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Yesterday, I wrote a little about brand awareness among architects (and, by extension, other artists).

Today, I offer you an article from BusinessWeek on remaking the McDonald’s brand:

The traditional McDonald’s yellow and red colors will remain, but the red will be muted to terra cotta and olive and sage green will be added to the mix. To warm up their look, the restaurants will have less plastic and more brick and wood, with modern hanging lights to produce a softer glow. Contemporary art or framed photographs will hang on the walls. Bob Dixon, a private school fund-raiser in Chicago, says of an Oak Brook (Ill.) restaurant that sports the new design: “It’s bright, it’s lively, it’s clean. It stunned me how beautiful it was.”

The dining area will be separated into three sections with distinct personalities. The “linger” zone will offer comfortable armchairs, sofas, and Wi-Fi connections. “The focus is on young adults who want to socialize, hang out, and linger,” says Dixon. Brand consultant Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a brand consulting firm, says that Starbucks has raised the bar: “A level has been set by Starbucks, which offers the experience of relaxed chairs and a clean environment where people feel comfortable hanging out even if it’s just over a cup of coffee.”

I haven’t had a burger at a McDonald’s since 1986, but my brother & I still consider the fry-dipped-in-strawberry-shake to be some sorta Proustian memory-trigger. Anyway, the article brings up issues of reducing brand-awareness in the name of hipness. I, for one, wonder how many diners at McDonald’s are that interested in wi-fi. I just don’t think you can be all things to all people.

There’s a slideshow that goes with the story, and it includes a shot of the new roof-style, which will replace the incredibly boring but effective brand-image of the mansard roof:

BusinessWeek has an interview with Phaidon Press editorial director Emilia Terragni about Phaidon Design Classics, a three-volume release covering 999 examples of great everyday design.

Do you believe that businesses can look to this book to help prompt their R&D departments to come up with the next iPod?

Companies right now clearly would like to make more design classics. But perhaps they should really care more about good design. They could examine how to make life easier and better via design. If this set of books will inspire more design-classics-to-be, though, that would be fantastic.

Read all about it.

I’m a late convert to American Idol. The official VM wife had been extolling the program’s vices for a while, but I never gave it a shot until this season. It’s turned out to be pretty darned entertaining, especially with Dave White’s commentary over at The Advocate (so my wife reads The Advocate; is that so wrong?). And the Spoonbender’s preview is always a hoot.

I discovered that nothing can match the lunacy and self-delusion of the first few weeks of auditions, when clueless people try to sing their way onto the show. My boss thinks I’m a bad person for enjoying these so much, but I figure, “You sign your waiver, you take your chances.”

Anyway, the season’s been pretty enjoyable, but it started to slow down in the last few weeks, as more of the novelty acts got voted off the show. (Sure, there was the train wreck of a night where the contestants had to perform songs by Queen, but it’s otherwise been pretty sluggish.)

And then there was last Tuesday’s episode.

The contestants had to sing “great love songs,” as coached by Andrea Bocelli and his producer. Not promising in itself, the episode was redeemed by the sight of Paula Abdul breaking down in tears after a guy’s performance. She tried to talk about some sort of “triumph of the human spirit” moment, but she was just incoherent and crying. What made this more perfect was the mid-range camera shot, in which we saw co-judge Simon Cowell trying to stifle his laughter. Inspired.

Anyway, I bring this up because there’s a neat article in the NYTimes about the history of show’s own audition, when it was being pitched to every network in America. And to admit that I watch American Idol.

Okay: last week, I wrote about Page 6 and how we rank the Baldwins. If you go through the comments, you’ll find some debate over who’s the “least-known” Baldwin. (There’s also a great comment/anecdote from my buddy Tom.)

My ranking runs as follows: Alec, Daniel, Stephen, and Billy. There’s some debate over the bottom two, but I figured Daniel was fairly ensconced in that #2 slot.

