Love And Loathing At The Stumps

You and I and the rest of us have many love/hate relationships. With the West, with our parents, with news anchors on TV, with food, with ourselves.

But none quite as strong as the one with cricket. It’s not our national sport. That would be hockey, a sport neglected and forgotten even though it is untainted by bad press and has brought home the only Olympic medals apart from boxing. Then there is squash, also the bringer of many honours but relegated to the sidelines.

What is it about cricket that inspires such deep and conflicting emotions? Is it the entertainment value of the newly minted T20s? Or the glamour associated with the sport. Why do we get into a frenzy at the start of every tournament, scrambling to get that personalized official jersey, revise personal (and professional) schedules around matches, follow each fixture religiously then just like that the minute the minute the team crashes out we vacillate to the other extreme, turning into digjihadis spewing vitriol at the disowned players, burning their effigies, vowing never to watch another cricket match ever again. Until of course the next tournament.

Is it because somewhere buried in our subconscious is the undeniable fact that the cricket team is in fact, us. And we are them.  

Perhaps we went to school with a Salman Butt who despite his suave demeanour and sophisticated manners was crooked to the core, the one had us shaking our heads in disbelief. Or lived in the neighbourhood with a Muhammad Amir who was just as crooked but without the veneer of respectability, the one who we gave a second chance to. Then there is the Misbah in our family, stoic and resolute, the cousin deemed too boring to hang out with but always came through in emergencies. The Sarfaraz we work with, the one with the easy-going manner, who keeps his nose out of office gossip, steadily delivers day in day out. Then there is the old friend, the Shahid Afridi, the popular one, who won the trophies and had the teachers up in arms with cheeky pranks.

If we have the winning determination of Javed and Imran, we are also the dishonoured Asif and Salman. If we have the grace and integrity of Hanif and Fazal, we are also the mercurial Shoaibs and Afridis. The raw energy and talent we so admire in them? It’s in the sporadic rags to riches stories that float on social media.

We readily accuse Afridi of misogyny when a comment is taken out of context but fail to show the same outrage at the blatant misogyny on our television screens everyday. Or when educated young men jeer at women playing cricket. We accuse the PCB of corruption and mismanagement but elect corrupt and incompetent people to Parliament every year. We deride the politics and manipulation within the team and blame it for the disappointing outcomes and then become party to the same within our families and with our colleagues. Perhaps we just like to complain.

The next time we’re conflicted by this love and loathing, take a look at yourself in the mirror and listen to these words written by an anonymous cricket fan in 2012. Liberties have been taken for a 2016 update.  

I am the Final at Melbourne. I am the last ball at Sharjah. I am the inventor of the Doosra and the Reverse Swing. When they wouldn’t let me play at home I drifted where I could. I am the Cornered Tiger. I am the fastest hundred. I am Boom Boom and the Little Master. I am also undisciplined, stubborn, occasionally arrogant, unsure and insecure.  I am gifted but need an army bootcamp to get myself back on track. I may be languishing at the bottom of the One Day ratings but I can conquer the most traditional of formats, the Test Match. I have talent that no one understands.

I am unpredictable. I am you.

In the meantime, let’s watch some cricket. And raise a glass to Team Green.

Or do a pushup or two?

The Rise, Fall and Rise of the Female Superhero

'Rosie the Riveter' recruitment poster

There's nothing like a good old-fashioned war to kickstart the imagination. Stories are spun of valour and treachery, of drama and even comedy. But the story of the Second World War is reflected in more than just the pages of history. 

The US stayed out of it for a year until one fateful day in 1940 when the country was dragged into a largely European war. With hordes of American men being shipped off to fight,  factories were suddenly left seeking workers, especially those in the all important munitions industry. An ambitious move was made to recruit women, resulting in women building everything from ships to cars to bombs. 

Suddenly women were independent and empowered. Fashions changed and in came shoulder pads and tailored trousers. The film industry also shifted gears, producing movies with strong women’s characters often at the centre of the films; from sassy working women to femme fatales. 

And girls began reading more comic books than boys.

