Bits: 02.12.09

A page from the tome created to rationalize Pepsi's multi-million-dollar logo tweak.

• Pepsi logo tweakers seem to see branding as a metaphysical art. The overinflated design rationale behind the minor noodging of the Pepsi logo is either an elaborate joke, a con job or as Gawker puts it (referencing the title of the branding document) "Breathtaking bullshit."

• Dave Combs of PEEL Magazine, who was with Shepard Fairey when he was arrested last week, writes: "It is my belief that the Boston Police Department had carefully planned to serve their warrants in front of an audience of approximately 800 excited Shepard Fairey fans, some of whom had reportedly paid as much as $500 on Craigslist for a ticket to the event. In my opinion, the BPD had at the very least set out to make a public spectacle of the arrest, and at worst were intent on provoking the agitated crowd to riot. They clearly had it out for Mayor Menino, and had engineered the perfect scenario with which to simultaneously tie Menino to a 'criminal graffiti vandal' and conveniently show up to be the heroes of their own story."

• Milton Glaser finds "the relationship between Fairey’s work and his sources "discomforting."

• A new Americans for the Arts study, "Arts and Economic Prosperity III," finds that "[n]ationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year—$63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences."

• When I worked in advertising years ago, we sent a rubber monkey named Weegee on the road -- with Beck and the Old 97's, to Paris and Washington -- and now Weegee's kin, a plush monkey, is making the rounds at MoMA.

• I will read this and then write a proper blog post on this, I will! Marco Deseriis and Brian Holmes on "today’s dilemma of producing critical culture within recuperative ‘ semiocapitalism’."

• Finally, the quote du jour comes from Cloaca-maker Wim Delvoye: "This machine doesn't just make poop, it makes reflection, it asks questions. It is a big metaphor for art creation: digesting influences from other artists and making it your own."