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Playlist: 99% Invisible Starter Kit

Compiled By: Roman Mars

 Credit:

25 episodes of 99% Invisible (standard 4:30 length) for stations looking to air the program.

99% Invisible #33- A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

This simple graphic design has saved thousands of lives.

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Plimsoll

If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships, you might find a painted circle bisected with a long horizontal line. This marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the Plimsoll line. This simple graphic design has saved thousands of lives. The Plimsoll line shows the maximum loading point of the ship and lets a third party know, plainly and clearly, when a vessel is overloaded and at risk of sinking in rough seas. If you see that horizontal line above the water, you’re good, if you don’t, you could be sunk.

The load line was named after the crusading British MP Samuel Plimsoll. The advent of insurance in the 19th century, created an incentive for ship owners to purposely sink their own ships and collect the insurance money. This grim practice became so widespread, and killed so many merchant seamen, that the over-insured, overloaded vessels became known as “coffin ships.” Samuel Plimsoll (“the sailors friend”) fought for sweeping merchant shipping regulation that led to the adoption of the load marking that bears his name.

Tristan Cooke, a human factors engineer and creator of a great blog called Humans in Design, tells us the history of the Plimsoll line and explains why it’s one of his favorite examples of design. I predict you will being hearing more from Tristan and his partner at Humans in Design, Tom Nelson, on this site and on the program. Every entry on their blog could serve as the basis of an episode. You should also follow them on twitter@humansindesign. Fun stuff.

99% Invisible #68- Built For Speed (standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

How long are lines on a highway?

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[For expanded Director's Cut version, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/90056-99-invisible-68-built-for-speed-director-s-cut]

I want you to conjure an image in your mind of the white stripes that divide the lanes of traffic going the same direction on a major highway. How long are the stripes and the spaces between them?

You can spread your arms out to estimate if you want to.

Over the course of many years, a psychology researcher named Dennis Schafer at Ohio State asked students from many different parts of the country this question and the most common response was that the white stripes are two feet long.

Tom Vanderbilt, author of the brilliant book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), reveals the real answer and some of the other perceptual countermeasures that are designed to make you feel comfortable going way faster than your brain can adequately process.

We also talk about how this design language of exaggerated scale and wide vistas is great for limited access highways, but it’s problematic when these features are grafted onto suburban landscapes where they don’t belong.

All the music in this episode is courtesy of my favorite new label, the Utah based, Hel Audio. Specifically, we played the bands OK Ikumi and Mooninite. Hel Audio focuses on physical releases of electronic and experimental music. I just bought myself the full Hel Audio catalog on four glorious cassette tapes, along with less glorious but more versatile (and free with purchase) digital downloads of the same songs. The tape deck in my twelve-year-old Golf has never been happier.

99% Invisible #02- 99% 180 (Standard 4:30 Version Only)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

In the beginning, former AIA-SF president Henrik Bull and the Transamerica Pyramid did not get along. The building was an affront to late 1960’s modernist ideals. It was silly. It looked like a dunce cap. Its large scale had no respect for the neighborhood in which it lived.

But over 40 years, something happened…

99logoprx_small In the beginning, former AIA-SF president Henrik Bull and the Transamerica Pyramid did not get along. The building was an affront to late 1960’s modernist ideals. It was silly. It looked like a dunce cap. Its large scale had no respect for the neighborhood in which it lived. But over 40 years, something happened…

99% Invisible #18- Check Cashing Stores (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:31

One could argue that check cashing stores do a lot of things that are just plain wrong. But given so many people use them, what are they doing right?

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A few years ago, journalist Douglas McGray learned that the largest chain of check cashing stores in Southern California, Nix Check Cashing, was being bought by the nation’s largest credit union, Kinecta. The credit union thought it had something to learn from the check casher about how to reach out and serve the poor. This was curious. McGray’s impression was that check cashers (and especially payday lenders) were predatory, the bad guys, and that credit unions, especially one dedicated to serving the poor, were the good guys. This proposed sale made McGray look at the whole situation with fresh eyes.

I highly recommend reading Douglas McGray’s New York Times Magazine article all about it. It’s excellent.

I, of course, was drawn to the design aspects of the story.

Check cashing stores can feel very odd when you’re not used to them. Quite simply, they are often designed to look and feel more like a corner store. The furnishings are sparse, and the information is on signs— big, bold and clearly presented. Banks, on the other hand, have a design legacy of carpeting, heavy desks, suits, and pamphlets that are hard to parse. If you were to start over and design a financial products retail location today, which model would you follow?

