• Of 500 invitees, about 250 members of the creative class (architects, artists, musicians, directors, writers, composers) arrived at the Vatican yesterday for an audience with the Pope. According to organizer Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the goal of the event "was to 're-establish a dialogue' between the church and artists 'that's necessary and fertile for both.'" Participants included Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Bill Viola. No word on whether Chris Ofili was invited. — http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/world/europe/22pope.html?em

• On my holiday wish list, "The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography" (Princeton Architectural Press) by Katharine Harmon. I highly recommend Harmon's previous book, "You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination."

• Slideshow: Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA, which opens today and runs through April 26, 2010.

A handful of graphic design's bold face names including Jessica Helfand, Ellen Lupton and James Victore, have customized a set of TOMS shoes currently for sale on Ebay in support of the Art Directors Club's scholarship program. Each pair starts at $100 and as of today only Scott Stowell's typographic pair has a bid. It probably doesn't help that all the shoes are a size 10 mens...

Browse the collection here: http://shop.ebay.com/212adc09/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

<p>555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.</p>

There are tons of tag clouds (aka word clouds) out there, lurking in the widgets column of blogs or springing up after a Presidential inauguration. While you could argue that ubiquity has watered down the effectiveness of this method of visualizing information, with the proper data, the tag cloud can still pack a punch.

Case in point, the site Capitol Words (a project of the Sunlight Foundation) which ranks the frequency of words used by Congress (per the Congressional Record) on a daily basis. You can search by timeframe, state or elected official and compare words. No surprise, "health" has been the most commonly used word for the past week, but would you have guessed it also takes the top spot for the entire year?

Other discoveries:

Gregory Meeks (D-NY) lives up to his name as one of the quietest law makers.

Joe Lieberman (I-CT) seems to be working in a parallel universe, as his top 30 words from the past year don't include "health," "care" or "insurance," which are in the top 30 for all of Congress during the same time period.

California is the most verbose state, thanks to the triple whammy of David Dreier (R), Dianne Feinstein (D) and Barbara Boxer (D).

For more: www.capitolwords.org

Part One: The Ghost of Domino

I was crushed when Domino, the glossy devoted to interiors and all-things home, folded earlier this year. But when I read that two members of the Domino team started a new digital magazine called Lonny to fill the void, it took me over a month to check it out. I am of the tactile reading school. I like my books and magazines in my hand, and I prefer to read the Sunday paper on Sunday in my yard, not online two days earlier.

I expected Lonny to resemble a traditional "web site of a magazine" (see lucky.com) both in regards to layout and content. It doesn't. Lonny is presented on a digital publishing platform called Issuu that's been around for a few years and currently hosts thousands of publications, from industry journals to experimental magazines (I even found a digital version of my alma mater's daily newspaper).

It's laid out exactly like a printed magazine, in a linear format with pages that you "flip" by clicking arrows. You can zoom, view by spread or by single page or in full screen mode. It's basically as though someone designed a magazine and uploaded the PDFs. Except instead of ripping out clippings of things I want to check out online later, objects in the photos and layouts are tagged so I can just click on them and go directly to the related web site. Pretty cool.

I know there are those who argue against applying the metaphors of the physical world to the digital world. Why do we have to have "files" and "folders" on our "desktops"? Why should digital media be constrained to irrelevant boundaries? Well, it's because there are plenty more people like me who need structure and familiarity in the presentation of reading material if they're going to cross the digital divide.

Which brings us to Part Two: The Elusive Apple Tablet

I read this post by John Abell on Wired today in which he hypothesized that the Apple Tablet would some day (soon) go from mere rumor to actual object if only for the sole reason of burnishing Steve Jobs' legacy. Abell writes, "If he is looking for One Last Thing, saving journalism would be the Holy Grail." For Abell, the tablet's success depends on Apple's ability to complete the analogy

iTunes :: The Music Industry as i_____ :: Print Media

Issuu seems like a step toward filling in that blank. It's interactive, yet traditional, easy to use, readable and perhaps most importantly, advertising friendly (Lonny has full page ads just like a "real" magazine).

I can say with 100% confidence I will never buy a Kindle. But an Apple tablet with an Issuu-like platform? Sign me up.

www.lonnymag.com

Issuu hosts a digital version of The Daily, complete with coupons to Papa Johns. http://issuu.com/thedailynorthwestern

Rather than redesign the content of the fall issue of V to fit a web site, the print files can be reused as-is. http://issuu.com/vmagazine/docs/v60

Explore Issuu here: http://issuu.com/

...and definitely more original than the Saul Bass-esque poster below which was released in the spring.
Lions Gate won't reveal the painter until after the film is released.

And from the archives, another great painting-based poster, this one for the film Half Nelson...

... by Tze Chun, a multi-disciplinary creative powerhouse.

You can check out his latest project, the film Children of Invention, here: http://www.childrenofinvention.com