retro" it was. I didn't see it.

I hate when that happens, and it happens more than I'd like. I work on something with absolutely no intention of going down a "retro" path, and then someone uses that word. My business partner Noreen Morioka says I live in the bubble. So it must be a bubble in time where I design things that...

Introducing Guest Blogger Sean Adams: Where Adventureland Meets Fantasyland

I'm jetting over to Spain for the ARCO contemporary art fair this week, and although I'll be popping up here from time to time throughout the week, I wanted to leave you all something extra special while I was away. I pondered the options for who could fill in. Who could be entertaining yet educational? Insightful yet inspiring? Proper yet provocative?

The answer came as I was doing...

Infographic of the Day: A Tattoo Representing Every Life Lost in Operation Iraqi Freedom

Giving new meaning to the phrase "Your body is a battleground," Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal will get a tattoo next month containing one dot for every soldier and civilian who has died in the Iraq war.

Even as American soldiers mount a new offensive in Afghanistan, Wafaa Bilal is planning an offensive against his own body meant to commemorate and call attention to all those who have died since the beginning of the war in Iraq. In a 24-hour live performance titled "...and Counting" at the

As Richmond Flock Mourns, Strategos Preps Congregations for Deadly Confrontations

The attacker is seated in a back row of the church. He's wiping his palms nervously on his jeans. His body is rigid on one side from the effort to conceal a nine-millimeter handgun. He's sweating, fixated on the preacher. All are telltale signs of trouble, but the room is filled with distractions: people coughing, cell phones buzzing, parishioners arriving late. Amid the bustle, the attacker pulls his gun, strides nearly 15 yards to the pulpit, aims dead at the preacher, and pulls the...