One wonderful new book gaining strong traction in the world of design and advertising is Rob Walker’s Buying In. The weekly columnist for the New York Times Sunday Magazine stands and delivers a book-length meditation on the 21st-century consumer, along with a perfect antidote to any under-researched column or study that tells you marketing “as we know it” is dead, or that the modern consumer is so over-informed and intelligent that all old strategies or ideas have jumped (or must be thrown) out the window.

Advertising is changing in fundamental ways–this, no one denies–but some rules of the game still remain, and Walker is here to chart the way all the various agents (producers and consumers alike) have adapted.

Besides the immediate appeal to anyone involved in advertising or design, the book has a transcendent draw that comes from its central examination of brand attachment. Walker coined the term “murketing”, to describe a 21st century mix of murky and marketing that he describes as being a two-part system, one which is made up of the “increasingly sophisticated tactics of marketers who blur the line between branding channels and everyday life” and the consciously “widespread consumer embrace of branded, commercial culture.”

Read the introduction to the book here and tell me you’re not hooked by his anecdotal reference to Chuck Taylor’s All-Stars: he says the book “was inspired by the disconnect between what the experts say [about consumer behaviour] and how we really behave,” and the first example comes from his very own experiences. Perfect for me, as I only started wearing All-Stars a year and a half ago, and since then I’ve already bought 3 pairs. Why? Lots of reasons, surely, almost all of them connecting to self/group identification, and (almost) all to be found in this book.

One of the most fascinating parts of Walker’s theory, the pieces of which you can put together through all the entries on his murketing blog or his “Consumed” columns (all available online), is the “Desire Code”, his examination of how we come to desire what we eventually buy, or how logo/brand/product desire is created.

His idea rides on a “fundamental tension of modern life,” one that extends far past marketing and consumerism but is essential to his understanding of it: the tension between the individual and the group. Hardly a new concept, but that’s the point–the game hasn’t changed so much to be unrecognizable, rather all its participants are (apparently) a little more self-aware. A fine sampling:

When I was in grade school, we watched a lot of films. Perhaps they were a relatively easy way to quiet the children down for a while. But remembering this period as an adult, I’m struck by the realization that those films all had one of two themes.

One was: Deep down, each of us is different, unique, and special.

The other was: Deep down, we are all just the same.

For years I shared this observation, for laughs, before it finally occurred to me that this was no joke. In fact, it articulated what is more or less the fundamental tension of modern life.

We all want to feel like individuals.

We all want to feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves.

And resolving that tension is what the Desire Code is all about.

Summer is here, and from anecdotal evidence in various popular magazines, I’ve heard it’s the “reading” season, although reading on the beach does nothing but hurt my eyes. If you, however, can keep yours relatively unsquinted, Walker’s book is an essential purchase.

There are an absolute ton of online archives and digitized university collections online, from the NY Public Library to just about every university you can name. One of my favorites has been the Duke collection, which houses a manageable amount of stuff while spreading its holdings across an interesting range of categories. Sure, historical insight is always interesting, but what I’m really after are some nice, big JPEGs that really let you explore old design up-close. Part of it could be some kind of image-hoarding complex, with the idea that one day I’ll start making one-off t-shirts for myself, with all the best images I’ve found online (unlikely), but probalby it’s just because this stuff is plain rich, and speaks volumes if you give it some time and thought.

Finding a smaller university collection like Duke’s can be a goldmine for inspiration or just good old interesting stuff to see, so let’s take a look at some favorite selections.

Songbook: I’m Going Back to California

Here’s one of my favorites: American Sheet Music from the 1850s right up to the 1920s. If you want to see a concise history of American illustration (or a little history of illustrated racism), look here. Not only do you get overwhelmed with lots of old-time song titles and obscure music hall singers long since forgotten, but the art continuously attempted to match the subject matter in a myraid of interesting ways. Endlessly worthwhile.

KLM Airlines Ad, 1953

There are over 800 transportation related ads in the Duke holdings, and there’s something about seeing how the American public viewed (or was sold) the experience of travelling to Europe in the 1940s that’s endlessly evocative to me. This idea of getting on a bouncy plane and heading across the ocean to find a Spain or Italy where English was surely non-existent and American money was still worth a lot more than the local currency is fascinating, especially when beheld through the lens of advertising.

Now You’ll Like Yeast!

Another fantastic thing about old collections is the text used in promoting the products, especially medical ones. Here’s one from Duke’s “Medicine and Madison Avenue” series. Remember that Simpsons episode where Grandpa tried to figure out what was wrong with Maggie and pulled out “Dr. Washburn’s” medical book, naming off such old-timey ailments as scofula, the ‘vapors’, jugnle rot, dandy fever, poor man’s gout, the staggers, and dum-dum feveer? If you enjoyed that in any way, old medical ads can hold your interest for about 6 straight hours.

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes Ad, 1915

This classic Kellogg’s advertising card is taken from Duke’s wonderful collection of advertising “ephemera“, made up of cards and inserts and hundreds of other little unmissable things that came along with standard advertising, from 1850-1920. An fount of styles and inspiration.

Photo from “The Urban Landscape”

Here’s an unidentified photo from an otherwise so/so “Urban Landscape” series I couldn’t help but include. I love it because of the overblown vignetting that obscures everything but the monument, the flag (see the full view), and whatever the protagonists of the photo are looking at off to the left. I’d surely buy this if it was artfully converted to a vector graphic and screen printed on a shirt.

Within these categories you can find some of the best old advertising, design, and illustration around. Whether you’re writing copy for an “old-fashioned” ad campaign, trying to get a retro look for a client, or simply interested in some vintage American advertising and photography, you’ll stumble upon something useful in the collection.

Francisco Guerra, the inventor of Flogos has created a “a revolutionary way to market products, services and events”. Flogos, effectively branded clouds, can be created in almost any shape you’d like and is an interesting, if not unique; tool to promote your brand or organization.

The machine which is effectively a re-purposed artificial snow machine, is used to generate the floating ads and messages. It kicks out Flogos at a speed of up to four per minute, completely flooding the air with foamy versions of your logos and brands.

Flogos are designed to last for as long as their visual impact is required. Specific formulations are available to provide a life expectancy of a few minutes up to an hour or so. The company states that this also greatly depends on atmospheric conditions such as wind direction and speed. The branded clouds are a simple mixture of a soapy foam and helium.

This unique approach to outdoor media presents exciting opportunities for effective marketing and advertising at open air events, fairs, beaches and sporting arenas.

Could you imagine a few hundred floating Red Bull logos above the next open air festival you attend? Or thousands of floating Nike swoosh’s at the next New York Marathon?.