Last night, I was fortunate enough to see the new documentary film Helvetica. It’s an exploration of the typeface and how it’s been used.

My thoughts after seeing the film:

• Man, I think I do like Helvetica
• Rick Poynor might be the most well-spoken man ever
• Hot damn, Michael Bierut is funny… he might have the most screen time in the whole film
• Wow, Erik Spiekermann is kinduva prick
• Wow, David Carson is full of himself
• Hey! I know two people featured in the movie! (Michael Bierut and Jonathan Hoefler)
• Wow, I’ve never heard of this Mike Parker guy, but I *love* his energy… he’s a total geek for type!
• Matthew Carter seems genuinely cool

In all, it’s a good flick. Having worked in design for so long, and being such a nerd, my experience will be different than, well, someone walking off the street. It’s gorgeously shot (on DV, by the guy who shot Borat), and the designers (interviewees) are treated lovingly.

In the Q&A after the film, the director, Gary Hustwit, said something that was true that surprised me. He couldn’t think of any documentary film ever made about graphic design. And I think he was right. The closest I can think are some of the short films on design that the Eames made. And it’s bizarre and a shame that some of these brilliant influential creators (Vignelli, Matthew Carter, even that prick Spiekermann) have never been captured before. And shameful that there’s no doc chronicling the lives and expeirences of folks like Paul Rand and Saul Bass. As this film proves, designers are compelling subjects for doc film — they’re passionate, engaged, and have great things to look at.

I’m intrigued by how after 4 separate iPhone ads, the fact that the device has a camera has yet to be mentioned.

Last week, my colleague Dan wrote an excellent post on the Adaptive Path blog about the role that features play in product design and marketing. It was in response to a New Yorker column on how people decide to buy products because they have more features, but then return them because they can’t figure out the products because they are too complex.

When I originally read the New Yorker column (at some point on my vacation), my first thought was, “Well, that makes sense *now*, but is it changing?” This kinda dovetails with the essay I wrote for Core77. What we’re seeing, increasingly, is that the products are succeeding when not competing on features, but focusing on the gestalt of the experience that people are having with them.

I wonder if consumers are becoming more features-savvy, in the same way that they’re becoming advertising and marketing savvy. That we might be at a point of relatively low sophistication in terms of understanding exactly what makes us happy in the products we purchase, but that in 3 to 5 to 10 years, purchasers won’t be comparing the lengths of bullet-pointed lists of product features, but instead orient to some understanding of how using the product makes them feel.

Stacy and I just completed an 11-day road trip that traced this path: Atlanta, Birmingham, Natchez, Kosciusko, Summertown, Nashville, Rugby, Chattanooga, and back to Atlanta. (See it on Google Maps)

There’s too much to relate in any detail, so I’ll stick with highlights, lowlights, and other random observations. There’s a photoset up on Flickr.

Atlanta is not really much of a town for tourists. There are constructed attractions, like the Georgia Aquarium, which are there in order to give tourists something to do, not because they’re really germane to the area. Probably the most impressive tourist attraction was the Cyclorama, a gigantic oil painting depicting the Battle of Atlanta that you view from rotating seating. Atlanta proved to be a bit of a disappointment, though we did very much enjoy Fat Matt’s Rib Shack:

Speaking of food, maybe we just didn’t go to the right places, but we were underwhelmed by our food choices. We were hoping for lots of great barbecue and meat-n-threes. We got a little bit of great barbecue, and no standout meat-n-threes. The best barbecue, hands down, came from the Old Plantation Bar Be Que in Chattanooga. We were turned onto it by Jim Leff’s Chow Tour blog.

Our best breakfast was at Ria’s Bluebird in Atlanta. Pancakes to DIE FOR. Or rather, to kill for. Even dearly loved ones. You would kill them if they got in the way of you getting these pancakes. And it’s right across from Oakland Cemetary!

The best bar was Lou’s Pub and Package Store in Birmingham, AL. I can’t describe it any better than Esquire, so I’ll let them.

