The problem with technology is that it sometimes solves a problem that doesn't exist. In the case of design, photoshop and illustrator effects and filters give us visual styles that can look cheesy and contrived. Take a walk down the cereal isle at your local grocery store and you'll see design thats run through a marketing department filter. Every element on the box has been studied by focus groups to get you to buy it. Puffy, 3-D, dropshadowed and outlined the designer is removed from the final output and some of its visual value is lost in the process.
Even if its a PR stunt, its refreshing to see General Mills turn back the clock and release limted edition throw back cereal boxes available at Target. They're not better because they're nostalgic, They are just better because they are stronger design pieces than anything currently available. The Wheaties and Kix Boxes are my favorite.
The Detroit Public schools are in embarrassingly horrible state. Even though the city gets more money per student than any other distrcit in the state, none of it ever gets to the students due to greed, corruption and bureaucracy. In a photo essay published on Vice Magazine, James Griffioen observes a public school system rotting in front of our very eyes. Combined with a city that is shrinking at an alarming rate, Detroit closes a public school once a year. The company hired through nepotism to pack the schools up and put them in storage takes the money but doesn't do its job and as a result, they are picked clean by scavengers. Computers, furniture, books, even the metal and glass from the buildings are picked clean. Public schools are left trashed, records and books litter the floors and a school that closed only last year looks like it was from a war torn third world country. How can an entire city rot in plain site?
A great article on the Telegraph UK about how the 16th century Painter, Caravaggio was using photography and darkroom techniques in his work 200 years before it was invented. Not only did he use a camera obscura to project images on to his canvas but actually used chemicals to treat the canvas with light-sensitive substances, including a luminescent powder made from crushed fireflies, in order to "fix" the image as 19th century photographers later would. He then used white lead mixed with chemicals such as mercury, to outline the image in greater clarity, she believes.
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