Harvard’s Mary Tripsas stresses the importance of categories:

GLANCE through a photo album of early automobiles and you’ll find an eclectic assortment of vehicles, including three-wheeled machines and bicycle-like contraptions. You’d be hard-pressed to identify many as cars.

Early consumers were confused, too, until innovators finally converged on a carriage-like design and coined the term “horseless carriage” in the 1890s, giving a clear point of comparison. More than 100 years later, we can learn from their example.

New York Times

Branding turns out to be older than we thought:

In “Prehistories of Commodity Branding,” author David Wengrow challenges the widespread assumption that branding did not become an important force in social and economic life until the Industrial Revolution. Wengrow presents compelling evidence that labels on ancient containers, which have long been assumed to be simple identifiers, as well as practices surrounding the production and distribution of commodities, actually functioned as branding strategies. Furthermore, these strategies have deep cultural origins and cognitive foundations, beginning in the civilizations of Egypt and Iraq thousands of years ago.

ScienceDaily

Sonny Astani reimagines outdoor advertising:

Sonny Astani walked into a Westwood movie theater in 1985 and saw the film that changed his life: “Blade Runner,” the science-fiction tale that imagined a dystopian Los Angeles where jet-powered cars zoom past skyscrapers covered with enormous, cinematic advertisements.

Decades later, the Iranian-born businessman is determined to bring some of those futuristic images to life. His plan? Attach an animated sign 14-stories tall on the 33-story condominium project he is building in downtown L.A.

Los Angeles Times