Holy Art Project, Batman! Saint Madonna Statues Reinterpreted by Soasig Chamalliard

Here's a wonderfully fun art project by french artist, Soasig Chamalliard called "Apparitions" by Soasig Chamaillard in which she takes existing figurines of the Virgin Mary and re-imagines them.

Ellen's "Faux Paw" unfairly depicts Mutts & Moms!

I find that I absolutely must speak out on behalf of Marina Baktis from Mutts and Moms in Pasadena given the shaft she is presently getting from the press as a result of Ellen Degeneres' "Faux Paw".

I am disgusted by the hate mail and posts I am reading everywhere that are attacking this woman, Marina Baktis of Mutts & Moms.org, for doing the right and responsible thing.

Marina Baktis is not cruel nor heartless, but instead one of the most responsible dog adoption agency owners I have ever dealt with. And, I have dealt with many- including shelters, humane societies and other dog adoption agencies.


Above: Marina, lovingly holding who is now my dog, Indie, at her store in Pasadena last May.

At Mutts and Moms.org they care so much about the placement of the dogs, and are so concerned about people who may simply 'give the dog away to god knows who' if they can't deal with it, that they make it very clear in their contract that the dog MUST be returned to them so they can be assured of placing it in the "right" great home. Ms. Baktis is extra stringent in finding the best homes for dogs because she loves them so very much.

Do you know how many people treat adopted dogs like crap??
Or fail to consider things in the environment that may be wrong for the dog like other pets or ruthless kids or the neighborhood or the hours kept by the owners, etc.?
Do you know how many people just give them away to others who say they can care for the dog, but really can't?
Why do you think we have so many dogs in shelters!?

Portia de Rossi clearly signed the contract -and no doubt had lengthy discussions with Marina, who, I know, from personal experience, makes it very clear that Mutts and Moms takes it upon themselves to be responsible for the dog's happiness if the adopter cannot keep the dog for whatever reason. And that's no easy feat. Marina puts the dog's needs FIRST over crying kids and weepy talk show hosts.

Marina Baktis didn't interview this 'hairdresser' or go see the home or the other dog that lives there to make sure Iggy would be safe and happy...therefore she cannot -in good conscience leave the dog there. Don't people understand that?

Sure, I love Ellen like the rest of America, but she's not trained to recognize the best home for a dog! She couldn't even keep Iggy herself! That says something right there.
Why didn't she (or Portia) just tell Marina that she may have found an appropriate family for the dog and let Mutts and Moms interview the family themselves?

I personally adopted my fabulous dog from Marina Baktis last May and I was so impressed by her deep concern and need to know all details before releasing the dog to me. She continued to e-mail me and stay in touch after the adoption to make sure Indie was (and is) happy.

Unfortunately, a few tears from Ellen and pics of sad kids' faces have turned the public against one of the kindest, most giving and responsible dog lovers in this country. After all, Marina devotes her life to finding homes for dogs. And good homes at that!


above: photo by Monika Hummer

Above: My happy dog Indie who I adopted from Mutts and Moms in May of 2007.
And who turns 1 year old today!!!!!

Happy Birthday Indie!


Addendum 10/19/07: Clearly this post, as well as the accompanying comments on here and on other blogs, have hit many nerves and upset many people. No, I am not aware of all of the details concerning this situation. Nor am I privy to the conversations that have gone on between the involved individuals. So, perhaps it was unwise of me to address this issue at all.

I have been called an apologist, a nazi and accused of personal attacks without rational substantiation. Clearly, not my intention. I merely put this post up initially to illustrate that I, personally, had a wonderful experience with Mutts and Moms who now has to close their doors on a benevolent and much-needed service.

I am sorry for all the parties involved in this. And sadly, there is no 'winner'.

It's Official. Everyone HATES the re-designed NYC TAXI logo.

Are you aware of the new design for the New York City Taxicabs?
The one that seems universally despised?

In an attempt to update the new York City Taxicabs logo, several fundamental design disasters took place. Starting with using more than one firm's work to do it and ending up with a Frankenstein's monster hybrid of Smart Design's original work and Wolff Olin's logo for the city of NYC.

Further complicated by the input of too many city related firms and opinions.

Below is some background (admittedly taken directly from the NY Times because it's a great article that walks you through how they came to this final design) along with several respected designer's feedback.

Of course, there are hundreds of designer's opinions on this. On blogs, online design mags and comments on the new york times site. And most seem to truly despise the new logo.

And I have to agree.. along with wondering to myself .. what? they couldn't find one decent design firm in NY??

It wasn't sooo bad until Wolff Olins new NYC logo had to be incorporated into it.

Wolff Olins, by the way, is the same company behind the heinous London 2012 Olympics logo.

Below are excerpts from the NY Times, October 15, 2007:

If the new NYC Taxi logo does not seem to be the smoothest work of design, that may be because it traveled a bumpy road on its way to more than 26,000 yellow cab doors.