In Tennesee, we had two experiences with utopian communities. The first was The Farm in Summertown. For $40, we stayed at You’re Inn At The Farm , in a small room in the Ecovillage Training Center. You’re in a giant house with about 8-10 other people, sharing a kitchen for vegetarian cooking.

The Farm began in the early 70s as a straight-up hippie commune, and at its height, had 1500 people living collectively. In the early 80s the commune collapsed (for various reasons, but, mostly, it seems, because the energy went out) and turned into something of a land trust, run almost condominium-style. That change is what allowed The Farm to survive — it simply wasn’t sustainable as a commune. The Farm might be best known throughout the country as the primary force for bringing midwifery back to prominence in America.

It was a bit sad how… moribund The Farm felt. It seems to have reached some level of stasis at around 150-200 residents, though word is more people are leaving than joining. We wandered around the morning we were there, and there was almost no one else about.

The other utopian community we visited was historic Rugby in northern Tennessee. Founded in the 1880s as a cooperative, class-free agricultural community, it never ever ever really succeeded. But, it left some pretty interesting architecture and stories, and it’s right smack in the heart of Stacy’s time period, so we spent a day there checking it out. The single most impressive remnant of the community is the Hughes Free Public Library, which remains pretty much unchanged since the 1880s, and is *filled* with priceless first editions of books. Sadly, my photos of the interior turned out poorly. Stacy has one that demonstrates the era:

Anyway, Rugby was delightfully relaxing spot, and worth visiting if you’re interested in that period in history. We stayed in an historic Rugby building, which was very charming. If you do so, purchase your dinner ahead of time at the town cafe (they close at 6). You don’t want to have to drive to 20 minutes to Jamestown for a mediocre meal, like we did.

Chattanooga was a surprise to us. Even a couple days before we got there, we weren’t sure we were going to stay there. We did, and it was very pleasant. We enjoyed the Incline Railway and Ruby Falls, and if we’d had more time, we’d have visited Rock City.

Chattanooga’s river walk was pleasant, and it’s where we ate that great barbecue I mentioned before (Old Plantation is all take out, so we ate it on a bridge overlooking the Tennessee river). Rembrandt’s made for a relaxing evening coffeehouse.

We could have spent a full two days in Chattanooga and been very satisfied. We definitely preferred it to Nashville (we’re not country music folk).

I haven’t even addressed the heart of our trip, which was driving the Natchez Trace. It’s an awesomely beautiful drive, thanks to it being maintained by the National Park service. No billboards, very calm, beautiful scenery, plenty to see and do. The highlight of the trace itself, for me, apart from the pretty driving, was visiting the Cypress Swamp. There’s a 30-minute trail around milepost 120, and the swamp is just amazing to look at, to listen to, and to be part of.

Click for more sizes

I think that’s enough. If I were to change one thing: I’d go a month (maybe two) earlier. Everywhere we went, the weather remained in the mid to upper 80s and humid. Which limited our mobility (and doubtless contributed to my girth — I gained ~ 10 pounds on this trip).

I’m honored to have a feature posted to Core77, a leading design site. Called “Experience is the product”, it’s a cogent articulation of thoughts that have been batted around here and over on the AP Blog for a while. It’s about how when we take an experiential approach to design, we end up moving away from standalone products, toward services where “products” are simply interfaces to a larger system. Working with Allan Chochinov, Core77 editor, has been great, and I’m really happy with how he’s presented the piece. Check it out!

Later I’ll give a fuller report from our Southern Road Trip, but while it’s fresh, I thought I’d report on our visit to The World of Coca-Cola, a new Atlanta tourist destination all about, well, Coca-Cola.

I’ve been to a similar, though much smaller, attraction in Las Vegas, which I enjoyed. I have a strange respect for Coca-Cola’s business history, which I learned through the fascinating book, For God, Country, and Coca-Cola. I say this to suggest that I don’t simply pooh-pooh such brazen attempts at marketing-through-theme-attraction (and really, isn’t that just what Disneyland was, anyway?)

