It’s a common problem - you try a new wine, you love it, you forget what it’s called, and The End. Not anymore, thanks to the designers of the Oxford Landing wine labels. They’ve created a handy perforated tab that you can peel off and store in your wallet until it’s time to get your drink on again. My life is complete! Let this be the new standard… Found on noisydecentgraphics via swissmiss.

Photo above from noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com.

Something I submitted for an environmental issues awareness campaign competition. It didn’t win anything - except my heart. ha.

With a fuddy duddy name like “congestion pricing”, it was doomed from the start. Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal died in the State Legislature yesterday. The progressive plan that would have charged $8 for vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street was inspired by a similar plan in London that started in 2003 and actually expanded last year.

But America likes a good slogan and where’s the fun in paying to lessen traffic jams? Sounds depressing… but yay for the Clean Air Contribution! The Transportation Enrichment Fund! The Money to Greatly Improve Your Subway, Bus, Bike, and Pedestrian Comforts So You Won’t Ever Want to Drive Again! Where do I pay!

On the border between Calexico, California and Mexico. Watch out for all those Mexican terrorists!

When we were going to college in Ann Arbor, James and I and other friends would often drive to Detroit to go to techno parties on shady streets. One time we drove back with a shattered hole for a passenger window. Good old Detroit! These days the renovated waterfront and downtown are increasingly populated by mothers and kids and couples on dates. It’s an unfamiliar and exciting sight, partially due to the help of Project for Public Spaces. Now the City needs to aim for that happy medium between dangerous & creative and safe & sterile…

Paying homage to his hometown and the citizens that  invented techno, James has made the ultimate Detroit techno mix called Detroit All-City Classic. ‘Sharivari,’ ‘Night Drive Through Babylon,’ ‘Alleys of Your Mind,’ and other thumping classics from the last three decades will make you nod your head hard. Download it for free and read his soulful commentary about America’s former murder capital and “the muscular arm of the American underground.”

Image above by James from his site.

My Sidewalk Psychiatry project has gained some more attention recently, thanks to Boingboing and some great personal sites. Emotional prodding in public space also reminds me of this fresh project from the ’90s. Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister often references it as one of the few art/design projects that has “touched his heart.” Mimicking the standard signs in New York City’s subway cars, an artist named True replaced them with some humorous and touching life instructions. A photo can be found here via LarimdaME’s Flickr.

I’ve never ridden the subway with despair, but I do enjoy a commute with some romantic melancholy. Few things are more poignant than listening to moody music in crowded places. Using a cool and simple tool called Muxtape.com, I created a mellow mp3 mixtape I like to call Ten Songs That Will Turn Any Old Subway Ride Into the Most Poignant Life-in-the-City Scene From a Heartbreaking Movie. Listen and sigh. Track list below.

1. Nico - These Days
2. Air - Mike Mills
3. Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin - Je T’aime Moi Non Plus
4. Mellow - Airplane
5. David Bowie - Space Oddity
6. Ratatat - Cherry
7. The Zombies - Beechwood Park
8. The Rolling Stones - She Smiled Sweetly
9. Sonic Youth - Superstar
10. Brian Eno - The Big Ship

Artwork above is by True and was scanned from Sagmeister’s great book Made You Look.

In Volcano Park in Hawaii.

Statistics can be scurry until you add some fresh shapes and colors… Getting down and dirty with geometry, I just finished designing this set of information graphics for The World Bank. To accompany various reports on slum infrastructure, these diamonds, hexagons, and octagons pack a mean load of info in one punch.

For the infrastructure hexagons above, six basic services are plotted along each axis and by connecting the dots and filling it in you get a quick visual sense of how much people have or don’t have in the slums of Nairobi and Dakar. The more color, the better. Now you can measure the differences in living conditions by big blobs and little blobs! Fun!

Chinatown is a land of good food, colorful shops, and fresh produce. It is also a land of about three trees in a ten-block radius. The sidewalks may already be packed with produce-unloading delivery boys and boxy, bag-toting Chinese ladies, but we’ll gladly make way for some quaint, tree-lined street action. To jump-start the Great Chinatown Tree-Planting Movement I pulled out the temporary spray-chalk and started marking some choice spots on the sidewalks for the City to plop some green ones.

It just so happens that April is MillionTreesNYC Month, highlighting the cool new program initiated by PlaNYC that makes it easy for residents to get involved in tree-planting good times. Shooting for one million new city trees in the next decade, the program gives hope to the leafless sidewalks of Chinatown that yearn to be charmingly lined with more than garbage bags. We call those black bushes! Please give us trees.