Saturday, August 29, 2020
The Fairytale of Alphonso Davies
"Davies is already on the fast-track to becoming a global soccer star, playing a key role as Bayern Munich won a famous “treble” of trophies including the Bundesliga league title in Germany, the main domestic cup competition and the prestigious UEFA Champions League—Europe’s top competition and the most prestigious title in world club soccer. He was also voted as Bayern’s Rookie of the Year.
By almost any standards it’s a stunning rise to stardom for a player many mainstream soccer fans had never even heard of two years ago.
In the process, Davies has set records, including becoming the first Canadian international to win the Champions League. But Davies isn’t new to rewriting the record books. His $13 million transfer fee made him the most expensive MLS player ever. And, after featuring at the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup at 16, he became the youngest player ever for Canada’s men’s national team. He also became Canada’s youngest ever goalscorer as well as the youngest player to score at the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
By most standards for young soccer players, Davies is living the dream. But that dream was very nearly crushed even before it started as he was born in a Ghanaian refugee camp to Liberian parents fleeing a brutal civil war which left more than 150,000 dead and nearly half a million people displaced. At the age of five, he arrived in Canada with his parents as refugees and soon began turning heads at local soccer training pitches and became the first player born in the 2000s to play in an MLS match after making his debut at 16 for Vancouver Whitecaps.
At a time when several Western countries in Europe, UK and the US are having heated political debates about keeping out refugees, Davies’ journey serves as the rare case which shows the other side of some of the unsavory discourse. "
Redesigning Taiwan's Passport
"If Taiwan adopts a quirky motif on its next passport, it will signal a break in the long tradition of using crests, coats of arms, cartouches, and other stodgy symbols in the history of travel documents. When passports were first used, projecting an air of formality in the graphic design was essential, in large part to convince border guards that your travel papers were legitimate and issued by an official body. But with the dawning of biometrics and ePassports in the late 1990s, a traveler’s data are now stored in a microchip embedded in the booklet. Today, computers ascertain the veracity of documents, thus technically eliminating the need to design documents so austerely.
The International Civil Aviation Organization in fact, only has recommendations, not rules, for what passports should look like. Despite this, most countries tend to stick to traditional colors to “look official” and uphold a “sense of propriety,” as explained in a 2018 Travel and Leisure article (though countries have begun to be a bit more creative on the inside). Similarly, South Sudan, the world’s newest country, chose a dark blue cover decorated with an eagle, ostensibly following the look of the US passport.
But seriousness is far from Taiwan’s favored policy. At this year’s TED conference, Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang explained that government ministries routinely hire professional comedians as “engagement officers” to help scheme information campaigns. The Taiwanese government recently used memes featuring dogs to quash hoaxes about Covid-19 circulating on the internet. Even its top leaders are willing to be, quite literally, the butt of the joke.
That goofiness, which is reflected in many of the contest’s entries, is a genius foil to China’s dour authoritarianism, Hugh observes, where the government regularly tries to bar jokes about the Chinese president’s likeness to Winnie the Pooh.
“It’s the one thing that dictators really can’t deal with it,” said Hughes.”They can deal with criticism or dissidents by locking them up or shooting them but being laughed at is the opposite of fear.”"
Previously,
The World's Most and Least Powerful Passports (February 2016)
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Goldman Sans
"Bespoke typefaces are an increasingly common corporate flex. Other companies that have recently commissioned them include Toyota, Duolingo, Southwest Airlines and CNN. Google has created several, from the minimalist Open Sans, to the playful YouTube Sans, to the ever-so asymmetric Scope One. Goldman intends to phase the font into its branding and marketing needs across its website, apps and even YouTube videos.
“Corporate fonts provide a consumer’s first impression,” said Sarah Hyndman, the author of “Why Fonts Matter” and the owner of Type Tasting, which offers multisensory font workshops. ““It sets a tone. It creates trust. It’s a flavor.”"
Previously,
Netflix Designs Own Font
Boys State
Winner of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival's U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize. Available on Apple TV.
Saturday, August 15, 2020
The 2021 Phoenix Suns
I’m not crying... you are
— 8-0 (@Suns) August 11, 2020
We surprised the team with starting lineups announced by their families at home 💜🧡 pic.twitter.com/xjtwYS7RN1
Saturday, August 8, 2020
Vintage Ikea
Related,
Patagonia’s Private Archives (Sept. 2017)
Oakley Origins (June 2020)
“Saved by the Bell” Pop-Up Restaurant (June 2018)
Farming Voyeurism - Experiences Over Things
New York Times – "In a Wistful Age, Farmers Find a New Angle: Chore TV"
Though Mr. Gold sells poultry and eggs from his duck farm in Vermont’s northeast corner, most of what he produces as a farmer is, well, entertainment.
...
Then, twice a week, like clockwork, he posts a short video on YouTube about his exploits as a neophyte farmer, often highlighting failures or pratfalls. Keeping a close eye on analytics, he has boosted his YouTube audiences high enough to provide a steady advertising revenue of around $2,500 to $4,000 a month, about eight times what he earns from selling farm products.
...
Mr. Gold does wonder, sometimes, about what it means, in the long term, to make his life into a story. When the cat was hit by a car, he found himself reflexively converting the event into a script, and stopped to ask himself who he was becoming.
“It’s like, how much is the experience and how much is the packaging of the experience, and how do you distinguish between the two,” he said. “Because you almost go, ‘I had a duck die, let me think about the first act here, and the second act.’”
Steve Powers in COVID
Via @SteveESPOPowers.
Previously,
Artist - Steve Powers (March 2012)
Artist: Steve Powers (June 2009)
Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek
"A second “Star Trek” film is the much-buzzed-about idea from Quentin Tarantino. The “Pulp Fiction” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” director worked with “The Revenant” scribe Mark L. Smith to draft an R-rated “Star Trek” script based on his idea. Deadline’s report reveals Tarantino’s movie “is based on an episode of the classic ‘Star Trek’ series that takes place largely earthbound in a 1930s gangster setting.”
The episode in question is most likely “A Piece of the Action,” the 17th episode of the second season of “Star Trek: The Original Series.” The installment aired January 12, 1968 and found the Enterprise crew visiting a planet with an Earth-like 1920s gangster culture. That Tarantino’s “Star Trek” idea was a gangster movie isn’t too surprising, as the filmmaker revealed in an interview with Deadline in July 2019 that his plan for “Trek” was to bring in some “Pulp Fiction” elements.
“I don’t know if I’ll do it or not,” Tarantino said at the time. “I’ve got to figure it out, but Mark wrote a really cool script. I like it a lot. There’s some things I need to work on but I really, really liked it.”
By December 2019, Tarantino revealed to Consequence of Sound he was “steering away” from directing the “Trek” movie. A final blow arrived in January of this year when Tarantino told Deadline, “I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it. It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut.”
While it appears Tarantino will not direct a “Star Trek” movie, his idea and Smith’s screenplay for it are not entirely dead. They’re not the only ones, however."
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Sunday, August 2, 2020
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