Historic Preservation

An oppo­si­tion to infe­ri­or change and cul­tur­al decay

Who to call

The Nation­al Trust for Historic Preser­va­tion

The Recent Past Preser­va­tion Net­work (mid-cen­tu­ry mod­ern, retro, vin­tage, goo­gie, space age preser­va­tion)

In the busi­ness? Get the book: [amazonify]0471191833::text::::Preser­va­tion Yel­low Pages: The Com­plete Infor­ma­tion Source for Home­own­ers, Com­mu­ni­ties, and Pro­fes­sion­als[/amazonify] (pub­lished by the Nation­al Trust)

Also rec­om­mend­ed: [amazonify]0873389271::text::::Historic Preser­va­tion for Pro­fes­sion­als[/amazonify] (a com­pre­hen­sive full-sys­tems approach)

Corporate Chains, Big Boxes, Franchises

“Fast Food Fas­cism” by Joyce Mar­cel shows how the cor­po­rate fran­chise chains are mak­ing every­thing ugly and bland

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Design Preservation

HP is not just build­ings and archi­tec­ture … all man­ners of design are part of “cul­tur­al preser­va­tion” includ­ing the dumb­ing-down of logos and pack­ag­ing and the doing-away with “out­dat­ed” or “old-fash­ioned” things for clear­ly infe­ri­or replace­ments.

Vivid exam­ple of the Bell logo’s descent from clas­sic to bland [respon­si­ble par­ties?]

Ditto for the UPS logo: from clas­sic (a famous design by Paul Rand) to unbe­liev­ably gener­ic and bland.