Tag: Virginia

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Muji-Shmuji

Yesterday I went to see the new Muji store in SoHO. I’ve never seen so many hipsters and so many $800 baby strollers concentrated in such a small space outside of Williamsburg. Spent about half an hour in the store, but could not find anything to buy – there were some good and hard to find soy sauce pourers, but I already have a similar one.  The rest seemed to be well designed kipple. Also, the items only seem well priced to those who willingly buy the strollers I mentioned earlier. The selection was rather small – maybe the forthcoming flagship store will be better…

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How the Starbucks Siren Became Less Naughty

[update] Starbucks logo changes again.

You are probably here because you looked closely at the Starbucks logo and were a little confused about what is depicted on it. Is it a mermaid? What are those things that she is holding up with her hands? Wasn’t the logo different before? What’s the history of it?

I asked those questions myself and did a little bit of digging. My research started with a book that I had, called A Dictionary of Symbols by J.E. Cirlot. In it there was a chapter about Sirens.

Basically, from what I gathered from different sources, including that book, there is a lot of confusion between the different mythological half-women. Typically they are called Sirens – both the half-bird/half-woman and the half-fish/half-woman varieties. The fish type are usually called Mermaids. Both types according to the ancient Greeks were in the business of seducing mariners with songs and promises of sex and then killing them, but Hans Christian Andersen and Disney mostly made everybody forget that.

The whole sex-symbol status of mermaids hinges on the question which part is “woman” – upper or lower. “The other type of mermaid” that hapless Fry was referring to would have problems attracting suitors, of course. And how do you do it with the normal type?

Wise mythologists came up with the answer, of course. And the answer is a two-tailed mermaid sometimes called a Melusine.

The book had an old engraving of a two-tailed mermaid. It reminded me of the Starbucks Siren, but back then I did not realize that the original Starbucks logo had a slightly altered version of that engraving in the original brown cigar band-shaped logo.

Notice that the graphic designer removed the belly button, the unattractive shading around the bulging tummy of the 15th century siren and merged the tail-legs to remove the suggestion of naughty bits. The logo Siren also smiles a little while its 15th century doppelganger is looking rather grim. Other than that it’s clear that this is exactly the image that he or she was using.

According to uspto.gov “[Starbucks] mark consists of the wording “Starbucks Coffee” in a circular seal with two stars, and the design of a siren (a two-tailed mermaid) wearing a crown”.

Here’s the “cigar band” logo from which I took the image above. The original hippie Starbucks owners did not sell espresso drinks, but mostly sold coffee beans, tea and spices. Today Starbucks sells liquor and ice cream, but no spices if you don’t count the cinnamon gum and the stuff on the condiment table.

The next, more familiar green iteration of the logo has a more attractive stylized siren. The chest is hidden, but the belly button is still there.

Here is the current logo. They cropped the siren image so that only a hint of the tails is visible. I asked hourly partners at Starbucks and friends, and none of them could figure out what those things to the side of Siren’s head were.

Lately I’ve stopped seeing pictures of the Siren on Starbucks mugs – they seem to favor just the word “Starbucks”. I also started seeing the new type of the siren as part of store decoration and on coffee packaging. She only has one tail. I guess the family-unfriendly image of a fish-woman spreading her tails is on its way out.

[update] Here’s a picture of the new siren:

The brown Siren logo can still be found on merchandize sold at the original Pike Place Market Starbucks in Seattle. The logo is altered though – instead of a “cigar band” design it uses just a circle logo. Cigar band logo mugs and coffee jars can still be found on eBay for upwards of $50 per mug and $200 per coffee jar. I am still looking for anything bearing an “Il Giornale” (a company founded byHoward Schultz that later ended up buying out Starbucks with the help of none other than Bill Gates Sr.) logo.

[Update]
Dear Boing Boing readers – you might enjoy other sections of this blog such as Gastronomic Adventures and 100 Views of the Empire State Building.

