CARL HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
Forget the loyal customers who had bellied up to the counter since it first opened in 1966, the legendary family-owned Carl’s Donuts of
Las Vegas is venturing into the wholesale business. It deserted its popular storefront shop and moved into a warehouse to cater to local
7-Elevens, hotels, and hospitals—the three unusual bedfellows of the visceral Vegas scene. Hometown studio Aquea Design is spreading
the word with a new logo featuring the classic glazed pastry. The cleverly chompedon emblem now adorns the new facility and
also brands the sides of a fleet of delivery vans albeit to the dismay of Carl’s forlorn, displaced regulars. www.aqueadesign.com
Figure 2. BASKING IN THE SUN
There’s something creepy about referring to the exterior
design of a children’s museum as skin, but when
environmental designer Ned Kahn speaks about the fluttering membrane he wrapped around the recently reopened Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, well, it’s slightly less disturbing. It’s clearly just healthy humanizing. Tens of thousands of translucent plastic panels,
patterns of five-inch squares, buffer the exterior and
create an image similar to a giant Noguchi lantern.
The sheer polycarbonate screen called “Articulated
Cloud” is not meant to block light, but rather absorb it and change color according to what’s absorbed. Koning
Eizenberg Architecture of Santa Monica, Calif.,
collaborated with Kahn to produce the wind-activated
epidermis, which also haunts visitors inside with a
sound like birds flapping their wings. www.pittsburgh
kids.orgwww.nedkahn.com
Figure 3.THE NINTH LETTER
What may sound like M. Night Shyamalan’s
next psychological thriller is really the name
of the new University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign literary magazine. The Ninth Letter,
as in the letter i and the Fighting Illini, is
a collaboration of the school’s creative writing
and graphic design departments. In fact,
the three MFA design students selected each
year for U of I fellowships are expected to
contribute, under the supervision of assistant
professor of graphic design, Jennifer Gunji,
who has introduced the art section to the
biannual publication. In just three issues,
they’ve been able to attract heavy-hitting
writers like Dave Eggers and Robert Olen
Butler, and artists like Jay Ryan and Ben
Rubin. www.ninthletter.com
Figure 4.THE SEXY LIBRARIAN
Misunderstood and underestimated
librarians everywhere
are getting a makeover.
Or at least their image is. The
American Library Association
teamed up with Designfarm of
Takoma Park, Md., to produce
a guide depicting librarians in
everyday copyright law predicaments.
Designfarm’s creative
director Jodi Bloom commissioned
Jessica Abel, aka Brooklyn graphic novelist Artbabe, to concoct a
cartoony cast of characters like the sexy librarian Lola Lola to spice up the reading of dull federal law. Even the really boring stuff is stylish: The 50 pages of pure legalese are printed in the back on bubblegum-pink paper. Funded in part by a grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.www.studio405.com
WEB-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