4:30 version available for Morning Edition C block, but longer version is probably better and available for shows with floating clocks.

99% Invisible #66- Kowloon Walled City (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

The densest place in human history.

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[For expanded Director's Cut version, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/90052-99-invisible-66-kowloon-walled-city-director-s]

Kowloon Walled City was the densest place in the world, ever.

By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000).  That’s a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile.  For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan.  

To put it another way, think about living in a 1,200 square foot home.  Then imagine yourself living with 9 other people.  Then imagine that your building is only one unit of a twelve-story building, and every other unit is as full as yours.  Then imagine hundreds those buildings crammed together in a space the size of four football fields.

We can’t really imagine it, either.

Kowloon Walled City began as a military fort in Kowloon, a region in mainland China.  In 1898, China signed a land lease with Great Britain, giving the British control of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and other nearby territories.  But the lease stipulated that the fort in Kowloon would remain under Chinese jurisdiction.  

Over time, the fort became abandoned, leaving the area subject to neither Chinese nor British authority.  This legal gray zone was attractive to displaced and marginalized people.  Thousands of people moved there after the war with Japan broke out in 1937.  Even more people moved there after the Communist Revolution.  It attracted gangsters, drug addicts, sex workers, and refugees.  And it also drew a lot of normal people from all over China who saw opportunity there.  

They built the city building by building, first blanketing the area of the fort, then building vertically.

Buildings were packed together so tightly in the Walled City that the alleys were nearly pitch-black in the day time.  Electricity and water were brought in by illegal or informal means.  

There was no garbage collection, so people pitched their trash out of their windows.

This sewer grate pictured above was installed to keep garbage from falling onto the roof of a temple, seen below.

The Walled City gained a reputation as a sort of den of iniquity—there were high levels of prostitution, gambling, mafia activity, and rampant unlicensed dentistry.

But an order did emerge.  People found ways (legal and otherwise) of getting electricity and into the city.  A resident’s organization settled disputes.  And there was lots of industry.

You could even receive mail in the Walled City.

Kowloon Walled City was torn down in 1993.  Today, it’s Kowloon Walled City Park.  Most traces of the city are gone, though there is a model of the city cast in bronze.

But the memory of the city lives on.  It was featured in the non-verbal film Baraka, and plays a cameo role in Bloodsport.

It’s also served as the setting in a number of video games, including most recently Call of Duty: Black Ops

If you still can’t get enough of Kowloon Walled City, here’s an hour-long documentary (in German, with English subtitles)

This week’s episode was produced by Nick van der Kolk (whom you may remember from Episode #21).  He spoke with photographer Greg Girard and architect Aaron Tan, who both spent time in the Walled City.  Nick also talked to as Brian Douglas, who helped design Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Nick is the director of the award-winning podcastLove + Radio.  You can also hear him over at Snap JudgmentAlexander Jerri contributed to this story.

99% Invisible #01- 99% Noise (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:21

This episode of 99% Invisible is all about acoustic design, the city soundscape, and how to make listening in shared spaces pleasant (or at the very least, possible). It features an interview with Dennis Paoletti from Shen Milsom & Wilke.

99logoprx_small This episode of 99% Invisible is all about acoustic design, the city soundscape, and how to make listening in shared spaces pleasant (or at the very least, possible). It features an interview with Dennis Paoletti from Shen Milsom & Wilke.

99% Invisible #43- The Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

Sometimes it's an object's imperfections that makes you fall in love with it. And sometimes that object is an escalator.

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[For Director's Cut version, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/89156-99-invisible-43-the-accidental-music-of-imperfe]

Ever since the industrial revolution, when it became possible for products to be designed just once and then mass produced, it has been the slight imperfections and wear introduced by human use that has transformed a quality mass produced product into a thing we love. Your worn blue jeans, your grandmothers iron skillet, the initial design determined their quality, but it’s their imperfections that make them comfortable, that make them lovable, that make them yours.

And if you think that a “slightly broken” escalator can’t be lovable, then our own Sam Greenspan would like to introduce you to Chris Richards. Chris Richards is a music critic for the Washington Post, and after years of ignoring the wailing and screeching of the much maligned, often broken escalators in the DC Metro, he began to hear them in a new way. He began to hear them as music.

Notes:

  • This story was adapted from one Sam Greenspan produced for his podcast, Whisper Cities, which tells stories of overlooked places and the people who find them.
  • The designer of the first DC Metro stations was Harry Weese. Weese’s “Jailhouse Skyscraper” in downtown Chicago was profiled in 99% Invisible #26 by Dan Weissmann. The Metro ceilings may be brutalism at its best.

