99% Invisible - 472- Mini-Stories : Volume 13

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

We're kicking off the new year at 99pi with a fresh installment of mini-stories, including: a strange collision of mundane infrastructure and political insurrection; a graphic design history mystery dating back to the 1980s; what may be the most hated architectural design of 2021; and a record-breaking album cover design so cutting edge it cost more money to make than to buy.Mini-Stories: Volume 13Get Beauty Pill's Instant NightGet New Order's Blue Monday

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. We are back. Happy 2022. 2021 was a weird year full of unexpected twists and turns, but one thing you can count on as we turn the page to a new calendar year are the 99 PI mini stories. This week we have stories about monster dorms, suspicious activity in the tunnels under DC, the most beautiful and expensive pop record of all time, and jazz cups. Stay with us. Yeah, same to you, same to you. Is it your back again with another story? I am. Yeah. So today I want to share the story of someone who, I guess he just seems like a

quintessential beautiful nerd. He was born and raised in DC. He loves the city. He loves the obscure infrastructure of the city. He just feels like he fits on our show. But that's not the only reason I wanted to introduce our listeners to him. He also intersects with recent history in this very strange and kind of unsettling way. Okay. Well, I'm intrigued. Tell me more. So this guy's name is Elliot Carter. And when he was in his 20s, he did a Capitol Hill internship.

And he said that this internship was quite boring, but that it did come with a perk, which is that they gave him an ID badge that allowed him to wander around the Capitol campus. And I spent this entire summer after college, basically, hungry for work from this office that wouldn't give me any, and just filling my time by, you know, disappear for two or three hours at a time when it was slow and just explore the building and kind of the campus really. And he gets really interested in the history of the Capitol complex, like the physical place.

And especially the tunnels that run underneath it. Oh, I've heard a little bit about these tunnels, but I can't really picture them and I don't know what they're like, but I've heard about them. I would totally be in the same boat with Elliot. Yeah. Yeah. There's all different kinds of tunnels under the Capitol. They served different purposes. And Elliot got really intrigued. He started researching the history of them. And he learned that the tunnels started being built back in the Civil War era. So some of them were used to move books at high speed between the Library of Congress and the Capitol. I know, I know, I love that.

And some of them house these huge underground air ducts that used to be packed with ice. It was like this early attempt at air conditioning. Wow. But the ones that really intrigue the public are these subways that are for congressmen and their staff members and visitors. And those really started to sprout on Capitol Hill right at the turn of the century. So the early 1900s. And those tunnels existed to shuttle congress people back and forth from the surrounding office buildings, which were going up around this time, to the actual capital building where they would cast their vote.

So they had to be able to get there fast, like within 15 minutes when a quorum was called. Oh, so these tunnels weren't about security as I was kind of picturing them. They're more about moving people back and forth quickly, so let a congressperson can jump on a subway and get to the capital in under 15 minutes. Yes, yes, exactly. But the public was also really curious about them and kind of suspicious of them, honestly, because they immediately thought it was about the secrecy. So, imagining an unpopular congressman who's getting berated by his constituents or by pesky reporters who were looking for quotes and imagining these people evading their tormentors by

shuddling across the street and disappearing. That was very much on people's minds, but on the public side. Yeah, I can totally see that. They really tunnels lead to conspiracy theories. Like, yes, they certainly do and we are going to get into that more shortly. So, so there's a lot of interesting history behind the tunnels. Elliot got really into it. He started pulling together all this research, not just on the capital tunnels, but on all the tunnels that run under the city. And he put together this really lovely resource. It's a website called WashingtonTunnels.com. And it's full of beautiful maps of these different tunnel systems. As you might expect, it became popular among local history buffs and the DC architecture community,

like those are his people. But here's where the story takes a turn, because about a year ago, in early 2021, on New Year's Day, Elliot started noticing some very weird traffic on his site, like not his usual visitors. I noticed like there was a unusually high volume of people who were kind of anonymizing themselves and they were from far away locations or using kind of anonymous browsers and search engines. And then a group of these people were being referred to my little friendly nerdy website from domains with names like AR15.com and mymolyshah.com. And these are not my normal friends in the Washington total community, so that kind of immediately raised a red flag.