Miss Fury

Enter Marla Drake, who fought crime in a catsuit as her alter ego Miss Fury. Created by (June) Tarpe Mills in 1942, a design graduate of the Pratt Institute and a fashion designer by profession. Miss Fury wasn’t just the first female superhero but also the first superhero created by a woman. Tarpe Mills came under some flack for unashamedly objectifying women which didn't seem to have bothered her one bit. Not surprisingly, Miss Fury’s adversaries were dastardly Nazis who were trounced in every edition. 

Little did Miss Fury know that her real adversary, the one who would eventually take away her glory as a female superhero was going to be a fellow American.

Dr. Marston

DC Comics sensing the change in tide introduced Wonder Woman just six months after Miss Fury. The creator of Wonder Woman was Dr. William Moulton Marston, a noted psychologist with three degrees from the prestigious Harvard University. Until his foray into the comic world he was best known for inventing the lie detector test and a rather unconventional personal life – a polyamourous home and children with a legal wife as well as a common-law wife (who he masqueraded as his 'brother's widow'). 

About his creation Dr. Marston said: ‘Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe should rule the world.’ He named his heroine Diana Prince (after the divine huntress) and made her an Amazonian who left her kingdom to fight intolerance and injustice in ‘America, the last citadel of democracy and of equal rights for women’. Dr. Marston’s legal wife was a lawyer and via his common-law wife he had family connections with the legendary Margaret Sanger who advocated better birth control and sex education for women.

Wonder Woman took on Nazis, evil demi-gods and supervillains alike with intelligence and some superhero gadgets. She was an instant hit. As Marston said: ‘Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power’. Regarding her appeal to men: ‘Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they’ll be proud to become her willing slaves!’.

In 1945 the war ended and the men started coming back home. Within a few years, women slid back into their roles as wives and mothers, keeping the home fires burning. Fashions changed to reflect their new roles, feminine dresses with pinched in waists and neatly coiffed hair.  On the screen, the archetypes vacillated from the sweet, angelic and always supportive wife to the blonde bimbos. 

Goodbye confident. Hello coy. And girls moved from comic books to Barbie dolls.

When women conformed to adopt identities attached to the men in their lives, it is not surprising that the only female superheroes of note created in the 1950s were also weaker reflections of their male counterparts – Supergirl and Batwoman. There was a new war to fight. One that even threatened to put superheroes out of business. The war against Communism. Championed with great fervour by Senator McCarthy and everyone was suspect. 

In 1954, a psychiatrist called Fredric Wertham, testified in front of a Senate committee that he believed that comics were corrupting children and took special offence to Wonder Woman who he accused of ‘a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity’ and that ‘women in these stories are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the same type of activities’ (values ironically dear to Communism and therefore anathema) - all evidently too much for his fragile ego. Governed by the rather amusingly named Comics Code Authority, superheroes became conservative and subdued. Wonder Woman all but vanished. Miss Fury went out of print in 1951.

Wonder Woman’s avowedly feminist creator Dr. Marston was unfortunately not there to defend his creation as he had passed away by then. Wonder Woman persisted in near obscurity until a revival in the late 60s, coinciding with the feminist movement of that time. Gloria Steinman championed her return, even putting her on the on the cover of Ms. Magazine in 1972, the same year as Roe vs. Wade the landmark law that legalized abortion. This was repeated in 2012 for the magazine’s 20^th year anniversary. Dr. Marston would have approved.

The mid 60s to much of the 70s witnessed a rejuvenation of the comic book industry, with superhero teams with the female superhero fighting crime alongside her male team members in X Men and Fantastic Four. Jean Grey evolved from Marvel Girl to Ms. Marvel to the present day Captain Marvel.  Invisible Girl aka Sue Storm seamlessly balanced a family life with her day job as a superheroine. Even Superman managed to regain his place with an iconic film series. 

It wasn’t until the new millennium that comics and superheroes valiantly rescued by Hollywood, experienced a rejuvenation. Superman, Batman, X-Men, The Avengers and Fantastic Four have reclaimed their rightful place in the public spotlight. 

Jean Grey, The Black Widow and Invisible Girl owe their resurrection to celluloid. In the comic world, too there are shifts of seismic proportions. Ms. Marvel (originally created as a super powered Gloria Steinem) got promoted to Captain Marvel. A new Ms. Marvel was introduced - the Pakistani Kamila Khan. There is a female version of Thor too, though polarising seems to be outselling her male counterpart. 