Speaking of Disneyland, though, Coca-Cola could have learned something from Disneyland. And that thing, that one simple thing, is quality. Particularly of the two specially-made film (well, probably digital video) entertainment, The Happiness Factory, and The Secret Formula 4-D Theater. The first is a film that *all* attendees much walk, a 7-minute (though it felt like 15) “documentary” of what happens when you put a coin in a Coke vending machine. It cops the style that Nick Park created for his Creature Comforts short (and which has been used by Chevron in their teevee ads) — interviews with various folks about what it’s like for them to do what they do. The Happiness Factory is hackneyed and not particularly inventive, and it was interesting to see just how little the audience reacted to the “spectacle” and the “jokes.” The second was a quasi-ride, similar in some ways to Star Tours at Disneyland/world, where you sit in a theater and “experience” what is happening on the screen. The acting was *so poor*, the story such a repeatedly pathetic sop to the Magic of Coca-Cola, and the seat effects *so annoying* that I simply couldn’t wait to leave.

I’d love to know more about how these two features were created. They felt *very much* like the products of committee, where any truly interesting idea was filtered out as it passed through too many hands, until all that was left was bland, inoffensive, rah-rah with no charm nor personality whatsoever. What’s strange is that Coke *can* produce good video — their recent “videogame” ad is brilliant.

Anyway, there is some decent stuff — the historic walkthrough has cool old stuff, the bottling works actually works (if you end up seeing stuff oddly out of order). Oh, and drinking flavors from around the world is a blast. But, in the end, we both felt like we’d wasted our time and money.

So, here’s the thing that pisses me off. We know that Locke and Ben are probably right with their warnings… But for some reason the writers feel it necessary that their motives remain hidden and secret… So of course Our Heroes do what they think makes the most sense. If Locke and Ben are so frickin’ concerned, why not spill the beans, since maybe that would get Our Heroes to pay attention? Why would Our Heroes be expected to listen to these two cranks who have done everything in their power to prevent their escape?

Argh. Sloppy lazy writing at its worst. Which is too bad, because the show also got interesting again in the second half of this past season.

Tomorrow we fly to Atlanta to begin our Southern Road Trip. We’re visiting states neither of us have been to. Our planned route:

21-24 May: Atlanta

24-25 May: Birmingham

25-26 May: Natchez

26-27 May: Jackson, maybe Tupelo

27-29 May: Summertown, Tullahoma, Nashville

29-30 May: Nashville, Rugby

30-31 May: Back to Atlanta

1 June: Fly home

We’re driving the Natchez Trace from Natchez to Nashville. In Tennessee, we’re visiting intentional communities old (Rugby) and new (The Farm).

And we plan on eating lots of great food.

Suggestions for these areas are welcome in the comments!

When the playoffs began a few weeks ago, who could have predicted that the most interesting, dramatic, compelling teams were going to be the 4th seed Utah Jazz and the 8th seed Golden State Warriors? Neither team had gotten much national air time, and so had flown under the radar of most viewers. The Mavericks were #1 and crazy dominant; the Suns continue their up-tempo fun ball; the #3 Spurs have been a contender for so long that, while they didn’t get the press of #1 or #2, there’s always a story; #5 Houston had the T-Mac and Yao excitement combo; #6 Nuggets had the AI and Melo show; and, of course, the #7 Lakers are Kobe.

Neither the Jazz nor the Warriors had much a story, and no (at the time) telegenic superstars. The Warriors were assumed DOA, and the Jazz had done so poorly at the end of the season that their prospects were dim.

Yet, as the second round of the playoffs wraps up, the Warriors and Jazz emerge as the most interesting teams to talk about. For the Warriors there’s the Cinderella aspects, dominating the “dominant” Mavs, with the new leader of Show-time, Baron Davis, exciting everyone. The Jazz had the emotional breakdown of Kirilenko to start their series, and then the oh-my-god-afterschool-special-of-the-week story of Derek Fisher’s daughter’s battle with cancer, and his remarkable performance upon returning to the team.

