Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Kurt Schwitters, "Merz Picture 25A: The Star Picture" 1920 Montage, collage and oil on cardboard, 104.5 x 79 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf ©1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild Kunst, Bonn

This curious poem, “Meatloaf” by Donald Hall, reminded me of the peculiar brilliance of German artist Kurt Schwitters.

Twenty-five years ago, Kurt Schwitters,
I tried to instruct you in baseball
but kept getting distracted, gluing
bits and pieces of world history
alongside personal anecdote
instead of explicating baseball’s
habits. I was K.C. (for Casey)
in stanzas of nine times nine times nine.

Kurt Schwitters appearing in a poem, printed in a modern magazine, over 60 years past his death, caused me to wonder, “What would Schwitters Twitter?”  Perhaps in 1936 he would write:

Drunk on victory in the Rhineland the German masses
listen bewildered to their radios:
the Fuhrer is declaring war
on abstract art

It turns out that Kurt tweets on.

rakete bee bee

10:00 PM Jul 25th from Twitter4J

See more Schwitters Twitters here.

Collage Homage to Kurt Schwitters, by Hank Grebe, 1972, paper on cardboard, 8.5 x 8.5 inches.

Chocolatized Logo

Did this in half an hour for a client.  Quick tutorial: Found Nike swoosh online.  Placed into Adobe Illustrator, Live Trace, Expand, Duplicate, create Offset Path with rounded corners, Expand, Fill with gradients, Export to PSD.  Open in Photoshop, play with Layer Styles->Bevel and Emboss on layers.  Done.

AT&T jobs promotional e-mail header

Are they all sharing one cubicle?  Do they always have lunch together, have outrageous fun, and make their coworkers sick?  Is their boss trying to squeeze into the janitor closet to join the party?  Is she envious of their youthful exhuberance?  Will they continue to bond this closely when one or two of them are right sized?  Will I get more emails with more positions?  Does the company provide free happy pills?  Is the white male trying too hard to belong?  Are they laughing at you because they have better jobs than you do?  Are they standing waist high in a big hole?

Here it is, I’m going to write it down so we don’t forget: the secret to designing a great product. This nugget of advice appeared in Friday’s SF Chronicle, in The Tech Chronicles article by Ryan Kim, “Apple iPhone exec jumps to venture capital firm.”  In the article, the Apple exec, Bob Borchers says,

The key for developing products at Apple was saying no to a lot of features and additions and instead focusing on usability and ease of use.

iPhone 4G Prototype