Traditionally, solo starring female superhero movies have not had the same impact at the box office. With a new avatar and not one but two movies out - an appearance in Batman Vs. Superman in 2016 as well as a movie of her own in 2017, perhaps Wonder Woman will change the tide. 

And guess what girls are reading comic books again. 

Here's to you, Dr. Marston. 

Hey Have We Met Before?

There is a fine line between imitation and inspiration. But a line there is for sure. It could be a new logo or a new campaign with the most fleeting of recall of another and cries of foul abound. The furor over a TV commercial or print usually dies a natural death when the TVC goes off air or the print is refreshed. But logos have an infinitely longer life. And therefore become much more contentious.

So what happens when you get a brief to design a new logo? You start with the conceptual then move on to the elements and colours that are a natural fit with the brand’s equity. Then starts the process of actual design. There are several options made, with a spin behind each. Presented, shortlisted, feedback incorporated et cetera. This fine-tuning and shortlisting continues till the winner is chosen. It can be a long and arduous process, one which is only partly objective.

But how do you ensure that your logo is completely unique? And is that even possible?

Here’s a story of some startlingly similar logos.

This is…CNN. No wait, it’s FDA. Nope, it’s Sega.

One is a US government organization formed in 1906. The second is a Japanese video game development company which started in 1940. The third is arguably the most famous cable news network (hence the truly imaginative name) which first aired in 1980. All three brands take pride in a respectable pedigree and belong to wholly different categories. That is until you come to their visual identity. And you’d think they were siblings lost in the mela at Kumbh.

On scouring the internet, it is discovered that the Sega logo was designed in 1975. Which makes perfect sense. The style has a very 70’s nonchalant, lazy vibe about it. The stripes resemble the classic Adidas stripes, which graced the most popular running shoes for both professional and recreation athletes in the 60’s and 70’s. At the same time, one could credibly claim that the logo is a classic example of Japanese minimalism. There is a mystery behind the Sega logo – some have erroneously claimed that the logo is the work of Naoto Oshima and Yuji Naka, the duo behind Sega's mascot Sonic. Highly unlikely since they were ten and eleven years old in the mid '70's. 

Other sources some claim it was the work of the company founder David Rosen, a former GI stationed in Japan after the war. Since Sega’s history is somewhat obscure we will probably never know. All that is known is that Rosen married a Japanese girl, set up a company that exported Japanese art to the USA, merged his company with Goraku Busan a manufacturer of jukeboxes and slot machines to form Service Games known more popularly as SEGA.

The CNN logo on the other hand was designed in 1980 and reportedly took all of 48 hours from design to approval. According to Toni Dwyer of Communication Trends Inc, the firm that worked with CNN prior to its launch, ‘In the eleventh hour, it occurred to someone that they needed a logo…We had about 24 or 48 hours to turn around and present a logo…There were several forms of the logo they weren't exactly wild about, there was one we thought would play the best, we tried to keep it simple…It was designed with money in mind, so we tried to keep it one colour.’

Terry McGuirk a former CEO at CNN says it resembled a cable running through forming the three letters of the brand name and was the one liked most by Ted Turner. The logo itself was designed by Anthony Guy Bost, a professor at the University of Auburn for a much negotiated sum of $2,800 (or $2,400 by some accounts). Since Mr. Bost has now departed this world we will never know the reality. But suffice to say, when a client gives a designer a day to come up with logo options, don’t expect earth-shattering creativity.  

There is no background available on the FDA logo at least not in the obvious places. What is interesting to note is the complete lack of controversy about the logos. There may well have been speculation thirty odd years ago, but without the omnipresent internet and a few obscure marketing / advertising manuals serving as sound boxes, the debate if any was possibly short-lived. The three identities have since thrived in their own right. Ironically it is the most recent (and possibly the most likely imitator) that has the most recall. Proof that what you do with the brand is what gives your visual identity life. And not the other way around.

With the design world becoming increasingly crowded, there will certainly be a cross-pollination of ideas. So to cry foul every time we see two logos with some similarity is silly. 

