Airports for the Supersonic Age

Yeah it seems like "the future".

With the exception of the planes that all seem to be careening out of control...

A mixture of change of materials (some of those are clearly paintings done in acrylic that have been photographed then used for colour plates), and change in style - at the moment we're in a backlash against the use of multiple colours, as well as any kind of clashing. This would absolutely be laughed out of the office today: https://www.airporthistory.org/uploads/1/2/1/4/121407428/cdg... - because green and purple are high-contrast colours.

Though I know nothing about the materials used, it looks to me like the aesthetic of Chesley Bonestell's space exploration images, and also of '2001' - as can be seen in the "Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey" exhibition, currently at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NYC.

There's something with the non-realistic hand drawing, that puts emphasis on some very specific points. You can't get a similar result with computer aided realistic images.

There is also that the designer seems to really empathize with the message. It's hard to find material nowadays that even has a message, the designer empathizing with it is really rare.

When I buy picture books for children, I will not buy anything that was obviously made on a computer. They look so bland and lifeless. (I don't care how it was actually made, it's about the look of the result.)

It's made by humans. With formal, classic training in plastic arts. By hand. Without Adobe tech. Using only pen, ink, charcoal, and paint

Sometimes looking at 1920-30s High Modernist design, it suggests that "new dawn" in human affairs, the sort of confidence people used to have in science triumphing over superstition ;)

As a child of the 80s, I can definitely say that life in past decades was "brighter" then than it is now, although it's for reasons unrelated to graphic design. What it basically comes down to is, we used to dream and fantasize about possible futures and our contributions to it in a way that was nurtured by society. There was a general feeling that we had grown beyond the profit motive, or at least, that prosperity was increasing faster than effort.

Basic etiquette was better. Well-read people like Carl Sagan were listened to. People could have a modicum of respect in their communities as simple professionals like teachers/architects/doctors/lawyers/etc. Children were allowed to be children. We had movies like The Goonies, which illustrated the ills of society (like unrestrained real estate development) and provided a counterculture message of hope.

I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based dystopia post-2000 so I'll leave it at that. I think that we can get back to the optimism of past decades, but it requires looking past the superficial and understanding that real prosperity is more about opportunity and a feeling that we're all equal and helping to build a better world together.

Paste this on the browser console:

document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};

My "dystopian future prediction" is it's about to get a whole lot worse.

Browser makers can stop JS shenanigans, but they are also integrating web assembly: the perfect tool for creating user-hostile, proprietary, unblockable features.

Sites will deploy stupid things like "a browser inside a browser". Soon OCR/"analog holes" will be the only way around them.

I do the same thing, using text selection to keep my place when scrolling. Feels very gross having to resort to extensions to restore what should be basic browser functionality. (e.g. Don't Fuck With Paste[0] for sites that try to prevent you pasting passwords)

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...

> Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like the inability to paste passwords.

It exist in most browsers and is typically called something allng the lines "disable Javascript" :-)

Stick it to the man

Worse yet, if you just disable scripts entirely the page renders beautifully and you can click on the images to expand them and actually read the tiny text.

Interestingly, on Mac in Safari, if you switch to Reader View, you can download images and copy text to your heart's content.

You're Too Cheap to Fly Faster: https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-fast...

This is a really good question. It's a complicated issue and depends on some definitions.

If we didn't build any and decided we wanted massive air travel now? Yep.

If we are only talking about travel between class B airports (basically any major city: LAX, DEN, ORD...)? Not really? DEN for instance was rebuilt in a new location around 1995.

What about literally all airports? Yes, but not really because of this era. We built tons of airports all over the country during WWII and the early cold war for military purposes. The FAA gave out tons of money to municipalities to build airports in places we'd never have them today, see KSMO[1]. Between this and funding from the federal government to subsidize routes serving far flung communities, we're seeing a lot of air travel that wouldn't exist otherwise. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as it allows these smaller communities to remain connected and support larger businesses. If this situation didn't exist it would put yet more pressure on massive landlocked urban centers to support everyone converging on them and make them the only locales that could support major businesses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Airport#Future

It's a good tagline but The Zoom still involves the first 5-10 minutes of technical issues interspersed with drop off and, in my opinion, doesn't displace the value of interaction IRL. Rather, I think it makes conference (formerly audio) calling way better.

I'm very hopeful that The Boom (aerospace company) is successful as someone who travels a good deal for work.

There was a small midwestern airport I used to fly in and out of.

They had the "new" terminal, all of 3 gates. And then the baggage pickup area.

In between those areas was the "old terminal" it was this absolutely pristine 1960s ish airport waiting area that was hexagon shaped with this gorgeous black flooring also in a hexagon shape, a big brass compass in the middle, and everything in that area radiated out from that compas, the seats were lined up along the lines of the hexagon. Service desks, bar, etc. It had big tall windows (a few stories tall) so you could see out onto the runways.

Sadly it eventually was torn down when they renovated the entire structure for a new more modern boxy... thing.

The Concord shutdown largely because many of the pax and approvers died in the Twin Towers attacks.

So I suppose if a similar number of people with too much money in NY and London, it could happen again.

It is a great lesson on why premature optimization can be a bad thing.