  • If you don’t get the “Culs-de-sac” joke, listen to this episode.
  • Radio producers Alex Van Oss and Charles Maynes also created their own Ballad of the DC Metro forPodstantsiya, a Moscow-based podcast and audio collective. (The site in in Russian, but the radio feature is in English.)

99% Invisible #17- Concrete Furniture (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:32

In 1965, the people of Toronto were revolting against City Hall. Over furniture. Made out of concrete.

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New City Hall, designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, was the first modern, concrete, civic building in Toronto. When it opened in 1965, it stood out very prominently in the traditional Victorian fabric of the city. The striking concrete design was carried throughout the building and was even incorporated into the office furniture. Desks, coffee tables, cabinets- they all had concrete legs- and nearly everyone hated it. A lot.

The public was angry. Controversy ensued. Someone even resigned.

4:30 version available for Morning Edition C block, but longer version is probably better and available for shows with floating clocks.

Reporter Sean Cole met a few people, including architect Masha Kelmans, who think the naysayers were wrong.

99% Invisible #16- A Designed Language (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:29

In the language that means hope, the sky is blueing.

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The idea is simple and quite beautiful: if we all shared a second, politically neutral language, people of all different nations and cultures could communicate freely and easily, and it would foster international understanding and peace. This is the idea behind the invention of Esperanto. It was a linguistic solution to what seemed like a linguistic problem. Esperanto may not have achieved the goal of ubiquity and international peace, but it has become the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Much of its success has to do with its design as a language. The grammar is very regular and easy to learn, but it also has a flexible and poetic nature that facilitates wordplay and artistic expression.

For this episode I talked with Sam Green, director of the live documentary Utopia in Four Movements. “What’s a live documentary?”, you ask. Good question. Quoth the website: “In this ‘live documentary,’ filmmaker Sam Green cues images and narrates in person while musician Dave Cerf performs the soundtrack.”

99% Invisible #06- 99% Symbolic (Standard 4:30 Version Only)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

Every major city in the US has a flag, but very few are part of city life. This 99% Invisible looks at the principles of good flag design and how those principles are used and ignored. Your host struggles with the word "vexillological."

99logoprx_small Before I moved to Chicago in 2005, I didn’t even know cities had their own flags. In Chicago, the city flag is everywhere. It’s incorporated into all different aspects of city life and the design elements are used on businesses, websites, clothing and apparel. So when I moved back to San Francisco in 2008, I looked up my new city flag and wondered why I never really noticed it before. Ugh, now I know. Ted Kaye, editor of Raven- a scholarly journal of vexillology and treasurer of the North American Vexillological Association, helps me understand the principles of good flag design and imagines with us a better flag for the greatest city on earth (IMHO).

99% Invisible #31- The Feltron Annual Report (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:31

Information designer Nicholas Felton has figured out how to graph the un-graphable: a year in his life.

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Nicholas Felton is an information designer. Since 2005, he has tabulated thousands upon thousands of tiny measurements in his life and designed stunning graphs and maps and created concise infographics that detail that year’s activities. The results were originally intended for his friends and family, but the “personal annual reports” have found an audience with fellow designers and people that really geek out on seeing lots of data, beautifully presented.

In 2010, Nicholas Felton’s father passed away, and Felton decided to turn his annual report into a full biography of his father. He took 4,348 of his father’s personal records and created an intimate portrait of a man, using only the data he left behind.

I produced this story with Nate Berg, who is an awesome freelance journalist and blogger at Planetizen (a site you should add to your daily routine).

(Below: A page from the 2010 Feltron Annual Report- The Paternal Report, by Nicholas Felton.)

99% Invisible #09- 99% Private (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

If a public space is owned by a corporation, just how "public" is it?

99invisible-logo-square-for_prx_small Privately Owned Public Open Spaces, or POPOS, are these little gardens, terraces, plazas, and seating areas that are private property, but are mandated for public use. City planners require developers to add these little “parks” to their buildings to make downtown more pleasant (or even just tolerable). Some are out in the open and used regularly by downtown office workers, and some are hidden away and don’t really serve the community all that well. They pop up in the most densely populated parts of the city, where large public parks are few and far between. Whereas the physical aspect of POPOS are pretty well established by the city planners, the social aspects of what constitutes a “public” space are harder to define. Blaine Merker, from the badass design activist group Rebar, showed superstar producer Stephanie Foo around a few of San Francisco’s POPOS to find out just how public these open spaces really are.

