Peter Saville (q.v.), interviewed at Wodcast:

My early work… was work that was pretty much an expression of my own point of view. And I found myself in this exceptional circumstance of… Factory Records, which provided me a kind of autonomous platform from which to express my point of view about the kind of small world I saw around me as a person in their 20s in Britain in the ’80s. And of course communication design is not about expressing your own point of view. Communication design is for others and to others….

The graphic aspect of it is just a necessary part of the process of communicating it. Most graphic designers, when given free space, so often default to sort of rather dumb things like alphabets rather than actually having anything to say. I studied graphics because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time – from a young person’s point of view – and I think that graphic design is interesting to young people. It’s entry-level visual arts. I mean, there’s a sort of a simplicity and a directness to it that sort of appeals to our limited awareness when we’re in our teens and early 20s. […] I find it quite worrying meeting people in their mid-life who are still fascinated by, you know, typefaces and layout. Actually, the content of the work is actually the interesting part. The graphic part of it is just the means by which that content’s delivered.

So, in the early years, I had this platform to express my own opinions, and then sort of pretty much spent the ’90s struggling with finding a sense of place within a professional environment which is about other people’s problems, not yours.

All of the foregoing is delivered in a surprisingly offputting, jaded, borderline hectoring tone of “I learned all this the hard way and don’t you think for a minute it isn’t true.”

I have the RFP for the TTC Web “redesign.” I know who bid on it (not hard to find), and I have asked them all questions for attribution.

Does anybody still think it makes sense for Adam Giambrone to indulge four blog editors in their fantasy that they are collectors and arbiters of public opinion?

Not that beauty is necessarily a criterion (let’s start with function), but why not compare two sources half a decade apart?

Katherine Ashenburg, “Motion pictures: When commuters board the subway on the new Sheppard line, they’ll ride through stations notable not for their architecture, but for their public art, each stop like a visit to a neighbourhood gallery,” Toronto Life, August 2002

When it was built, in 1996, Downsview [station] raised alarm bells at the Ministry of Transportation. David Lawson[, architectural coordinator of the Sheppard line,] summarizes the bureaucrats’ reaction to the chic, column-free layouts: “How much did this flash cost?” The designer details – what they considered “fripperies” – had accounted for 10% of the total, so when it came time to plan the Sheppard line, the ministry cut the budget accordingly. The austerity meant much less high-end terrazzo and much more exposed concrete on the floors and walls.

“University Subway Stations Renaissance: Design Enhancement Initiatives, Museum Station” (sections reordered)

In 2006, funds of $600K have been approved… with $500K to be accommodated from under expenditures in other programs. A further $1.5M was also included in the years 2007–2009 for this project…. Approve the award of the Museum Station detailed design assignment to Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. (DSAI) on a sole-source basis for an upset limit amount of $500,000 which includes detailed design and design support during construction….

The conceptual design was developed prior to the agreement being reached between [Toronto Community Foundation] and TTC in consideration of the best use of funds within the agreed capital limit of $5M. […] The DSAI workplan was submitted May 30, 2006 and indicates a total fee requirement not to exceed $500,000, which includes approximately $250,000 for design and $250,000 for design support during construction[.]

Art in the Sheppard subway was capped at 0.5% of budget and “design” (undefined in Ashenburg’s article) at 5.4%. Howard Moscoe allegedly wanted to increase the art budget to 1%.

What else could we do with that 0.5% increase? What could we do with $1.5 million misdirected to a station redesign? (It is a station redesign, moreover, that nobody needs and that only the Toronto Community Foundation [who?]; its mink-stole, Bill Thorsell–style backers; and TTC management want.)

And here’s another question: If the TTC can “sole-source” a half-million-dollar contract to a star architect, then turn around and sole-source a merchandising contract, why does it refuse to talk to the Spacers until some unspecified other tender is in place? They’ve grossed more from subway buttons in two years than the merchandising contractor did from its entire line in one year.

Lynn Crosbie, Globe and Mail. 2005.02.05:

Lately, it is the unlikeliest of heroes, the long-capsized NYPD Blue star Davis Caruso, who has emerged as a vocal stylist nonpareil…. The show starts, and Caruso appears on some blood-lashed crime scene and discovers a lead. He, without fail, raises his ubiquitous sunglasses and comments, in a way that implies he is inventing language as he goes along. Then the Who’s Roger Daltrey slices through in a scream that punctuates the fervour in motion.

I watch this show every week with a friend and we both scream along, like bong-carrying disciples at a monster rock concert. And then it occurs to us: We have become excitable maniacs over the delivery of such prosaic comments as “Ricky. He doesn’t know what’s going on. But we do” or “Accidents happen, that’s quite true. And so – so’s murder.”

With all due respect to the writers, the words mean nothing. It is Horatio Caine (Caruso’s character) we are flipping the heavy-metal index and pinkie at; it is his staggered, drawling and almost insanely portentous delivery that ignites the dormant lighter in all of us; that lets us know we are in the presence of the kind of star heat that burns all the more brightly for its rarity….

I too enjoy the spectacle of this leathery ginger acting with his eyeglasses and blazer, after the manner in which J. Roberts acts with her bosom.

Now: D. Caruso–A. Rodriguez slash fiction? I would attend a staged reading. I would perform at a staged reading – acting with my Gore-Tex hat, veganist Docs, and Carhartt pantalon.

Well, it’s either this or hairless quarter-Burmese engineer go-go boys across the street.

“Queen’s”? Don’t be so obvious.

In an “Australian” winter.

Or is it a lyre?