IKEA is doing more for the image of Sweden than all governmental efforts combined. That might be a sad statement coming from a governmental official tasked with enforcing “the brand of Sweden.” But IKEA’s 285 stores in 37 countries feature the blue-and-yellow national colors, serve Swedish meatballs and sell blond-wood Swedish designs and books about Sweden. To visit IKEA is to visit Sweden.

I’m from a little town in the Chicagoland area. (An aside, ‘Chicagoland’ is my favorite metro placename and the one that speaks most directly to the unique qualities, both good and bad, of the area.) Many of our early non-indigenous settlers were of Swedish descent. The Swedes came and built the railroad through town and stayed.

Every year, we celebrated what was formerly named Swedish Days, the so-called Granddaddy of Illinois Summer Festivals. Herein we celebrated our Swedish pride. It’s recently been renamed Midsömmer Festival to connect it more with the solstice celebrations of pre-Christian Swedes and give it a vaguely upscale European sounding name — much like how IKEA’s naming system does the same for pressed fiberboard and laminate. So I’ve long been fascinated by Sweden, influenced also by fairly liberal parents and the general midwest upbringing.

No doubt my view of Sweden, taken from self-mythologizing and American interest in the supposed Swedish miracle presented through National Geographic articles (many written in the 1960s which came to be my source material for 1980s-era school reports) and now through my own IKEA shopping experience.

5:15 pm  •  4 July 2009

Plastics hold up well for the decade or so during which a consumer uses most products. But museums, unlike consumers, are in it for the long haul, and when plastics crash, they crash precipitously. As a result, museums of all sorts have been having Gabo moments in the past decade.

5:20 pm  •  3 July 2009

Street art meets out-of-doors campaign for NYT style magazine?

7:40 am  •  3 July 2009

My nomadic existence takes a turn toward NYC, August 1. Because U;S. Immigration Law doesn’t recognize my partner of eight years as my family, I’m not allowed to sponsor him for immigration. So we keep moving chasing opportunity.

To help off-set the costs this time, I’ve created a little shop at Skreened.com. Twenty-percent of my commission will support the work of Immigration Equality.

Please give us, and every binational, same-sex couple, a hand by buying a t-shirt?

UPDATE: If you’re going to shill for yourself, helps to get the URL right. Change made. Shop away!

11:11 pm  •  2 July 2009

Suggesting a market for everything, Tyler Cowan notes the fascinating sports phenomenon of chess boxing.

From Wikipedia, a definition:

A match between two opponents consists of up to eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess sessions, starting with a four-minute chess round followed by three minutes of boxing and so on. Between rounds there is a one minute pause, during which competitors change their gear. The form of chess played is speed chess in which each competitor has a total of twelve minutes for the whole game. Competitors may win by knockout, checkmate, a judge’s decision or if their opponent’s twelve minutes of chess time elapses.

And some history:

The concept was envisioned in 1992 by cartoonist Enki Bilal, and a match of chess boxing was a major plot point of his graphic novel Froid Équateur. Iepe Rubingh, a Dutch artist, was inspired by Bilal’s book and brought the concept to life in the spring of 2001, fighting under the name, ‘Iepe the Joker’. Rubingh decided that the method of play described in the book, a boxing match followed by a chess match, was impractical. Rubingh instead instituted alternating rounds of chess and boxing.

There’s more, much more, including several film appearances and RZA’s endorsement of the sport. Who says contemporary art isn’t entertaining?

11:09 pm  •  2 July 2009

This poster, only available in 8” x 10”, shows the level of security in America during World War II. In July 1940, the federal government ordered all citizens to report to their local post office to be fingerprinted and the FBI accumulated a large number of citizen fingerprints. Various efforts have been made in this current high security climate to justify a similar program but without the same success as in World War II.

Thing we forget about our past. Both aesthetic of this poster and the Orwellian content feel post modern, like a contemporary critique of lost civil liberties. In fact, it’s very real.

Via The Library of Congres Shop

9:40 pm  •  2 July 2009

5:39 pm  •  2 July 2009

"I have been looking for a definition of what art is all my life, without fully understanding exactly what is encompasses… I found one by Horace, who is a critic and poet back in Roman times… He had this great, great line. He said, ‘the purpose of art is to inform and delight.’ And I thought ‘wow, you can’t get much better than that.’"

— Milton Glaser from To Inform & Delight

4:39 pm  •  2 July 2009

The City of Copenhagen recently launched a public bicycle counter [copenhagenize.com], completely equipped with an air pump for the convenience of cyclists. The urban display counts the daily number of cyclists that use the new Green Path that slices diagonally across the Copenhagen and Frederiksberg pathway system. There is a ‘sensor line’ in the asphalt on the bike lane a few metres in front of the counter which registers the cyclists, probably via a motion sensor.

Example of how information design can be social marketing as well. Much better than those “your speed” temporary displays that police departments use.

Why not just catch speeders and use the digital display budget to promote bicycling?

Via Information Aesthetics with picture from Matt Blackett at Flickr.

2:20 pm  •  2 July 2009

Joe Carnevale, a student of NCSU is facing criminal charges for creating a highway monster out of construction barrels. The statue was up for less than a day before authorities ripped it down. the wide grinned monster greeted motorists along a major road near the university’s campus.

Is the highway monster a manifestation of road rage/our infatuation with the automobile/evil, like party monster was a manifestation of a club culture run amok? (Videos: party monster, highway monster)

via Design Boom

3:54 pm  •  30 June 2009