A Child Of Atom

Ladies and Gentlemen! It's time for my new favorite game: Why The Graphic Designer Should Have Been Fired!

Today we have a subway ad for the Nova special "Becoming Human," a three part Nova series on human evolution.

The ad jokes that you can become human in "6 million simple steps" and lays out the first few:

1) Get out of tree
2) Grow big brain
3) Scratch vigorously
4) Shed
5) Flee animals
6) Chase animals
7) Make tools
8) Make fire
9) Make small talk... there are one or two others that are visible on other versions of the ad.

So what do we see? First there are some gross over-simplifications, like step 2. Whether we grew larger brains after leaving the trees, or as a part of being better able to move in trees is part of a huge debate. But we can leave that aside as just being advertising, I'm sure the actual Nova episodes go into more detail. Then there is the odd ordering of the steps... is shedding of body hair so important that it needs to be step 3? And did we really shed it before we discovered fire and tools? Our cousins the Neanderthal used tools, but we generally consider them to still be fairly hairy and apelike. But again... artistic license to tell a story quickly and easily in an ad.

What I really object to are the illustrations that accompany steps 5 through 7:

Flee animals... chase animals... make tools.

A pretty simple concept, right?

So why then does the human in step 6 already HAVE a spear? Is a spear not a tool? I mean... it's only 10 steps... you'd think you could get them in a fairly appropriate order... right?

So what do you think? Fire the graphic designer, or no?

(And for the record, yes... this is the type pf thing that I think about when the train is too crowded to draw...)

On Atlanta's MARTA train... not as easy to sketch on as an NYC train, and not nearly as easy to navigate. I pride myself on being able to read a train map, you have to to get past the MTA's weekly rerouting and altered schedules and changed lines... but I'll freely admit MARTA stumped me for quite a while. You have to know what direction you are traveling (the lines are marked southbound, westbound, etc.) which is hard for a visitor, and the trains are marked by the final stop on the line, not by any color that I could see, even though the maps are marked with colored lines. When I asked someone what color line went to the airport they just stared and said "Southbound." That was supposed to be all I need to know I guess. At least the last stop on the line I wanted WAS the airport, so when it arrived there was a giant "AIRPORT" on the side. Though I had to run quite a ways down the platform after I realized that even though it looked like it could accomodate an 8 or 10 car train the actual train that arrived only had 4, so it stopped well short of where I had chosen to stand. The ticketing system was odd too, it took me a lot of back and forth to figure out that buying a Breeze ticket was the same thing as just buying a ticket... and what is with the .50 surcharge on a single ride ticket? Where was staff? I never saw anyone in any of the three stations I passed through that looked like they could answer a question. God I'm spoiled by the MTA, and with all the shortcomings they have, that is... baffling.