The first logo (seen above) by Smart Design was simply the capital letters NYC, followed by slightly higher capital letters spelling TAXI. The words were set in a custom typeface based loosely on the computer-generated block letters once found on driver’s licenses. Smart Design moved the fare information panel from the front door to the rear door, where passengers were more likely to see it, and added a pictogram showing a person hailing a cab. It moved the medallion number to the rear of the cab, also to improve its visibility and added a streaming trail of rectangles to recall the historical Checker.



Bump No. 1 occurred when city officials said that the all-type logo was not flashy enough. Trying again (above), the designers placed a bold T set in the middle of a black circle, something evocative of public transit. (Particularly if you’re from Boston.) Davin Stowell, the chief executive of Smart Design, recalled the concept. “Let’s make it iconic and big,” he said. “Everybody knows what it is. You don’t need the words.”



Bump No. 2 occurred when it dawned on city officials that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority intended to use the T designation for the future Second Avenue subway. Lest any confusion arise, Smart Design was asked to restore the words to a prominent position in the logo, which now had the original “NYC” and “AXI,” flanking a shrunken version of the T in a black circle.



Bump No. 3 occurred when NYC & Company, the city’s official marketing and tourism organization, unveiled its own NYC logo, a bulky ligature designed by Wolff Olins. “A number of agencies have incorporated it,” said Matthew Kelly, a spokesman for the Bloomberg administration. “That consistency is good from a customer service perspective and we plan to continue broadening its use.” With that, Wolff Olins’s NYC was substituted for Smart Design’s NYC. And the new taxi logo was born.

If Mr. Stowell is disappointed in the hybrid result, he doesn’t let on publicly. Speaking of the mission to elevate the design quality of the yellow cab, he said, “I still feel good that we raised the bar significantly from where it was.”

Following are the taxi logo critiques from eight designers invited by the NY Times to critique:

Michael Bierut, Pentagram
“I think the content is all very sound and I agree with virtually every decision made in the editing and organization of the fare panel, from the elimination of the headline TAXI FARE (it is on a taxi, after all) to the simplification of the fare structure. “I have to admit, the form is more of a problem for me. I am a little confused by the overall aesthetic of the new graphic, which seems to be intentionally crude and lumpy, more Checker than Crown Vic, I guess. There is also a blunted trailing off of the other checker pattern which seems particularly halfhearted to me. And that attempt to combine the NYC logo which is being used elsewhere with T in a circle (why?) and that (again) bluntly rounded off and oddly-spaced A-X-I just seems a little ham handed. Maybe it looked good on paper, but I don’t find it convincing on the side of a cab. “For all that, though, these are all deliberate decisions. So someone clearly designed it, which is a cause for applause.”

Michael Rock, 2×4
“I think that an essential aspect of New York is the brutal juxtaposition of the rough and the smooth, the professional and the amateur. The yellow cab was always the perfect embodiment of that sensibility: it was an essentially an open-source, D.I.Y. corporate identity in that almost any four-doored car, simply painted yellow and stenciled on the door, could became an integral part of the whole. The beauty of the system was its almost ridiculous simplicity. This attempt to professionalize the image of taxi ends up just another incongruous element in a system that defies professionalization. “Any attempt I made to do it would suffer the same fate. I would just bring back the stencil.”

Oscar Bjarnason, Systm
“First impressions: I like the fact that they are trying to make the T in a circle an emblem of some kind. A bit like the subway signs. Would be a good move to have something simple that you could just see for one second on the move and think, ‘Taxi.’ “Having said that, there could be some misunderstanding when the Second Avenue subway line opens. That line will use the letter T. Maybe not a problem but maybe something to look into.

“The first thing that I saw when looking at the new logo was ‘NYC AXI.’ The T got lost somehow. The T and AXI are too separated for my taste. The NYC letters seem a bit to bold and straight and not in line with the rest. NYC is sharp and pointy. T AXI is smooth and soft. I know that NYC is some official New York City logo but I don’t think it goes well with the T AXI type. Maybe the idea is that T AXI drives smoothly through the rough city. But all of this makes the whole thing a bit complicated.

“I see on the Smart Design Web site that the NYC type was different from what is used now. I’d guess they changed it due to some New York brand issues but in my opinion the NYC TAXI looks better as it is on their site. “Conclusion: I’d go with something simple. Maybe a typographic solution with some hint of the new NYC logo embedded.“In my opinion, you don’t need to have the NYC logo on the cars as well to make something that should be simple more confusing. A simple type that you read instantly and the yellow cars should be iconic enough.”

Sam Potts, Sam Potts, Inc.
“A few observations about the official logo from a designer’s p.o.v.: “It’s really three parts that don’t relate, either conceptually or formally (or spatially or typographically). “The central T is obviously a reference to the subway — too obviously if you ask me — but that is strategically a mistake, as the T.L.C. is separate from the M.T.A. Why equate them visually?