99% Invisible #15- Sounds of the Artificial World (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:31

Without their beeps and chimes, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use.

99invisible-logo-square-for_prx_small Without all the beeps and chimes, without sonic feedback, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use. If a device and its sounds are designed correctly, it creates a special “theater of the mind” that users completely buy into. Electronic things are made to feel mechanical. It’s the feeling of movement, texture and articulation where none exists. We talk with Sound Designer Jim McKee of Earwax Productions about the art of designing organic sounds for inorganic things.

99% Invisible #59- Some Other Sign That People Do Not Totally Regret Life (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:29

Call it a "fentence."

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Sean Cole is a poet and he knows what you think of that.

He is also a radio producer. One night, drunk and stumbling around the Hudson River with his friend Malissa O’Donnell, he discovered a monument — two of them actually — to two of his poetry heroes. Apropos of the name of this show, the tribute wasn’t very obvious. In fact, he and Malissa nearly walked right past it. Still, embedded in the architecture of a 25 year old plaza were the words of Walt Whitman and Frank O’Hara. And weirdly, Sean had he’d been reciting from O’Hara’s Lunch Poems just minutes before.

Thus began Sean’s quest to talk to the people whose idea this was — forging a largely unloved art form into a permanent fixture of the cultural landscape. Along the way he talks with urban landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, former Battery Park official Richard Kahan and none other than Frank O’Hara’s younger sister, Maureen O’Hara.

Sean Cole and Malissa O’Donnell both work for WNYC’s Radiolab. And Sean is also a 99-percentilist from way back.

99% Invisible #22- Free Speech Monument (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

The inscription on the granite reads, “This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation...”

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In 1989, a group called the Berkeley Art Project decided to hold a national public art competition to create a monument that would commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, which began on the University of California Berkeley Campus in 1964. The winning design, created by Mark Brest van Kempen(who was then a graduate student at the San Francisco Art Institute), is an invisible sculpture that creates a small space completely free from laws or jurisdiction. The six inch circle of soil, and the “free” column of airspace above it, is framed by a six foot granite circle. The inscription on the granite reads, “This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”

4:30 version available for Morning Edition C block, but longer version is probably better and available for shows with floating clocks.

99% Invisible #24- The Two Fates of the Old East Portico (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

When the District recovered the old Capitol columns, it forgot about the other fragments that had also once held up the country's icon of democracy.

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Above: The Capitol Columns at the U.S. National Arboretum (photo courtesy of U.S. National Arboretum).

If you were present for any of the presidential inaugurations, from Andrew Jackson to Dwight D. Eisenhower, you saw the solemn oath of office taken between twenty-two smooth sandstone columns at the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol Building. The slabs that made up the columns were considered so important that when they were transported from a barge on the Potomac River to Capitol Hill in 1824, they were pulled by man power alone, because lowly mules were deemed unfit to move such sacred objects. The columns did not have the same standing in 1958. During the renovation of the East Portico, the columns were removed, crated and stored, until a couple of women fought to put them back on their feet in the National Arboretum. Other parts of the façade were also carted away in the renovation, but they didn’t get quite the same treatment. Those pieces of the old U.S. Capitol were brought to their final resting place in a little known, unmarked spot in the woods in Rock Creek Park, miles away from the gloriously presented columns.

Below: The Capitol “ruins” in the woods at Rock Creek Park. (photos by Jess Schreibstein)

4:30 version available for Morning Edition C block, but longer version is probably better and available for shows with floating clocks.

99% Invisible #19- Liberation Squares (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

Tompkins, Tiananmen, Tahrir...why do revolutions always start in public squares?

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In a recent piece from Urban Omnibus, Vishaan Chakrabarti (Professor at the Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University), wrote about how urban open spaces contribute to political change:

Public spaces like Tompkins Square, Tiananmen Square and Tahrir Square have been stages for history because they provide the loci for urban gathering, particularly for a city’s youth. After all, if the revolution is to be televised, from where else would it be broadcast? One could argue that without cities and the spaces they inspire, nations themselves would never change.

Host of WFMU’s Too Much Information, Benjamen Walker, took a walk with Chakrabarti down to Tompkins Square Park to talk about the past and present design of the space and how the layout has affected the public actions that have taken place there. Chakrabarti also relates this to the current protests in the Middle East. Twitter and Facebook may have had a significant role in organizing the protests, but if there is no place for everyone to gather, what possible change can result?

