Walking around Berkeley, you usually see old clothes or furniture that people put out to have disposed or recycled. Today, while walking back from lunch, the word "Helvetica" caught the corner of my eye. As I walked closer to get a better look at the refuse, I found that someone had discarded the Helvetica. These are some sort of typeball / disc for an ancient label maker. These discs were 12" plastic platters, which probably at one time enabled a machine which probably was considered "state-of-the-art" to make labels in perfect Helvetica. Its interesting how far we've come from the days of Wooden or Lead type setting to just a digital facsimile that we affectionately call "font." How far we've come and how removed we've become to our typesetting needs. Lead has been replaced by the forward and back arrows; which depending on the software that you are using maybe accompanied by a Shift and/or Command key stroke.

I must admit I am biased towards Helvetica; this typeface which is absolute, unfeeling and neutral. But one has to admire Helvetica's ability to work in any situation or context; try that with your beloved Comic Sans! I've heard students bemoaning my Helvetica project which I inherited from my former professors. "If you can make Helvetica expressive, then you can almost design anything... better!"

The approach to Hybrid/Electric cars for the mass market has pretty much been designs that are very "pedestrian". The current offerings all seem to be cut from the same fabric; the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight as well as the upcoming Chevrolet Volt all seem to have the same overall shape but with different headlight and grill treatments. The other common approach is that Toyota and Ford have been doing is creating hybrid versions of their gasoline models; Camry hybrid or Ford Fusion hybrid. All these designs seem very plain and not very inspiring. Of course there are people who really don't mind screaming to the whole world that they are doing mankind a favor by driving one of the aforementioned cookie cutter cars, but there is an audience that just wants a really cool car that doesnt scream "I'm an environmentalist". This is where Fisker and Tesla come into the picture, although their current offerings are somewhat pricy to the average car buyer; but wouldn't the Aston Martin DB9 driver want to be green if they can while keeping up with appearances? Sometimes your Prada just clashes with the Prius a little too much, and you don't have a family to haul around; so you don't really need a Camry or Fusion.

If the current BIG automakers can start designing cars like the Fisker Karma, I can really see a shift into more widespread acceptance of hybrids or even full electric cars. BMW? Mercedes? Anyone?