One-Man Focus Group
Why No One Saves Ticket Stubs Any More
(Hint: It's because there are no more ticket stubs.)
Why doesn't anyone save ticket stubs any more? Because there are no more ticket stubs.
Someone at the National Security Agency is apparently a Pink Floyd fan.
New Airline Uniforms: Just as Boring as the Old Ones
Prosaic flight attendant outfits and the decline of the uniformed service class
A bunch of airlines have recently updated their flight attendants' uniform. They're just as boring as the old ones—which actually says a lot about the sad decline of the uniformed service class.
Did anyone notice that the way you close a cereal box has changed? One-Man Focus Group noticed, and found out the surprisingly complicated design history.
Little Debbie Gets a (Very Minor) Fashion Update
But the snack food company wants you to know her "innocence and purity" are still intact
Annals of branding: The snack-food icon gets a minor makeover, but the company wants you to know she's still innocent and pure.
Why would the only brand to get a baseball-anthem shout-out ever want to reinvent itself?
Smart Quotes are Killing the Apostrophe
How a software innovation doomed the inverted comma
How the rise of the "smart quote" heralded typographic doom for the humble apostrophe.
The New $100 Bill is Less Dignified than Monopoly Money
The aesthetic cost of counterfeit-proofing
What would Ben Franklin–a printer by trade–make of the goofy-looking new bill that bears his image?
That new dumbbell-shaped can isn't about improving ergonomics–it's about impressing millennials. (But don't tell them the can uses twice as much aluminum.)
The Vocabulary of Flesh
Chewing over the meat industry's redefinition of chops and steaks
Beef and pork producers are putting new information labels on meat. Is this about educating carnivorous ignoramuses, or tricking them into paying more for un-sexy cuts?