[Update]
I was alerted to another article that explores the Siren’s symbolism. I haven’t used it in my research, but it is very thorough.

[Update] The whole logo history is described pretty well in Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. The book is full of other Starbucks trivia: if I remember correctly, it states that Howard Schultz is a close friend of Yanni.

[Update]

I received some information from Doug Fast, the designer behind the green logo. He also graciously sent me some rare examples of the logo, for which I am extremely thankful.

“I am the guy who designed the green SBUX logo. The original brown SBUX logo was designed in 1971 by my employer before I started working for him in January 1974. ( I still work there as a designer) The design company was then called Heckler/ Bowker, here in Seattle. Bowker (the company copy writer) was one of the three original founders of SBUX and left Heckler/ Bowker in 1984 to take on SBUX full time. (there were 5-6 stores at that time) The other two founders were; Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegal. Heckler/Bowker came up with the Starbucks name and Heckler came up with the first (brown) logo. The other name strongly suggested was Pequod, but lost out to Starbucks.

The original SBUX store was NOT in the Public Market or in the Arcade as people think. It was at the corner of Western Avenue & Virginia, just north, across the street from the Public Market at the foot of the steep hill going up to 1st Avenue, and opened it’s doors in March 1971. I have a photo of it and also a drawing of it that was on an SBUX Christmas card from 1977.

The first retail Starbucks coffee drink concept store was originally called Il Giornale, and located on 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle. There was only one of these stores ever. I designed the logo for that in 1985-86, plus the coffee bag packaging, and still have the stationary, bags, and cup designs in my sample file. Howard Schultz was still an employee of SBUX at that time, not the owner, as I’ve seen said in previous blog info. here.

The reason only ONE Il Giornale store ever existed was because of the purchase of SBUX by Howard and his investers, and because the SBUX name and logo had so much capital already, they changed Il Giornale back to SBUX and wanted a more reproducable SBUX design, to go national.

I did the green “full siren” logo with a stronger, simpler, read for reproduction. The SBUX type was HAND DRAWN and based on the typeface, Franklin Gothic (this was pre-computer, folks) and had to be drawn so it bent well, around the circle. We submitted the logo to Howard, one with a red color and one in a green color. He picked the green color option.

In 1992 we had to blow up the siren to eliminate the spread, so called suggestive tails, so that’s the version you see today.

I still have most of the original concept work for the creation of this logo in one of my big sketchbooks. To me at the time, it was just another logo job to do. Who would have thought I’d be sick of seeing it all over the place. It isn’t one of my best logos.”

Original stores from the old coffee bag:

The original “cigar band” logo:

Il Giornale logo:

Green “bellybutton” logo

One of the newer coffee bags that reimagines the siren:

New “cigar band” logo with covered up nipples and cleaner lines:

New plastic stirrer / plug in the shape of the siren:

Old logo at one of the first (from what I hear it’s not the “original” location) stores at the Pike Market in Seattle

original-starbucs-logo

starbucks-pike-market

Did reading this article inspire you to write a poem about Starbucks? You can use Rhymebuster, the algorithmic rap generator. Turns out a lot of things rhyme with Starbucks (other than sucks).


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Best Sci-fi You Haven’t Read Part III or Call Time Police – We’ve Got a Time Traveler


William Fitzgerald Jenkins, better known under his pen name Murray Leinster, was born in Norfolk, Virginia on June 16, 1896 (or so they tell us). I have many reasons not to believe this. He earned his living entirely through freelance writing, except when he worked as a researcher in the War Department during WWI and WWII. In his early literary career he wrote various junk, including “cautionary tails of the perils that could await a young woman, who, in all innocence, failed to insure that she was properly chaperoned at all times” (I am still trying to locate those). In 1919 he witnessed a clock being reset on a building across the street, and rapidly rotating hour and minute arms of that clock gave him an idea. He wrote a story about time travel called “The Runaway Skyscraper”. Since then he wrote mostly science fiction. Good science fiction too, for instance he won a Hugo for one of his stories (becoming the only person who wrote before 20s to win a Hugo).

