A book printed through a printing chain made of four desktop printers using four different colors and technologies dated from 1880 to 1976. A production process that brings together small scale and large scale production, two sides of the same history.

MAGENTA (Stencil duplicator, 1880)
CYAN (Spirit duplicator, 1923)
BLACK (Laser printer, 1969)
YELLOW (Inkjet printer, 1976)

For several years now, Nike has made use an image of a snake coiled around a soccer ball for their ongoing "Don't Tread On Me" campaign in support of United States men's soccer.

A representation of the rattlesnake is also contained on the inside of their uniforms to be used in in the 2010 World Cup.

Personally, I've always associated this image with the US Marines and Navy, and so have been little dubious about the messaging here. Particularly, I was worried that this image suggested that we understand ourselves not as participants in the world's game, but rather as a kind of isolated, standoffish gang apart from the community of world footballers. The logo, it struck me, was not in the spirit of world sport that is supposed to underwrite the World Cup.

Having said that, I have become ambivalent about this issue after doing a bit more reading about the original locus of this symbol, the the Gadsden flag. To wit:

The use of the timber rattlesnake as a symbol of the US can be traced back to colonial days, and specifically to the publications of Benjamin Franklin. In 1751, Ben suggested that America ought to thank the British for their policy of sending convicted criminals to America by sending rattlesnakes to England. The Gadsden flag -- which bears this symbol -- is considered "one of the first flags of the United States," later replaced by the current Stars and Stripes flag.

"Since the Revolution," Wikipedia claims, "the flag has seen times of reintroduction as a symbol of American patriotism, a symbol of disagreement with government, or a symbol of support for civil liberties." On this view of the symbol, I think it's great. It says something about our national history, and celebrating that is certainly in the spirit of the World Cup.

In the end, I leave it to you to decide for yourself. There's more detail about the history of this symbol here.

I'm particularly fond of the dog-restrainer:

I ended up Wednesday settling on a working definition of "design" as something like that special practice of making something that's desirable, viable, commercially successful and adds value to people's lives.

Upon further reflection, I realized that I may have been so pleased with those items as criteria for picking out design quality, that I overlooked their clear shortcomings as a definition of design. Why, exactly? Well, where being desirable, viable, commercially successful, and adding value to people's lives may be excellent criteria for picking out good designs from bad, they're hardly useful for picking out a design from non-designs. After all, if every design was commercially successful, we'd all be a lot richer. Which means that they aren't, after all, necessary criteria.

So we'll have to go it alone. After a couple of days further thought, I've decided I'd prefer something like design is the practice of creating an object that is normatively understood to serve primarily commercial purposes. While that's certainly not as pithy as some of its forebearers, it seems to me critical to definitionally couch design practice in a historical and social context, which none of them do.

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