My "Pub Sign"

One of my good friends is Jillian, an English lady who owns The Chattaway, a dining establishment that has graced St. Petersburg for decades. Earlier in this blog (here), I posted about how old-fashioned bathtubs have become the quirky signature of Jillian's restaurant.

Today there are more than 40 such tubs, of which this is but one. (I took this photograph one morning before the place opened, otherwise you'd see a good crowd.)

When The Chattaway was in need of new signage, and given Jillian's heritage, I suggested the look of a classic British pub sign. Jillian produced a favorite note card that was just six inches wide, and that became the basis for the design.

Unfortunately, when a design that small is blown up to nearly 40" wide, it rasterizes, which is another way of saying that it degrades into an ugly blur of pixels.

So I took the image into Adobe PhotoShop and put it through a series of filters that posterized and enhanced the edges, with a result that looks as clean on close inspection as at a distance.

Ford Motor Company Consults a Poet

cstone.net

In October of 1955, Robert B. Young of Ford's Marketing Research Department contacted the American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) with an interesting challenge. It seems that Ford was in the process of designing an exciting new car, and they were looking for a name that would be distinctive. They would pay Ms. Moore "on a fee basis of an impeccably dignified kind."

Moore was up to the challenge. In a series of letters to Mr. Young she made interesting suggestions; here are a few:

Though Honda made a Civic and Mitsubishi produced a Diamanté, the Ford Motor Company never used Marianne Moore's suggestions. Ford's Marketing Research Manager, David Wallace, sent her a letter of apology, saying in part,

"We have chosen a name out of the more than six-thousand-odd candidates that we gathered. It has a certain ring to it. An air of gaiety and zest. At least, that's what we keep saying. Our name, dear Miss Moore, is — Edsel.

I know you will share your sympathies with us."

time.com

The Edsel was introduced in 1958. It was a spectacular failure, in part because it had been so hyped that the public was expecting a radically new kind of auto. Today, the Edsel is quite collectible — only about 10,000 exist.

Information for this posting comes from Letters of the Century, edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. It's a portrait, through fascinating letters, of the United States from 1900 to 1999. Twitter will never rival this!
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