As I mentioned, he served in two World Wars as a researcher. I bet that most of his work was classified, but I’ve seen mentions that it had something to do with submarines. Crypto, nuclear propulsion – your guess is as good as mine. Seems pretty strange that a freelance writer would also turn out a brilliant technologist, because he was definitely a good engineer : he got two patents for “Front Projection System” (frigging Delphion is charging for access these days, so I can’t really look up what they are) which he later sold to Fairchild Camera.

How does a “cautionary tail” writer becomes a great sci-fi writer, submarine researcher and inventor? I think that he was replaced by a time traveler. He wasn’t alone, he had friends too.

Here is an excerpt from and introduction Will Jenkins wrote for an anthology “Great Stories of Science Fiction” that he edited:

“During the late lamented World War Two, the FBI had occasion to check on me. They decided that I wasn’t subversive, and made due note of the fact. As a consequence, one day I had a telephone call. A voice said pleasantly that it was the FBI calling, and they’d like to talk to me. I searched my conscience hurriedly, and then asked where I should come to talk. The voice said graciously that he’d come to see me. He did. In a hurry. With a companion.

One was a large man with a patient expression, and the other was quite young and looked rather shy. They produced credentials and proved who they were, and I obligingly proved who I was, and then one of them said, “Tell me, have you ever read the Cleve Cartmill story, ‘Deadline’?”

I said I had. The larger FBI man asked interestedly, “What did you think of it?”

“A pretty good story,” I said, “and the science is authentic. Quite accurate.”

Then there was a pause. A rather long pause. Then he sighed, and reluctantly inquired, “Well, what we want to know is: could it be a leak?”

At this point my hair stood up on end and its separate strands tended to crack like whiplashes. Because “Deadline,” by Cleve Cartmill, was a story about an atomic bomb, and this was a year before Hiroshima. The bomb in the story was made of uranium-235, it was to explode when a critical mass was attained, and there were other details. The story described most minutely the temperature of an atom-bomb explosion, the deadly radiation, the lingering aftereffects, the shock-wave, the heat-effect, and all the rest of the phenomena that a year later were observed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I was being asked about it before Hiroshima, and the Manhattan Project was perhaps the most completely hush-hush of all the hush-hush performances of the war.

My copy of this book is of course signed :)

But that is nothing, nothing I tell you, compared to what Will Jenkins himself wrote. You see, he wrote a story called “A Logic Named Joe” in the year 1946. Here is an excerpt

“I’m a maintenance man for the Logics Company. My job is servicing Logics, and I admit modestly that I am pretty good. I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will select any of ‘steenteen million other circuits—in theory there ain’t no limit—and before the Logics Company hooked it into the Tank-and-Integrator set-up they were usin ’em as business-machine service. They added a vision-screen for speed—an they found out they’d made Logics. They were surprised an pleased. They’re still findin out what Logics will do, but everybody’s got ’em.
…
You know the Logics set-up. You got a Logic in your house. It looks like a vision-receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It’s hooked in to the Tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch “Station SNAFU” on your Logic. Relays in the Tank take over an’ whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin comes on your Logic’s screen. Or you punch “Sally Hancock’s Phone” an the screen blinks an sputters an’ you’re hooked up with the Logic in her house an’ if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfields administration or what is PDQand R sellin for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the Tank do it. The Tank is a big buildin foil of all the facts in creation an’ all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an it’s hooked in with all the other Tanks all over the country—an everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an’ keeps books, an acts as consultin’ chemist, physicist, astronomer an’ tea-leaf reader, with a “Advice to the Lovelorn” thrown in. The only thing it won’t do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, “Oh, you think so, do you?” in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don’t work good on women. Only on things that make sense.

Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us.All on accounta the Carson Circuit. “

Holy Crap! How did the time police miss this guy??
By the way, notice some military humor there. Do you know what SNAFU means?

If you would like to read some of Murray Leinster’s stories, a good place to start is “First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster”