Category Archives: Uncategorized
Reinventing the Wheel
How do you change the wheel?
Enter 21st century innovation.
Goodyear tires, familiar to anybody who has ever seen or owned a car (or looked up during a college football game), has dedicated its resources to envisioning a wondrous future of driving. In the real world, life-altering advancements take time, brilliance, money, luck, ingenuity, patience and courage.
And let’s not forget persistence.
Will the public (and not just investors) buy-in to a game-changing innovation?
When it comes to cars and the sad realities of inevitable accidents, repairs, flat tires, and a variety of inconveniences and limitations, people are exhausted at the same old routines of car parts not withstanding basic road conditions as they were promised at the dealership. In the same spirit as Dyson and its revolutionary design (for vacuums) of a rotating ball for limitless agility, Goodyear has released a video of a tire that could very well change the way we drive in the future that doesn’t involve the terrifying concept of a driver-less car.
That’s a very cool idea.
Did I just say tires are cool?
Yes, yes I did.
Not only do the Goodyear Eagle-360 concept tires have the realistic potential to be marketable, but these tires could transform how roads are designed in the future. At the highest level, this country’s infrastructure could be directly impacted by this tire design. Innovation takes time to become a valued and reliable product with people. There are many, many stages of development, retooling and testing.
With all that being said, that daring first step is always exciting.
It gets the ball rolling.
The Trailer is Looking at Me, Ray
We may be heading towards yet another summer of some Old Testament, wrath of God type stuff.
A Ghostbusters reboot is just a few months away.
Was this a good idea?
How do you top Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson?
(Hint: Nobody can)
Will an all-female cast of Ghostbusters hold their own?
One thing is is for sure: The 1984 original and 1989 sequel are absolutely untouchable in the Ghostbusters universe.
The second thing for sure is there’s a new reboot coming July 15th with an all-female cast and they appear ready to add an entertaining chapter to this epic story of green slime, proton packs and refrigerators from hell.
Doesn’t this movie seem perfect for Sandra Bullock and Julia-Louis Dreyfus?
Well, they weren’t called.
However, we do know who was called and it looks like they get into some exciting conflicts with some new ghosts. Above all else, hopefully they remembered that age old proverb:
When somebody asks you if you’re a God (or Goddess), you say yes!
Announcing a Flat Formation
At the end of a metaphorical 90 minutes (more than 20 years literally), this is what U.S. Soccer and Nike came up with:
- A crest with 13 vertical stripes of red and white under a blue field is a traditional American style.
- Seven red and 6 white stripes come directly from our flag, demonstrating that the crest is rooted in the history of our nation.
- Uses the traditional field of blue to celebrate the three most important letters in the vocabulary of our fans, from stadiums to watch parties to the local bar – U.S.A.
- The colors stay true to our nation’s colors with the red and blue drawn straight from the flag.
- Notably, the new identity no longer features stars or a ball. In soccer tradition, stars are placed above the logo to represent World Cup victories. The WNT crest will prominently feature the three stars earned in 1991, 1999 and most recently, the historic 2015 victory.
(U.S. Soccer)
The new crest has uniquely American features (as listed above), yet it lacks imagination and declarative strength. This is the symbol of this burgeoning sport in America and the first impression is strikingly plain and boring.
Where is a bald eagle in striking position? The snake nobody should dare tread on?
There are countless creative design ideas that could have/should have been brainstormed for this branding endeavor.
Where is the ingenuity, that defining characteristic of soccer and this country? What does this crest convey to ourselves and our competitors? How does this new crest represent our heritage and a future of excellence?
There are 13 stripes, yes. The colors are red, white and the right shade of blue this time, yes. However, how did a design team at Nike, a company that prides itself on creativity and branding (cough cough Oregon football), submit this idea without it being April 1st? What does this crest possibly inspire for new jersey designs?
The United States of America broadly, and soccer in America specifically, has always been about a brighter tomorrow. But the new crest is a straight-forward graphic that doesn’t really tell us anything about yesterday, today or tomorrow.
U.S. Soccer desperately needs a vivid and cohesive identity on the pitch.
Flat and humdrum has already been done.
Jimmy's Daily Planet 