The GoYin Store: Buy GoYin Wholesale

I’m pleased to announce the winner of the Sherwin Williams Historical Logo Authorship Discovery Award (or the SWHLADA).

Just a refresher: I held an international contest to find out who came up with the brilliant Branding Tool of Sherwin Williams.

And the winner is: Jake Haglund.

The answer:

The logo was designed in 1890 by advertising manager george ford for a cleaning company he had an interest in. When that company dissolved he adapted it for sw. The logo was first used on packing slips in worcester, ma in 1905.

The SWHLADA award statue this year is the Xpad laptop cooler. You can read my scientific journal entry about how laptops are the key element of the Chinese Impotence Conspiracy.

The Xpad laptop cooler in a nutshell saves your posterity by shielding your fragile, heat sensitive scrotum from the heat of your laptop. (Women use it to keep their laps cool) It also helps heat escape from your laptop by slightly elevating it, creating heat passages on all four sides. This saves your laptop’s battery from overheating which causes permanent damage and is the leading cause of laptop batteries going bad. It also saves short term battery energy by preventing the need of your laptop’s fans to activate: the leading cause of short term battery energy loss. I’m using Xpad laptop cooler as I type this article. This year’s SWHLADA prize is sponsored by Sewell Direct.

Of Course…

This has nothing to do with the quality of Sherwin Williams paint. The Provo, UT location even provided us with sweet and free heavy-duty shelves. But I still do think its weird that SW hasn’t updated their branding imagery, no matter where you stand (whether its with Geneva Steel or Ralph Nader).

Anyone think the new M&M commercial called ‘kaleidescope’ is weird? Hard shell candies with goofy googly eyes get motion sickness and eventually eaten a la slapstick to the music of Iron and Wine, the independent, cerebral, transcendental, melancholy, folk band, covering the Postal Service song “Such Great Heights.”

Is this a clever ironic juxtaposition, or a lame transparent marketing trick, tossing a stone in the dark at hard-to-reach demographics? What a weird pair. Imagine if WBEZ (NPR) took This American Life away from Ira Glass and gave it to the late-late-night charlatan Carson Daly.

Public Announcement: Cover the Earth in toxic materials. (And used motor oil makes good fertilizer)

Is it just me or is Sherwin Williams throwing away their leftist demographic with their brilliant logo? If someone would like to find out who came up with that, I think I could come up with some sort of reward. But for now I’m going to just assume that someone named Dutch Boy won the Sherwin Williams logo design contest.

Update:

This Year’s Sherwin Williams Historical Logo Authorship Discovery Award (or the SWHLADA).

Did you think you had to have a six figure income, a son with a trendy heroin habit, and a reserved seat in the local Mason Temple to enjoy a Rear View Camera for your car or truck? This one goes for 129.95, and I could see it as a very cost effective way for companies with trucks to implement a safety program and protect expensive equipment/walking liabilities (ie. employees).

This is brought to us by VR3, the makers of the very popular FM Thumbdrive Dj, which plays MP3s stored on your flash storage device.

-OR-

Here’s a quick tip for anyone who doesn’t want to drop $40 (or more) for a Real Book (ie. Fake Book).

Go here: Free Real Book.

This site, which appears non-profit, offers something even better than a book you buy at the music store. The chord charts can either be generic, or set to any key you wish using a single drop down menu. There’s even a little midi player that plays the song.

You have to register, but its free and painless.

I was waiting for my friend in a waiting room when this January 2006 Time issue with All-American Narcissist Bode Miller on the cover caught my eye. The cover story is entitled American REBEL. Sub-copy states: “He speaks his mind– and apologizes later.”

Either Time is cutting corners on their cover-page copy writing budget, or American rebels have tip-toed-through-the-tulips down a couple notches since the rebel defining Dean/Brandoesque days.

Also noted, I appreciated this author’s romanticized support of sending athletes to the Olympics that don’t care about winning, although Bode’s performance this Winter Olympics has not proven this strategy to be successful.

I like how Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post puts it:

“There are few things less worthy of respect than the athlete who pretends not to care about the outcome. It’s a bail-out position, a protection and an excuse. If you pretend not to care, then no one can say you really lost. Miller never committed to these Olympics, never put his ante on the table. He sauntered around the Games as if he was just here to watch.”

iControl - Total Control for Garageband

M-Audio’s iControl is an all-in-one solution for anyone who uses Garageband and is tired of using the mouse to change settings that were designed since the beginning of time to be changed with real fingers. iControl basically takes every single knob or dial in Garageband and puts it into a hardware surface, including a wheel that easily lets you travel forward or backward through the mix-down. Use the knobs to even change settings on effects menus. I want one.

Here’s a very informational video from M-Audio.