Tomorrowland

Incaps Are The New Swoosh

Nearly as ubiquitous today as the swoosh was back in the late 90s, incaps—those quirky little capitalizations occurring inside a word—are destined to become the poster child for clichéd, trend-humping, web 2.0 design mania.

Just look at those logos. Playful, efficient, compressed and connective, they speak the visual language of our times in a dialect we can easily understand. Incaps are a way of orthographically "baking in" a design attribute without having to necessarily rely on decorative iconography. I like that minimalist approach toward branding; it's ascetically noble and trim. But by now, in early 2008, we're beyond the incap tipping point. It's time to learn from the swoosh and collectively resist the temptation to use an incap in our designs. It's beginning to stank like the worst kind of party cheese.

Incap backlash, anyone? 

Here Comes The Hypertablet

Dubbed "The Looking Glass" by tech blogger Yanko Design, Mac Funamizu's slick little hypertablet would tell you anything you need to know about, well, anything you see. For now it's a prototype, but man, wouldn't this be amazing?

oSkope Visual Search

There's more than one way to find stuff online. oSkope is a visual search tool that lets you search content from sites like Amazon, eBay and Flickr, but in a refreshingly new way. Search results show thumbnails of the items which can be tossed around, stacked in a pile, "biggified," arranged on a cool x-y axis and dragged into a folder for later comparison. Definitely one of the slickest web applications I've used in a while.

Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, Architect, b. 1931

High Desert House, Joshua Tree, CA, Kendrick Bangs Kellogg

Rising from the desert like the exoskeleton of a giant prehistoric insect, Kendrick Bangs Kellogg's High Desert House exemplifies the free-form ideals of organic architecture. It's transcendental, sculptural, radically non-Euclidean and eerily timeless. It harmonizes with its environment like a perfect 5th. The interior design is just as eccentric and bewildering as its exterior, and it happens to be the home of Bev Doolittle, 1980s "mall art" painter extraordinaire.

Not much has been written about Kellogg, although he does have his own website if you're interested in seeing some more examples of his brand of architectural abstraction. I also found a discussion of the High Desert House at pushpullbar and an article about Kellogg's relation to biomorphic architecture (with bizarre photos):

"His structures actually tend to derive from Modernist pavilion structures, his organic forms tending toward macro-structural elements which enclose large clear-span spaces rather than building up from cellular room elements. Still, he makes extensive use of integrated furnishings despite an open-plan layout approach, sculpting elaborate interior landscapes within these larger clear-span spaces. His hybrid composition makes his work extremely complicated and expensive to build and limits its use to the wealthiest of clients."

Kellogg has built only a handful of projects, so it was pretty weird to find that one of his celebrated works is the Chart House seafood restaurant on the south bank of downtown Jacksonville (not a town known for its architecture). I used to live near the Chart House in San Marco and always wrote it off as beachy kitsch. (Has anyone actually eaten there? Is the "organic" aesthetic distributed throughout the interior? Does the carpet match the drapes?)

More on Kellogg here, here and here. 

Spiral Jetty: Endangered Land Art

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, viewed from space (via Tropolism)

Bad news, folks: the Spiral Jetty—Robert Smithson's brilliant, visionary earthwork from 1970—is officially at risk for destruction. According to the Dia Art Foundation, nefarious oil barons plan to drill in Utah's Great Salt Lake near the iconic 1,500 foot long coil. This is certain to disrupt the remote ambiance and placid environment so crucial to the Jetty's design.

From Dia's February 6, 2008 press release:

"Dia strenuously objects to the proposed drilling which will occur less than 5 miles away from the Jetty. The drilling itself, and potential subsequent oil extraction, will disrupt the viewshed and the area's isolated character, and will degrade the natural environment of the lake by introducing barges with large-scale drilling equipment.

Moreover, construction and operation will introduce toxins and chemicals to the delicate saline water and wetlands that surround the lake. In the case of a toxic spill, the proposed operation would cause irreparable damage to the lake environment and threaten the physical integrity of Smithson's extraordinary sculpture. Additionally, Dia is concerned about increased traffic and heavy transport on the rural road that leads to the Spiral Jetty through Golden Spike National Monument, and the potential for noise pollution from drilling and operations."

If you'd like to actually DO something to oppose the destruction of Spiral Jetty, please email or print out the convenient PDF letter and mail it to the address at the top of the form. I don't normally use Tomorrowland as a bully pulpit for any sort of cause, but Robert Smithson's work is inspiring enough to warrant this sort of outreach. Let's save the Jetty!

The Spectacle of Paradox

Badd Madame at the Eighties Club Bands database.

"All I've got is a photograph" - Def Leppard, Photograph

Without a doubt, the homoerotic pageantry of late-80s "butt rock" was high paradox, a spectacle of drifting genders and mirrored shades that nowadays leaves most of us laughing at our cultural past in an eye-rolling embrace of a once-guilty pleasure.

Perhaps kitsch is where this sort of thing works best, "high" and "low" locking lips in star-crossed union, good taste (and common sense) be damned. Things just get more authentic when viewed at the local level. The burgeoning database of Eighties Club Bands demonstrates, yes, vintage rock sleaze. But you won't hear about these bands on VH1. They're unknowns, forgotten heroes of the glam revolution, curious artifacts, each one now reduced to a quaint, dusty photograph.

Chief exhibits include BareBac, Maniac, Fantasy, Ice Water Mansion, Sweet Savage, and High Risk.