(Below: Crowd driven from Tompkins Square by the mounted police, in the Tompkins Square Riot of 1874. By Matt Morgen(?); Illustration in: Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, 1874 Jan. 31)

 

99% Invisible #20- Nikko Concrete Commando (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

The story of the guy who etched his name in 1,000 slabs of San Francisco concrete--and the reporter who spent years tracking him down.

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In 2001, Delfin Vigil was walking the streets of San Francisco and ran across the name “Nikko” carved into the concrete sidewalk. After seeing Nikko once, Delfin began to see the name everywhere. One block after another, there he was again and again: Nikko. The carvings numbered in the hundreds, seemed to go back decades, and Delfin Vigil became obsessed with finding San Francisco’s mysterious “concrete commando.”

Vigil’s story about the hunt for Nikko is beautifully written and illustrated (by Paul Madonna) in his self-published chapbook available at The Rumpus. It’s outstanding. You can read the whole story there online, but if I were you, I’d order a hard copy to hold in your hands or give as a gift. That’s how I roll. I’m old school.

The original, audio version of this story was produced by my future employer Stephanie Foo for the smokin’ hot, new public radio program Snap Judgment. You may remember Stephanie from 99% Episode #9 about the POPOS. She rocks.

4:30 version available for Morning Edition C block, but longer version is probably better and available for shows with floating clocks.

99% Invisible #16- A Designed Language (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:29

In the language that means hope, the sky is blueing.

99invisible-logo-square-for_prx_small

The idea is simple and quite beautiful: if we all shared a second, politically neutral language, people of all different nations and cultures could communicate freely and easily, and it would foster international understanding and peace. This is the idea behind the invention of Esperanto. It was a linguistic solution to what seemed like a linguistic problem. Esperanto may not have achieved the goal of ubiquity and international peace, but it has become the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Much of its success has to do with its design as a language. The grammar is very regular and easy to learn, but it also has a flexible and poetic nature that facilitates wordplay and artistic expression.

For this episode I talked with Sam Green, director of the live documentary Utopia in Four Movements. “What’s a live documentary?”, you ask. Good question. Quoth the website: “In this ‘live documentary,’ filmmaker Sam Green cues images and narrates in person while musician Dave Cerf performs the soundtrack.”

99% Invisible #45- Immersive Ideal (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

The closest one could ever hope to get to dancing about architecture.

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[For Director's Cut, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/89160-99-invisible-45-beauty-pill-s-immersive-ideal]

(Above: Chad Clark under the “Abbey Road” window. Photo credit: Jon Pack)

Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington DC. They have released two EPs (The Cigarette Girl From the Future and You Are Right to be Afraid) and their last album, The Unsustainable Lifestyle, came out in 2004.

In the interim, the singer/guitarist/producer for Beauty Pill, Chad Clark, got very sick and nearly died. That can be enough to make anyone stop making music, but in Clark’s case, he continued to make music, but he just never felt the need to release a record or play live. His music was just for him and his friends, and that was OK.

But a strange confluence of opportunity, desire and architecture knocked Beauty Pill out of their unforced exile. The curators at a new multimedia art center called Artisphere invited Chad Clark to come in and do something musical in the space. While they were showing him around, he saw the angled, 2nd floor window overlooking the Black Box Theater and it reminded him of the window in Abbey Road Studio 2, made famous by The Beatles. Months later, the Black Box Theater was transformed into a very public recording studio, capturing the sounds and energy of the band, onlookers and guests over the course of a couple weeks.

They called the project Immersive Ideal.

99% Invisible #42- Recognizably Anonymous (Standard 4:30 Version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

A group accidentally created what ad execs dream of: a unique brand identity that rapidly achieved world-wide appeal and renknown. Except this group wants to bring down the entire system. In fact, they're not even a group.

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Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization. Rob Walker describes Anonymous as a “loosely affiliated and ever-changing band of individuals who… have been variously described as hackers, hacktivists, free-expression zealots, Internet troublemakers, and assorted combinations thereof.”

But when Anonymous came up against the Church of Scientiology, a small, non-hierarchical collection of Anons decided to take the disparate phrases, images and ideas circling around the 4Chan.org /b/ message board (where Anonymous has its roots) and combine them into a very engaging and effective “brand identity” (For lack of a better word. Is there a better word? I’d love to hear it. -rm).
 
 The Anonymous logo is comprised of a headless man in a suit, with a question mark where the head should be, juxtaposed against a UN flag. All of these elements are freely interchangeable and can combine with other Anonymous imagery (see top illustration). According to Walker, the logo is “a cleverly subversive, and ironic, appropriation and exploitation of paranoia about Big Brother-style faceless power.”

