viz.

Image Credit: screenshot capture of NYTimes.com

This was one of the ads on my NYTimes.com edition today. Upon first glance it appears to be a simple ad for an e-book by Amy Harmon called Asperger Love, but the New York Times masthead and the words "Byliner Original" suggest that the Asperger Love is an in-house publication. And that's just what it is: an "e-single" written by a NYTimes journalist, packaged for Kindle, iBooks, and Nook, and hosted on a partner site, Byliner.com.

(Image Credit: Ad Age, MBA Online, Magid Generational Strategies)

This cutesy inforgraphic from Ad Age and MBA Online presents the reader with a breakdown of media use by type, time and generation. The initial study was performed by Magid Generational Strategies. At first blush this seems to present a thorough overview of how different populations consume media, but on closer examination there are some signifigant issues. These issues aside, and in some cases because of these issues, this long image (I've broken it into several pieces for readability's sake. See the full image here) raises a number of questions about not which types of media we consume but how our methods of media consumption are changing to the degree that this infographic doesn't quite make sense. 

Image Credit: Evan Sung for the New York Times

A recent article in the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times led me to rethink the importance of visual culture in the current round of debates about food in America. In a shift from the usual conversation about how food is deceitfully misrepresented in branding or advertising, the article at hand got me thinking about the role played by the visual presentations of actual meals. Thinking about plating allows us to revisit the relationship between food and visual culture and reimagine sight as a creative component of foodways—instead of a predatory marketing ploy—with the potential to positively impact the ways we eat. 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube

Zounds!  After Noel’s heartwarming welcome-back posting, I feel reinvigorated and ready to begin posting again here at viz.  I did rest my blogging muscles over the break, but managed to take a few notes for what will hopefully be more piquant posts on pop culture.

Recently, my friends have helpfully provided me with such a deluge of musical material that I don’t know what to do with it all.  My friend Cate Blouke forwarded me the NPR story about HOPE: The Obama Musical, which delights me to no end—but I was a little more intrigued by a video my friend Meghan Andrews brought to my attention—a short-form musical YouTube video that doubles as a Yale advertisement called “That’s Why I Chose Yale.”

A study recently conducted by researchers at UT-Austin and the University of Florida has shown that alcohol advertising is significantly heavier around schools with Hispanic populations of 20% or more.