Then comes today’s Page 6, with the following item:

DANIEL Baldwin, the blow-loving black sheep of the Baldwin brothers, has been arrested again on drug charges. Cops say they were responding to a loud noise coming from Baldwin’s room at the Ocean Park Inn in Santa Monica the other day, when they found him holding a drug pipe. Baldwin, 45, and another man, Anthony Hunter, 52 — who was reportedly hiding in the bathroom — were also found in possession of a “small amount of cocaine,” police said. Baldwin spent the night in jail and posted $10,000 bail the next day. The least-known Baldwin brother last made headlines when he had a drug-induced meltdown during the filming of the VH1 reality show, “Celebrity Fit Club.” In 1998, Daniel was found running naked, high on crack cocaine, through the Plaza hotel. Cops were called following complaints that the actor was watching porno movies with the sound turned up loud. After being hospitalized for an overdose, he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to three months in drug rehab. Baldwin has admitted battling a cocaine addiction since 1989, shortly after he started his career in Hollywood.

Now, I just don’t know what’s what. Daniel as least-known? When Billy’s biggest movies were Sliver and Fair Game (which was derived from the same novel as Cobra?

So, when all else fails, I will try to re-establish Billy Baldwin’s least-known status with the following series of pictures:

Conference over! Now my boss & I head off to the Tigers-Angels game! For those of you scoring at home (ha-ha), this is the ninth ballpark I’ve visited (Yankees, Mets, Baltimore, Philly, Toronto, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego); there may be a Fenway visit (grr) in June, too.

Back in 2002, after breaking up with a LONGtime girlfriend, I plotted out a driving trip to hit 7 or 8 ballparks in 9 or 10 days. I thought about it pretty seriously, but concluded that a solo drive that long probably would’ve left me talking to myself WAY too much. I’m glad to do it this way, visiting parks when business-travel brings me around.

I only wish I’d scalped tickets a few Sundays ago for the Cubs-Cards game at Wrigley.

Sorry to be posting so infrequently, dear reader. This headcold’s been whomping me, and I’ve been on a rough production schedule for the magazine. On top of that, I have to head out to Anaheim on Sunday for another conference. I’m guessing that the architecture won’t quite match up to Chicago’s.

We’ll catch up next week, sometime.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I’m not too far behind the cultural shwerve on this one: Gino the Ginny.

(It’s a video, it’s got loud music, and it’s got crass language; you’ve been warned)

I follow Page 6 in the New York Post pretty devotedly. I’ve never been one for the supermarket tabloids & gossip mags, with their overriding fixation with pregnancy, but Page 6 usually gets is just right, with embarrassing celebrity stories, blind items that Amy & I occasionally suss out, and a seeming moratorium on Paris Hilton items.

I don’t link to the items because they go dead within a week, and it always makes me sad to look over blog-archives and find dead links. I’ve got issues.

Anyway, in the past week, Page 6 raised an interesting question in the VM household. See, a few months ago, there was an item about Stephen Baldwin’s residence in near(ish)by Nyack, NY. Baldwin, a born-again Christian, so objected to a local porno store, he began writing down the license plates of cars in its parking lot, for publication in the local paper.

Last week, the column reported that Baldwin’s moving out of Nyack for another town in Westchester. The thing is, the item referred to him as “the least-famous Baldwin.”

Well, we thought, it’s pretty easy to say that Alec‘s the best known, but what about the rest? I know Daniel Baldwin best from his crack-binge blowout a few years ago, but Amy sez he’s pretty well known from being on Homicide.

But Billy? More famous than Stephen? Sure, he’s married to Chynna Phillips, but could we really say that Billy’s Dagwood Bumstead haircut in Sliver outranked the “Oswald was a pussy” line from The Usual Suspects?

Fortunately, a week later, they followed up with an item referring to Stephen as “[t]he third-most famous of the acting Baldwin brothers,” which sounds better. Unfortunately, the item was about how Baldwin’s actually moving because he’s stuck for cash.

All of which gets me to this weekend’s movie revelation: The Cooler. Sure, William H. Macy was great as a down-on-everybody’s-luck casino jinx, and Maria Bello was flat-out great to look at, but Alec Baldwin was absolutely fantastic as the casino owner. I was amazed at how he devoured the role without playing up the “Look at me! I’m Alec Baldwin!” face. He seemed to revel in the past-his-prime-ness of the character.

He’ll always be the most famous of the Baldwins to me. Even if Page 6 reports more terrible details of his custody fights with Kim Basinger.

There’s a player on the Cubs named Angel Pagan. I think there’s also an episode of Buffy with that title.