“To have the ‘NYC’ touch is, to me, poor craftsmanship, especially with such a blocky typeface. Additionally, as this goes whizzing by, clumped-together letters just get clumpier. “Having said that, my first reaction to this was, ‘There’s a logo for the taxis?’ In fact, the logo is a secondary element in the branding of the taxis — I imagine very few notice the logo but everyone knows what the yellow signifies. I’d even say that the Crown Vic is a more powerful brand identifier (in the parlance) than whatever logo they had or adopted.”
you can see Mr. Potts Alternative designs here.

Jonathan Corum, a graphics editor at The New York Times
“New York City taxis have long displayed three pieces of information: a list of fares, the words ‘NYC TAXI’ and the medallion number. “The most prominent feature of the new design is a large, awkward ‘NYC (T)AXI’ — everyone knows it’s a New York City taxi, so there’s no need to shout it. There’s also no need to have every taxi look the same.

“My proposed redesign would highlight the most important piece of information: the medallion number. Encouraging riders to remember (or at least notice) the number of their cab is a simple and cheap public safety measure, and would likely speed the return of lost property. A large medallion number would also be much more legible at a distance, or when the cab is moving.”

Rob Giampietro, Giampietro + Smith
“The new NYC TAXI logo is ugly and unsuccessful. Before I get to why, however, we should all be grateful that none of its many contributors ­ Smart Design, the Taxi and Limousine Commission or New York & Company and their designers at Wolff Olins considered changing the taxi’s signature yellow color. The reason cuts to the heart of what actually constitutes a taxi’s ‘identity’ and what doesn’t. An identity is something we use to identify something out in the world. McDonald’s golden arches help us to identify the fast food chain from the highway. The fact that it’s a McDonald’s of Greater Cincinnati isn’t really part of its identity. We probably know we’re in Cincinnati and all we care about is getting something to eat.


Above:A taxi with the new logo treatment.

“The idea of a logo for NYC TAXI fails along the same lines. It’s an NYC TAXI because it’s yellow and we hail it in New York. It’s not an NYC TAXI because it says NYC TAXI on it, no matter what form those letters might take. Many designers, if faced with this brief, would question the need for this particular logo in the first place. The logo probably matters more to the Taxi and Limousine Commission as a sign of driver compliance than it does to people hailing a cab. It’s secondary to the customer’s experience, so its placement, size, and form should indicate as much.

“Still, the logo exists, and merits a more visual critique. Its committee of designers must have discussed the legibility of the logo from across the street moving at high speeds, and they have seemingly addressed this problem by making the letters NYC TAXI bolder. Here the new logo fails again. The design of highway signage has shown that legibility from a distance depends on the spaces inside letters remaining as open as possible. The upper floor of an A or twin bowls of a B shrink as we move further back and continue to shrink as these letters are made bolder. In the worst case, letters become more like blobs, each indistinguishable from the next, and this happens to a certain degree in the NYC TAXI logo.

“What helps us find bold text in a field of unbolded text is the change in tone from light to dark. On highway signs and taxicab liveries, where there are very few words and none of them unbolded, boldness doesn’t help­ it hurts. The yellow color is bold so the letters in the logo needn’t be."

to read the article in its' entirety, click here.

UPDATE: The Taxi Cab Logo Redesign debacle continues. See the reader submissions here.

Knoll & DWR Fight Breast Cancer With A Pink Bench Ebay Auction

Take a seat for the cure.
Or, as I was tempted to name this post.... Bid on a Bench For Boobs.

Join Design Within Reach® and Knoll® in the fight against breast cancer. Like many communities, DWR has been severely impacted by this disease. Support the search for a cure by bidding on this limited-edition Florence Knoll Bench,upholstered in pink Spinneybeck® Riva leather. All of the proceeds from this auction will go to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.


The bench.
We’ve provided pink Spinneybeck Riva leather to upholster this limited-edition Florence Knoll Bench, which was donated by Knoll. The bench is not available in this color and leather combination anywhere else. Originally designed in the mid 1950s, the Florence Knoll Bench is crafted with distinct, individually sewn leather squares, and the cushion sits atop a chrome base.

Bench will ship Fed-Ex ground at no additional cost.
Dimensions: H 36.25” W 19.5” D 16.75”
Retail price: $3,463.

The foundation.
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation is the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists. Founded in 1982, the foundation has invested nearly a billion dollars toward their cause, becoming the largest source of nonprofit funds dedicated to the fight against breast cancer in the world.

Learn More about the foundation here.

You Can Also Bid On It In Certain DWR stores
In addition to the auction on eBay, nine auctions will be held at nine DWR Studios across the country on Thursday, October 25,. The proceeds will go to the local chapter of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, so your donation will benefit your community. Auctions will take place at the following DWR Studios:

* Bethesda, Maryland
* Chicago, Illinois (North Ave)
* Dallas, Texas
* Newport Beach, California
* New York, New York (Flatiron)
* Portland, Oregon
* Princeton, New Jersey
* San Francisco, California (Potrero Hill)
* South Beach, Florida


Bid on it here.