And then there’s the mask. Appropriated from the graphic novel and movie “V for Vendetta,” the V mask (designed by comic book artist David Lloyd) has become the de facto public face of Anonymous, and it serves as such a powerful image that it has skipped over into other street protests like the Occupy Wall Street movement. Alan Moore, the author of V for Vendetta, has expressed his support of demonstrators exploiting the theatrical qualities of the V image in street protest.

Anonymous at Scientology in Los Angeles

In this episode, Rob Walker explores the origins of the meme-like images in the Anonymous “visual brand” and explains why these icons so powerfully define a phenomenon that eschews definition.

This piece was produced by me and Rob Walker based on his article “Recognizably Anonymous” in Slate.

99% Invisible #49- Queue Theory and Design (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue.

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[For Director's Cut, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/89170-99-invisible-49-queue-theory-and-design-direct]

In the US, it’s called a line.

In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up.

Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue.

My friend Benjamen Walker is obsessed with queues. He keeps sending me YouTube clips of queue violence. This preoccupation led him to find a man known as “Dr. Queue.” Richard Larson is a queue theorist at MIT and he talks us through some of the logic behind the design of queues.

Whereas US companies like Wendy’s and American Airlines once prided themselves on their invention of the single, serpentine, first-come first-served queue, more and more companies are instituting priority queues, offering different wait times for different classes of customers.

99% Invisible #54- The Colour of Money (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:29

Australia made its money better. Why can't the US?

99invisible-logo-square-for_prx_small [For Director's Cut, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/89176-99-invisible-54-the-colour-of-money-director-s]

US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns…it’s just dreadful.

US $20 Note

Even though paper currency itself, just idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of US paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism.

The worst aspects of the design of the greenback are illustrated in this video by Blind Film Critic Tommy Edison.

 

It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all the design innovations in Australian money. Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and are generally considered better and easier to use than US currency.

But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make US paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the US economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note.

Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman’s view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it’ll just be gone.

Extra: Below is the 2010 winner of Richard Smith’s Dollar ReDe$ign Project, submitted by Dowling Duncan.

Relative Value : Dowling Duncan : Dollar ReDe$ign

99% Invisible #52- Galloping Gertie (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie.

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[For Director's Cut, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/89174-99-invisible-52-galloping-gertie-director-s-cu]

Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie.

The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge design by Clark Eldridge was pretty conventional for a suspension bridge, but it was later modified by Leon Moisseiff to be slimmer and more elegant. The most notable change was that the 25 foot lattice of stiffening trusses underneath the bridge on the original drawings, were replaced with 8 foot solid steel plate girders. The new solid girder along the side in Moisseiff’s design made for a much lighter and more flexible bridge— it also caught the wind like a sail— but they didn’t know that. Moisseiff’s design was also 2/3 the price of the original Eldridge design and that fact ultimately won the day.

Motorists who used the bridge found out first hand why it got the name Galloping Gertie, and during the four months while the bridge was open, many traveled from far away just to ride the undulating waves as they crossed high above Puget Sound. The thrill ride didn’t last long.

On November 7, 1940 stiff winds caused the road deck to twist violently along its center axis. The center span endured these brutal torsional forces for about an hour and finally gave way.

The collapse of the twisting suspension bridge is one of the most dramatic images caught on film.

I talked to John Marr from the seminal zine Murder Can Be Fun for this story and I’d like to give a shout out to Alan Bellows of Damn Interesting for independently suggesting Galloping Gertie as a show topic and publishing a great, much more detailed account of the disaster on his site .

Special thanks to Benjamen Walker for the audio of Kathryn Schulz . That interview originally aired on his show Too Much Information in the episode called “Mistakes Were Made .”

99% Invisible #71- In and Out of LOVE (Standard 4:30 version)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Standard Length) series | 04:30

Follow a breadcrumb trail of black wax and wheel marks to a secret war over public space.

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Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park. With its 
sleek granite benches, geometric raised planter beds, and long expanses of pavement, its success as a pedestrian plaza is debatable. But it turned out to be perfect for skateboarding. As skateboarding culture grew in the 1990s, LOVE Park became a Mecca of the skating world--even though skateboarding was officially banned there.  

Skateboarder and radio producer Andrew Norton takes us for a ride through the surprising history of LOVE Park, and pulls back the curtain on a decades-old battle over public space in Philadelphia and beyond.