Linked List: May 11, 2016

Wednesday, 11 May 2016

The Panic Sign 

Of course Panic’s sign is the most fun sign ever. Of course.

Race and the Default Emoji Skin Tone 

Speaking of Eli Schiff, he wrote an interesting piece on race and emoji:

It is therefore quite strange that yellow (white) emoji were set as the default, given that not assuming all users to be white was the entire premise behind making the new diverse set of emoji. In this way, the Unicode Consortium’s efforts to achieve a more inclusive solution only served to doubly reinforce a racism of defaults. […]

It was at this point that the troubling nature of the situation became more clear. It is not simply that it is problematic for whites to use the white emoji, but so too is it racist for them to use the brown shades and the yellow default. In sum, it is racist for whites to use any emoji.

There are two choices going forward: either white users should refrain from using emoji, or an alternative default must be drawn. Perhaps green, blue or purple would be an ideal choice as they don’t have racial connotations.

I’ve been wondering about the decision to use yellow ever since iOS started supporting the skin tone variants. It still seems “sort of white”, in a way that a Smurf-y blue or Hulk-y green would not.

Budweiser Renames Its Beer ‘America’ 

Mark Wilson, writing for Fast Company:

With the backdrop of the Olympics and a comically botched election, this summer is bound to be what Ricardo Marques, a vice president from Budweiser, calls “maybe the most American summer ever.”

So Budweiser is going to potentially ingenious, potentially absurd branding extremes. The company has kept the same can you already know, but when you look closely, you’ll realize that it has swapped out its own name, “Budweiser,” for “America.” That’s right, Budweiser has renamed its beer America for the summer. “We thought nothing was more iconic than Budweiser and nothing was more iconic than America,” says Tosh Hall, creative director at the can’s branding firm JKR.

I rolled my eyes when I first saw this story, but the more I think about it, the more genius I think it is. It’s the perfect publicity stunt for Budweiser.

Coach Apple Watch Bands? 

David Boglin de Bautista, writing for Haute Écriture:

A sales associate at a Coach boutique informed me Friday that Coach will be releasing Apple Watch bands as early as June and sent me photos of some of the bands. Now, a sales associate has confirmed the number of bands that will be available, their prices, and sent me more photos, though another sales associate at a different boutique says the bands may not be available for purchase until the fall.

The sales associate along with others working there told me after I called and asked for more information that there will be 9 new watch bands from Coach in white, black, and saddle, though, there is a red band in the first photos, for $150 each.

Hard to say from this whether it’s an official partnership with Apple — like Hermès — or if Coach is just designing and selling standalone bands. I’m guessing it’s the latter, given that these are standalone bands.

This sort of thing, I think, is the “luxury” story for Apple Watch, not the Edition models. I noticed last week that the Walnut Street Apple Store here in Philadelphia no longer displays the Edition models.