Posts by Amy Gale

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  • Island Life: Anyone can do design.,

    New York is 5 different boroughs not one city council.

    It's both. A "Super City", if you will.

    (Seriously, I wouldn't want to tell the New York City Council they don't exist. Some of them probably Know People.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Island Life: Anyone can do design.,

    The NYC.gov thing in the top left might be the city logo but it's seem more like a logo for the web page.

    I think it might actually be the rounded-looking "NYC" you see in various colors down the right hand side of that page. I'm not sure I've ever seen it anywhere, though. So it's either unused or unmemorable.

    That Tokyo logo might well be stylized cherry blossoms. I rather like it.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Island Life: Anyone can do design.,

    So, moving along from a public logo competition, how about this:

    An Auckland typeface competition. A proper competition, with a proper prize, and a good proportion of experts in the judging panel(s). The brief would include the following:
    - the Auckland logo would be "Auckland" (or possibly "AUCKLAND") rendered in the winning typeface.
    - the winning typeface would be used for signage throughout the region.

    Then: yay. Auckland gets a big heap of visual identity. Some typeface designer (or maybe a design student! or maybe a passionate amateur!) gets a decent prize. The world gets a new typeface. Everybody smiles and dances!

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Southerly: Interview with Rodney Hide,

    I find the ideas of the ACT party to be 1.57079632

    Except that 1.57079632 ∈ Q

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Island Life: Anyone can do design.,

    Seen Melbourne's logo lately?

    Nope. Because nobody has, except for design/branding enthusiasts and the occasional grumpy vox pop-er.

    Ok, I've looked now. It seems perfectly nice. Better than Telecom. Not as good as the NZ Film Commission or NZ Post. I can't imagine it speaking to me as a Melburnian, but I probably wouldn't be offended either.

    That's the competition.

    Melbourne might be the competition, but its logo? Is there any research at all to show that tourists are even aware of the logos of places they visit, much less influenced by them?

    This just seems like the ferry terminal thing from another angle. People want Auckland to be awesome, and seen as awesome, but their approach is so heavily influenced by their own areas of expertise that they seem to entirely miss the fact that their ideas will have negligible or zero impact on awesomeness.

    So we end up with arguments for looking good, and for telling people we're good. Do world class cities seriously worry about that sort of thing? Or do they just get on with being?

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Island Life: So, what do you think of…,

    [Paul] I think most people's first impression of NZ is being forced to wend their way through the duty free shop maze to get to immigration - "how tacky" may not be the impression we really want to make

    I must confess that I find this aspect of AKL oddly soothing, and much preferable to being disgorged into a maze of barren corridors leading to a cavernous passport control hall, which is what you get in the other international airports I spend much time in. After all, if there's ever a time for an unfeasibly large bottle of gin...

    [Stephen] JFK is a shithole. La Guardia is a pain in the butt. The ferry terminals are shitholes.

    I fear you have a calibration problem now. What terms do you have left for describing the Port Authority?

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Island Life: So, what do you think of…,

    I don't really have a horse in this race, but a fancy cruise terminal seems a bit over the top. The photos here don't seem out of line with what you see in other places. Some quite simple changes could spiff it up substantially, though, so they should do that. Solid dividers. Paint. Enough immigration staff.

    Seriously, though, it seems like a mistake to pour a predicted fifty million dollars (which means probably well into 9 figures before it's over) into impressing wealthy foreign cruise passengers who are just passing through the terminal in order to jump into a Rotorua-bound bus. They are not coming to NZ for its cosmopolitan urban scene (I'm sorry, but they're just not), and there's no point in trying to compete on that basis.

    Some of the figures and comparisons made in this post are just weird, though.

    More international visitors to New Zealand arrive on cruise ships than fly directly into Queenstown.

    I am shocked, shocked that an airport whose only international connection is to Australia (and not every day, either) does not produce a high proportion of international visitors.

    Next season we are expecting around 133,000 passengers on 70 voyages. What will they find when they get here?

    Another adorable Pacific nation, is my guess. A fifty million dollar cruise terminal won't trick these passengers into thinking Auckland is like New York or London or Tokyo. A fifty billion dollar cruise terminal couldn't do that.

    For 70 percent of international arrivals to New Zealand, their first impressions of New Zealand are based in Auckland.

    Sure. Usually Auckland Airport, right?

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Cracker: Go Figure,

    I'm still not over seeing Craig Parker as Darken Rahl in Legend of the Seeker.

    Not that I watch crap TV. Not that I in fact make a point of watching crap TV with NZ scenery. Certainly not that I own any of it on DVD. Absolutely not that I have Jack of All T-. Ahem. Carry on...

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Radiation: Big bang theory,

    I think what Amy has said is that choirs "joining in" isn't that farfetched.

    Oh, just joining in with someone else's performance apropos of nothing is totally far-fetched (and obviously rude, in the real world in which we aren't all dressing up in our Grease catsuits, kicking the winning field goal, and so forth).

    Being so caught up in someone else's performance that you wish you could jump out of the audience and be a part of it, OTOH, is not far-fetched at all.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

  • Radiation: Big bang theory,

    the other team bowled in over the top

    I would absolutely have preferred it if the Deaf choir had explicitly invited the New Horizons kids to join them. I don't even think it would have been that difficult to implement in the context of the scene.

    however

    I get the impression that some people just don't believe that there is any way this scene could ever be ok if it involves the Deaf choir. And I can't agree.

    In my experience on the minority side of the fence (modulo my various privileges), people who outright dismiss or underestimate you aren't actually the problem. Firstly, you can see them coming. Secondly, they tend not to have much power. No, the bigger problem is people who should actually know better, but believe your sole (or major) role is to Represent. This is a substantial and damaging barrier to full, first-class participation, and it's really not ok. We're all participants first.

    So, if we accept (reasonably, I think, because there will be diminishing emotional returns) that they will do this joining-together-aww thing with exactly one other choir, I believe the Deaf choir should be an equal candidate for selection. In hindsight they may have been wrong to choose it. Not because there is anything wrong with a hearing choir and a Deaf choir having this interaction, but because you might as well avoid people getting mad if you can help it, even if you are perplexed by their interpretations. Then again, isn't excluding the Deaf choir for that reason just as bad?

    As for what made me cry: it was what I talked about in my first post, what it means for strangers to make music together. It's corny, sure. But I've had that experience every now and then since I was about ten years old. It means something very true and real to me, in fact I'm finding - as you see - that it's actually upsetting when people read it as something patronising or aggressive.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report

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