Run a search of the net and you will find dopplegangers abound, perfectly respectable ones too. 

The Mini Cooper and Bentley. Swiat Zdrowia and Unilever. Sun Microsystems and Columbia Sportswear. Gucci and Chanel. Smart and Stark. Scottish Arts Council and Quark.

More recently the Airbnb logo came under scrutiny. An intrepid designer found similarities between the Airbnb 'Belo' logo and a logo designed for a Japanese drive in called Azuma in 1975 by Akisato Ueda. The logo was spotted by an intrepid Redditor F. R Starmer in a book called Trademarks and Symbols of the World: The Alphabet in Design published by Yasaburo Kuwayama in 1988. 

Airbnb on the other hand is a company founded in 2008. The current logo was unveiled in 2014 and took the London and San Fransisco based Design Studio a year to complete, during which time four designers visited 13 cities across four continents to absorb and comprehend the Airbnb experience. Below is their rationale behind the design:

Some will arguably raise eyebrows for the logos being too close to comfort. However the site Design Taxi dismisses this scepticism. While it may not suggest that Airbnb copied Ueda's design, it is interesting to see that 'even hours and months of design can produce a result that has already been seen before'.

In many cases, it is mere coincidence or at best inspiration with value addition. What is undeniable is that these are all logos with their own unique personality, representative of a unique brand experience. That is what matters. To seek inspiration is fine, it’s human, it is real. But to take that inspiration and make it well and truly your own, that requires imagination and vision.

Photographs courtesy Wiki Commons and Google public domain.

A version of this article was previously published in Aurora Magazine in 2013.

Spanish chimneys, German helmets and George Lucas

Over a hundred years ago, an architect called Antoni Gaudi delivered one of his masterpieces, the Casa Mila also known as La Pedrera. A devout Catholic and ascetic vegetarian, Gaudi was once told that he was either a fool or a genius. He reportedly replied that it meant he was an architect. His quest to create a new architectural narrative is exemplified by La Pedrera, a building of many technical innovations but one does not need an architectural background to be awed by its grand, gothic solemness. 

The tower of the Casa Mila, designed by Gaudi

And despite never having seen it you may still find it oddly familiar. For its iconic towers, marked by a series of ghostly, masked faces have been reimagined in the public consciousness in ways as dark and wild as Gaudi's own design. La Pedrera built in 1906 as a residence for a flamboyant developer, was controversial at the time, inviting both distaste and admiration. 

A few years later, across the borders in Germany, Dr. Friedrich Schwerd a technical designer for the German army realised the inefficacy of the boiled leather helmet being used in World War 1 and designed the Stalhelm or steel helmet for the newly anointed specialist soldiers called the Sturmtruppen. The helmet especially with the gas mask looks remarkably like Gaudi’s heads on the tower. The Sturmtruppen eventually evolved into the brainwashed, goose-stepping Nazi soldier in World War 2, blindly loyal to a mad man.

So design when good enough can even inspire fascists hard hats.

German Sturmtruppen

Jump ahead a few decades to the 1970s, a Californian film-maker with one hit film under his belt went on to realise his science fiction ambitions with a film that much like Hitler's Third Reich, featured an evil dictator and robotic soldiers called The Stormtroopers (English for Sturmtruppen). Like Gaudi, many thought George Lucas too had lost his mind. Famously, his fellow director Steven Spielberg was so convinced of the story that he bet Lucas's sci-fi film would make more than his own sci-fi film, Close Encounters of a Third Kind. Lucas in turn thought his friend's film would prove more successful and said whoever won the bet would get 2.5% of the more successful film's profits. 

Spielberg won the bet. Star Wars proceeded to make three times as much as his film and become the highest grossing film of all time.  

It is said there are no original stories. And perhaps there is no original design. But good design tells a story too and when it meets a good mind, the two can procreate to tell a magnificent story or two or more. Whether that story is by Gaudi or by George Lucas.

George Lucas's Stormtroopers

Then again, maybe there isn't any connection between these different narratives, of concrete, cruelty and celluloid. Or maybe there is. The imagination is such a wonderful friend to have. Blurring the lines between what is real and what is not to spin stories at your command. 

Photographs courtesy Wikimedia Commons.