The Arnell Group & PepsiCo

Summary
The Arnell Group is a design company famous for its work with DKNY and Banana Republic (among many others). In the last several years, several of its high-profile projects with PepsiCo have met with derision and consumer outrage.

Blank paper does not count towards the page count of a report.
(Photo: jacqueline-w at Flickr)

Commentary
In 2008, an Arnell Group design document called "Breathtaking" was leaked to the public. The 27-page document was the point of much ridicule as its contents attempt to explain how the proposed Pepsi logo was the ultimate realization of thousands of years of good design. Gems include:

• conformance with the golden ratio (frequently used in the world of design) [p. 18] and detailed instructions on how to construct the logo using the golden ratio spiral [p. 19]
• comparison of the logo to the Earth's geodynamo and magnetic fields [p. 21]
• a 5000+ year timeline of all the "authentic Constitution of Design" (culminating with the Pepsi "Breathtaking" logo) [p. 6]

Apparently, the new logo fulfills the destiny of good design in addition to making Pepsi's logo look similar to other modern logos.

In 2009, the Arnell Group orchestrated the Tropicana orange juice package redesign. (Tropicana is owned by PepsiCo). The design met with amazing backlash from consumers (supposedly, there was a 20% drop in sales) and the existing iconic straw-in-orange design was reinstated.

Meta
What was your reaction when Pepsi changed its logo? What about Tropicana? Other companies?

See Also

• Breathtaking Design Strategy for the original 27-page design document.
• Pepsi's Nonsensical Logo Redesign Document: $1 Million for This? at BNET for a longer discussion about the Pepsi logo redesign.
• Tropicana's Marketing Folly at Harvard Business Review for a discussion of how focus groups fail to provide and understanding of advertising in context.

Reader Question: What does the furious brushing in curling accomplish?

This post is a response to a reader question. Please email your questions to metaist.blog@gmail.com. Not all questions will be answered.

Question
An anonymous reader asks: What does the furious brushing in curling accomplish?

From the little I've read, curling is a combination of darts and marbles. Sort of.
(Photo: andreassolberg on Flickr)

Summary
Curling is a 400+ year-old sport about which I know very little. Wikipedia saves the day again.

Explanation
Curling is played on level ice. However, droplets of water called pebbles are added which cause the stone (pictured above) to curl when it travels across the ice. According to Wikipedia, sweeping accomplishes two goals: to increase the distance the stone travels, and to change the amount of curl. The strategy of sweeping seems to involve figuring out when to sweep and how hard to sweep (apparently that has an effect on the amount of moisture created).

Overall, the point of sweeping seems to be to influence the curl of the stone by wearing down the pebbles.

Meta
Do you know more about curling than I do? If so, please post a comment so that I can update this post appropriately.

See Also

• Olympic Science: The Science of Curling at Fox News for a discussion of curling.
• Does sweeping in curling achieve anything? at Metafilter for a bunch of people talking about sweeping in curling.
• The Physics of Curling at the University of Toronto for an interactive description of how curling works.
• Curling at Wikipedia.

Shoes & Gait

Summary
A study in the journal The Foot showed that wearing shoes isn't that good for your feet.

(Video: YouTube)

Meta
Suppose you were shown the overwhelming evidence of the harm of shoes on gait-- how would you respond?

See Also

• Shod versus unshod: The emergence of forefoot pathology in modern humans? for the abstract or the author's personal version.
• Why Shoes Make "Normal" Gait Impossible in Podiatry Management for an older study.
• You Walk Wrong at New York Magazine for an article on the subject.
• Feet Hurt? Stop Wearing Shoes at NPR for another article.

Zotero

Summary
Zotero is an excellent way to organize, save, and cite your research.

In other words, magic.

(Photo: libraryriot at Flickr)

Commentary
Zotero is plugin for Firefox that provides inline citation and bibliography for hundreds of different styles including MLA, APA, IEEE and many more. Zotero also provides plugins for OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word. One thing I particularly like is its ability to store PDFs and extract metadata; it saves so much time and lets you focus on continuing to do your research.

Meta
What tools do you use to organize your research?

See Also (Updated 2010-02-24)

• Zotero for the plugin and related resources.

Feedback Friday: February 2010

Summary
Feedback Friday is a week late, and there hasn't been a post in two weeks; The Metaist is in ad-hoc mode (but not for long).

Things got kinda slow, didn't they. No worries, we'll bounce back.
(Photo: streamishmc on Flickr)

Feedback
As always, this is your place to voice your opinion on things you'd like discussed in future posts.