Supposedly, NBA audiences are reliant on having superstars on the floor — your Kobes, your T-Macs, your AIs. What seems to be happening here, though, is that the fans are engaging with the deeper, subtler, and more interesting dramas of teams emerging, unfolding, and evolving before our eyes. Maybe the same qualities that have lead to the success of multi-episode dramas like The Sopranos and Heroes is also priming an audience to find the interesting stories within the playoffs. I know I find it far more interesting than some type of KOBE VS T-MAC showdown.

The Eastern Conference? The less said about them, the (yawn) better.

Last Friday I attended Steven Johnson’s talk at the Long Now Foundation. Titled “The Long Zoom,” Steven explores the trend towards looking at systems at a variety of scales. This has become a theme of Steven’s recent writings, starting with his book The Ghost Map, where an appreciation of factors at various scales was required to address cholera outbreaks, and his feature on Will Wright and his upcoming game Spore, which allows players to track life, beginning at the cellular level, and steadily complexifying until you’re managing societies on planets.

I am intrigued by Johnson’s work, because I do think he’s tapping into a contemporary trend around people’s ability to work at multiple scales at once. It’s obvious in the popularity of mapping services, where you’re constantly zooming in and out to understand context at different levels. In a total other realm, I see it as a requirement in the practice of information architecture — when we teach IA, we’re very conscious about how the practitioner has to bounce between the global and the local in designing a robust system.

However, Johnson needs to be careful that he doesn’t get too enamored of his framework. It’s tempting for a public intellectual to put forth a model, and try to get everything to fit within it. Gladwell tried this with The Tipping Point, coming up with ideas around “mavens,” “salesmen,” and “connectors” that don’t really hold water. In his presentation on Friday, Johnson began to fall into the same trap.

A key point of The Ghost Map is that in order to solve the problem of cholera transmission, John Snow needed to be able to think at many levels. Johnson pointed out these levels, in ascending order:

Microbes — Organs — Humans — Neighborhoods — Data Systems — Cities

Snow believed cholera existed at the microbe level; this was because, as a doctor, his familiarity with organs lead him to that conclusion; humans were the level of transmission; neighborhoods were the level of spread, in that same neighborhoods got it while others didn’t; data systems, in particular statistical tables of deaths, made apparent the broader trends; cities are organisms with infrastructure that handles (or doesn’t) hygiene and waste.

I basically buy this “zoom,” (though I’m skeptical of “data systems,” which feels like One Of These Things That’s Not Like The Other Ones.) Where Johnson begins to fall, though, is his attempt to provide a “Long Zoom” on the “miasma” theory of cholera transmission (which preceded Snow’s theory, and was proven wrong). It’s not worth going into the detailed of miasma theory (basically: smell is disease; kill the smell, remove the disease), but Johnson laid out these levels (again, from small to large):

human sensory system — “great men” — contemporary politics — technology — urban development — cultural traditions

I might be able to buy “human sensory system” at the smallest level, and maybe “great men” at the next level up, but then everything else is pretty much a mush. I particularly don’t understand how “technology” is below “urban development” — technology is a fundamental human endeavor, and intimately wrapped up with culture.

My real point, though, is less about the outcome than the process. Johnson has his “Long Zoom” hammer, and every system he sees looks like a nail. And while the Long Zoom works great for things with truly physical scale (as exemplified in the film Powers of 10), I suspect it is pretty much useless for concerns which are fundamentally semantic.

This is why, listening to Johnson’s talk, I began thinking about Weinberger’s new book, Everything is Miscellaneous. Among Weinberger’s many points is the messiness of categorization and the meaninglessness of arbitrary distinctions. Johnson, however, expends a lot of effort determining these levels of the Long Zoom, which are essentially categories. But they’re arbitrary categories, and their relationship to one another is not scalar. Johnson is committing exactly the kind of fallacy that Weinberger rails against. Johnson needs to be careful of the seeming convenience of frameworks, or he’ll miss the truly interesting factors at play.