Design Observer, a consistently strong design blog/journal/website, has a great piece on Wilhelm Deffke by Stephen Heller. To claim my awareness of Deffke was anything more than vague would be stretch, but most people do have an awareness of his work. After all, we are all living in a world influenced by the work of Deffke and his contemporaries in Germany.

Deffke’s most enduring work, for me, is the Zwilling J. A. Henckels AG mark on the left. If you imagine it etched into the blade of a knife, you may remember it, as that’s Zwilling’s best-known product.

Unfortunately, his work at simplifying and modernizing many older symbols, such as the Hakenkreuz, has tangled his name up with the Nazis. They took his geometric simplification of the Hakenkreuz, done decades before their existence, flipped it, and now most of the world recognizes it as the National Socialist’s swastika. Just to be clear, Deffke was not an ideological Nazi and did not design it for their use. (I suggest you read the article for the details and judge for yourself.) In fact, they took it without asking, which is kind of their thing, historically speaking.

Regardless, the article is a fascinating look at the ideological origins of the modern logo. It’s a good reminder of the power of ancient icons and marks, a legacy which our modern marks attempt to tap into. To look at dreck like the new Xerox bubble is to see how thin the soup can get, the further you stretch the stock. To look back to the beginnings is to catch the scent of a fuller meal in the kitchen of a true chef. Examining Deffke’s work on these symbols reminds us that some forms have roots deep into our primal consciousness, and that there are lessons we can learn away from the computer, with our eyes on our origins.

Seriously? Seriously.

The thought of this vile, effervescent goo in a child’s stomach is enough to turn my own.

A few friends of mine and I saw Cloverfield on Saturday and I was very pleased with the film. It delivered exactly what it needed to and told a convincing and engaging tale from a unique perspective. For those not familiar, Cloverfield is the creation of J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost. It tells the story of a group of friends whose going-away party is interrupted by the violent invasion of New York City by a massive creature. However, the story is presented as the unedited contents of a video camera SD card (the reason why the movie itself is one and a half hours), recovered after the events it recorded. The novel storytelling device is what prevents Cloverfield from becoming blockbuster dreck like Godzilla and, for me, added a terrifying realism to the entire film, which grabbed me from the moment the attack begins all the way through to the end.*

Note: I give no specific spoilers, but I do occasionally describe the movie’s structure, more often pointing out what is not done. I leave it to you to decide how 'virginal’ you want you perspective to be going into this film.

I’ve been listening to NPR coverage of the presidential races all morning (unfortunately) and seeing blurbs online. I’d like to send a message to those of you covering the primaries and caucuses:

Winning one state is not a crushing blow to the opposition and winning one state after losing one out of a total of two is not a comeback. You idiots.

Now please start covering something other than your airheaded opinions about other people’s opinions about 1/25th of something.

Thank you.

Welcome, everyone, to the new year. I hope you’re all finding it to be the cornucopia of possibilities that I do. This year the Voteprime crew found itself once again in Philadelphia. Last year Alisa and I bought a house and so did Alisa’s sister and her husband (our good friend) Brian. Our houses are within about four blocks of each other, so Philly was the obvious choice.

Much fun was had, as you can see in Adam’s photos. Many firsts occurred that year (all photos taken by Adam):