A high-brow collage I made while watching the DNC… I Heart Barry!

Labor Day is around the corner and made me wonder what I was doing Labor Days of yore - banging on keyboards! Here’s a flyer I made when I played synth in The Sems and we performed at Pianos in NYC. A night of proletariat good times for the working class.

Shops like this one in Joburg remind me of Wal-Mart where you can buy yogurt, a hamster, and a gun, but here they really do nix all the stuff in between. Would you like to buy a microwave or a hair extension? The art of selling whatever you can get your hands on… They should pair up with the lady down my block in Chinatown who sets up a shopping cart on the sidewalk and sells tofu and bras. Another winning combo! The Dadaists would love them haha.

Sign in Diepsloot in Johannesburg

PSAs just got a little more media savvy. Recognizing the extent and accessibility of cell phone use in India, the BBC World Service Trust launched an HIV prevention campaign via humorous cell phone ring tones. Now your phone can belt out an acapella chorus of “condom condom condom!” Which contacts would you assign that ring to? Maybe not Mom… And what other health messages could we turn into ring tones… how about “fat kid fat kid fat kid!”

Reminds me of other services via mobile technology like Wireless Amber Alerts that send out depressing but powerful text messages on missing children in your area. Seems like there’s a lot more we can do with this kind of set-up, including neighborhood-centric text messages between residents, public transportation text messages on changes with your local line, government text messages on free flu shot services, etc.

NYC’s 311 service has definitely made it easier for citizens to report pot holes, complain about noise, and collectively improve the lay of the land. After choking on gnarly fried chicken vapors in our Red Antenna office (the vent from Popeye’s Chicken shoots out by our window) we called 311 and a health inspector came out the next week. City services in action! Of course he came out during the hour when the smell disappeared, but now I sit in fried chicken vapors knowing the City works, sort of… This is just the beginning…

Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV building in Beijing, otherwise known by the locals as “Big Shorts” haha… Image by OMA.

Here’s a building I saw in Osaka that doubles as a Demon Drop-like amusement ride on one side. Building + Six Flags! Reminds me of vertical farming…

Building + cornfields! What else can we do on the sides of our buildings… How about building + bike rack… Second image from treehugger.com.

A baggy-eyed, cracked-out lookingTommy Lee Jones as the face for Boss coffee in Japan. Drink Boss and you’ll look just as refreshed!

Truck in NYC.

Left to right: Steve Baker (Red Antenna), Rosten Woo (CUP), John Mangin (CUP), Sean Basinski (The Street Vendor Project), and James Reeves (Red Antenna) discuss big things.

CUP’s Making Policy Public project continues and we all met at our Red Antenna office yesterday to discuss the scope of content that will go into the final fold-out poster for The Street Vendor Project. How much will be directed towards street vendors as a much-needed resource, and how much will be an educational/advocacy tool about street vendors and regulation reform? How much will be about clarifying the convoluted regulations into clear graphics and how much will be about showing just how convoluted it currently is? Will the tone be neutral, pleasantly reform-suggestive, or fight-the-man militant? Probably not the latter, but it’s fun to imagine the extreme… I’ve always wanted to draw a big fist. Stay tuned for next week when I come up with some design directions!

Hey kids, it’s collage time again! And Men In Hats is now a series… Words from Pocket Calculator by Kraftwerk.