Saturday, April 30, 2022

Wooden Skyscraper

 













New Yorker - "Transforming Trees Into Skyscrapers"

CNN - "Has the wooden skyscraper revolution finally arrived?"
Vox - "The hottest new thing in sustainable building is, uh, wood"

The NFL Draft Hat

 






















Sports Logos - "NFL, New Era Unveil 2022 NFL Draft Hats"

New York Times - "How do players get the correct draft hats?"

Promo Marketing - "What the 2022 NFL Draft Hats Tell Us About Current Headwear Decoration Trends"

"Sort of like how Pantone's Color of the Year gives us clues about what graphic design and fashion might look like in the following year, the NFL Draft hat gives us a little bit of insight into what people want on their decorated apparel and headwear.

The first clue is that subtlety is not the most important thing in the world. The layered look creates sort of a busy atmosphere for the main panel, but the contrasting colors give your eyes a chance to make heads or tails. (Although, the Browns brown-on-black-on-orange is a little tough to handle.)

The hats also show that multiple decoration areas are definitely "in." In addition to the front-panel graphic, the hats feature an NFL logo in the team's colors on the side panel, as well as a team logo on the back of the hat. So, while your clients might think they just want a logo on the front, it might be that that's the only option they know about.

The front graphics are also decidedly retro, with the front-panel decoration in particular evoking '90s sports fashion. Nostalgia has been a big influence on style trends since, well, forever, but the '90s are especially hot right now.

Finally, the hats showcase what you can do with a brand's color palette. After all, a professional sports team is a brand, too. Using a brand's colors in different ways and allowing them to interact on a hat as they do on signage can turn a small object into a big branding creation."

American Steakhouse

 














Esquire - "The New Golden Age of the American Steakhouse"

"The table is laden with slabs of beef, trays of oysters, and copper pots of pommes aligot. A waiter in a tux, tossing a Caesar salad. Iceberg’s in the air. Diners grinning at the show. One, a doubting Thomas, cuts into his rib eye, scarlet under char, and wonders, “Is this really rare?” Limbs are limber, eyes shine bright, the Barolo is empty. If Caravaggio were alive today, there is no doubt he would take his talents to a steakhouse. There is no other restaurant that better captures all that is primal, all that drama twixt life and death, all the revelry mankind can summon, all the pleasure mankind can feel, than a steakhouse.

And yet the past few years have not been kind to the American steakhouse. The plant-based revolution not only threatened its relevance but also triggered an existential crisis: Should these temples of beef even exist when it’s a known cause of climate change? The pandemic didn’t help, either. Steakhouses were hit hard. In Chicago, the unofficial capital of steakhouses, they closed at twice the rate of other types of restaurants. But the institution has persevered, and today the American steakhouse is experiencing a renaissance. Across the country, ambitious chefs are returning to the steakhouse to rejuvenate the genre, balancing virtuosity and fidelity, theme and variation. These restaurants are worth traveling to. Not just because hot damn if a skirt steak and a strong cocktail aren’t one way to achieve satori. But, more profoundly, because there’s something hopeful about how vibrant and vital an old idiom can still be.

The modern steakhouse emerged from all-male beef banquets of the mid-nineteenth century, wherein men devoured endless steak with their bare hands, often squatting on beer barrels and singing songs like “Sweet Adeline.” The first wave of proper steakhouses sought to capture this spirit, but with utensils and actual chairs—places like Old Homestead, Peter Luger, Gallaghers, and Keens, all in New York. Women were allowed in 1920, and steakhouses evolved into something classier, with salads, oysters, and cocktails. The caveman pantomime persisted and fermented into the Mad Men–era decadence of places like the Palm (near Manhattan’s East Forty-fifth Street, known as Steak Row), Bern’s in Tampa, and Gene & Georgetti in Chicago. The steakhouse was swept up in franchise madness and disseminated nationally in the form of Ruth’s Chris (the most confusing of all possessive names), Shula’s, Mastro’s, Morton’s, Del Frisco’s, and more. Around the turn of the century, in an effort to modernize, steakhouses got a makeover. They transmogrified into their second wave: the big-watch untz-untz establishments of the nineties and early aughts. The main culprit, STK, a self-described “vibe dining experience,” spread nationwide like a plague. Generally speaking, this was not a good time in the steakhouse game."

The Return of the Martini

 













GrubStreet - "Wellness Is Dead. Long Live the Martini."

"“I think it is a perfect pressure valve for everything people are feeling,” Cecchini predicts. “Everywhere you look you see war, you hear ‘keep your mask on,’ or ‘don’t keep your mask on’ — people are tired of toeing lines. They’re just like, ‘Give me something that transgresses the bounds.’” Cecchini, too, knows that ordering a martini is an attempt to capture some sort of classic romance: “The martini harkens back to so many things that were so solid and representationally correct. You don’t have to think about it. It’s a big solid punch in the face and sometimes that’s just what you need.”"

Finding Endurance

 































Barbie

 













Variety - "Margot Robbie’s ‘Barbie’ Sets 2023 Release Date, Unveils First-Look Photo"

July 21, 2023
Written by Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach
Directed by Greta Gerwig
Starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Hari Nef, Will Ferrell

Friday, April 22, 2022

Thor: Love and Thunder


Written & Directed by Taika Waititi 
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Chris Pratt, Jaimie Alexander, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, Jeff Goldblum, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper


Hyundai's Retro-Futuristic EV

 


























Related,

Movie on Nike Sneaker Man Sonny Vaccaro

 
























Hollywood Reporter - "Ben Affleck, Matt Damon Team for True Life Story of Nike Sneaker Man Sonny Vaccaro (Exclusive)"

"Affleck will direct, write, co-star and produce the untitled sports marketing drama, while Damon will star and also write and produce. Mandalay Pictures, the banner run by Peter Guber and Jason Michael Berman, will produce as well.

Damon will portray Vaccaro while Affleck plays Nike co-founder Phil Knight in a story around Nike’s long-shot effort to sign rising superstar basketball player Michael Jordan to its shoe company in the mid-’80s, an endorsement that seemed impossible at the time but, thanks to the maverick sneaker salesman, would become the most significant relationship between an athletic brand and an athlete. The deal launched the global, multibillion-dollar contemporary sneaker industry and also helped the sport do the same."