Seeing as I posted last week about my work on the England 2018 World Cup bid, I thought I’d dig out this glimpse of the American bid identity, which has been designed by Pentagram in New York.

I really like it, and it’s strikingly similar to some of the identity work I did for the England bid which didn’t see the light of day (and which I’m not allowed to show you, sorry). As it stands, it still shares some common DNA, the custom typeface playing a central role in the identity, a campaign tagline about community based on a play of words. Even the two-tone colours are close to the England United colour palette which our host cities have been provided with.

There’s a similar tension between the bid logo and the campaign identity, although I think the balance between the two is better on the England offering so far. Interestingly, Pentagram are also designing all the bid materials themselves, whereas the England identity is being rolled out by various agencies across the country as and where needed, so is already unavoidably looking less coherent.

But hang on a minute, even I, as a football agnostic know that the USA hosted the World Cup in 1994, which is fairly recently. Surely England deserve it, having waited over 40 years…?

Check out the US bid website here…

…but obviously don’t vote for them.

Illustrator Christoph Niemann has been playing with his sons’ Lego set. He’s created these lovely vignettes of New York life.

There are more here. I wonder what the London equivalents would be?

While the world mentally says goodbye to war, famine and injustice while they wait for President Obama to start work, I’ve noticed that all that speculation during the Democratic campaign has proved sound. Obama IS a Mac, and so is Joe Biden too.

I wonder if Barack will be ringing up Al Gore for some Keynote tips?

Good luck America, don’t screw it up.

When my girlfriend and I were in New York last year we found a great Diner where we went back a couple of times for breakfast or coffee. Well, I just heard via some incoming searches to this site, that it’s closing down. We found the Cheyenne Diner as it was opposite the world’s largest photographic store, B&H, and so heavily laden with new lenses etc we staggered in for some pancakes.

It had been there for 19 years, but now the commercial pressure for development is forcing it to close its doors. Even so, the landlord says “I don’t want to knock it down. I want to save the building,” so perhaps it will become a trendy trainer shop (sorry – sneaker store) or something. At least we got some great shots of it while we were there. Click the images here to see more on Flickr…

Last year we also had to come to terms with the closure of the New Piccadilly Café in London, another place we had just started visiting before the owners were priced out of the area. That had been there for half a century and has just been lying derelict ever since it shut down.

Well, if you’re looking for the few remaining places to enjoy an affordable no fuss bite to eat and nice retro cup of tea, there are lots of sites around which can point you to somewhere a little more imaginative than Starbucks. Remember to support your local independent shops and cafés, otherwise pretty soon it will have to be Lattés and Ciabattas all round…

…got a suggestion? Post it here…

Please forgive me while I write about politics. Don’t worry, I’ll get to design by the end of the post…

So today is Super Tuesday, Americans and UK news correspondents alike are getting more and more frantic about it all (just imagine the US media taking such an interest in our own quaint elections) and the spotlight is on the two Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I don’t even know why I’m typing this, as I can imagine that anyone reading this post wouldn’t already know what they both had for breakfast this morning. Anyway, it’s a win win situation, Obama would be the first black president, Clinton would be the first female president. Both are several steps further along the evolutionary chain than George Bush…

The two are neck and neck, it’s too close to call. With almost identical policies, it’s a race being fought on personality, but perhaps the most striking difference between the two candidates is that according to the New York Times one is a Mac, and the other is a PC…

This comes from Obama’s visual style being seen as fresh and uncluttered, while Clinton shows a tendancy towards the generic way of doing things:

Read the rest of this entry…