Whoa. Okay, so what was going on? Well, Elliot started following some of the links back to see what was going on on these referring websites. So I clicked through these links and I'm looking at comment threads where someone will have screen-shotted my website and then they've annotated it, you know, with like the iPhone markup or the Snapchat markup with these arrows and texts saying, Patriots form here, block this entrance, look for escapes here, annotated like a Civil War battle plan with arrows and unit positions and stuff. Yeah, so he can actually immediately see what's happening.

This was people who were planning the January 6th insurrection, and they were using his maps to talk about how they were going to surround and infiltrate the Capitol. Oh, my goodness. So what did Elliot then do with that information? He was disturbed enough that he sent a tip to the FBI's Washington Field Office. And he never heard anything back. And then a few days passed and it was January 6th. And we fight. We fight like hell.

And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. Are exciting adventures and boldest endeavors. And so that day, just as a quick recap, there was a rally near the White House. Trump spoke at it and repeated his lies about election fraud. And then thousands of attendees walked over to the Capitol building and hundreds of people actually broke in and went inside where Congress was beginning the electoral vote count. You know, it was terrifying.

I mean, we all watched it happen. Yeah, absolutely terrifying. And Elliott says that everyone in DC that day knew that it was going to be chaotic. They'd basically been warned by the mayor to stay home if at all possible. And Elliott was up on the rooftop sunroom of his apartment building doing a Zoom call for work. Kind of watching this insurrection out the window, a couple blocks away, and then opening up like Google Analytics, and seeing in horror that there are like 600 people actively on this website right now. This is a quiet sleepy website. So like if you see 600 people in there,

like there's something wrong. Wow, that sounds very unsettling but that he was somehow part of this thing that he completely objected to. That's terrifying. Yeah, yeah. I mean, regardless of his intentions when he built the site,

he said he felt just afraid that he would be perceived as complicit. Yeah, I mean, he did report it. I mean, so clearly that wasn't his intention. But like, so what happened after January 6th? Well, so Elliott watched all the news coverage that unfolded after the attack and was kind of stunned by it. Like, the fact that the organizers were sharing tunnel maps was one of the things that the press and law enforcement

were holding up as evidence of the advanced planning in this attack. Anytime they were talking about the capital tunnel maps that these people were sharing, they were talking about this obscure project that I had labored on. And so Elliot ended up pulling down the site for a time, just so he could have time to look back through it, line by line, and think about the information he'd shared.

And if any of it should be changed, and he ultimately concluded, no, he felt he'd presented the information responsibly. It had all been stuff in the public domain. And so he put the site back up. And so did anyone ever follow up with him, like from the FBI or anything like that about the maps? He was never contacted by the FBI, but eventually the Senate Rules Committee published their first investigator report into the attack. And it had a couple of footnotes that referenced the tip that Elliott had submitted before the insurrection happened. Then after that, he was

contacted by the House Committee investigating January 6th, and actually had a conversation with them about the tip that he made. So they're trying to suss if law enforcement groups, like the FBI, drop the ball at all in their response to January 6th. Wow. So where does that leave Elliot today? I mean, you mentioned that the website was back up. Is it still up right now? It is.

Yeah, it's still up. It's a beautiful site. You should go look at it. And I think Elliot feels more strongly than ever that there's kind of a public service element to his site. He wants people to know about these tunnels about their real history. And this actually gets back to the conspiracy theory point

you made earlier. And he says that for as long as they have been around, the tunnels have been a subject of conspiracy and speculation and mistrust. Like, he gave this example of back in the 1930s. There were these wild ideas about how people were getting raped and mugged in the DC tunnels. And then more recently, like today, there are a source of fascination for QAnon believers who think that democratic politicians are involved in all sorts of completely fabricated stuff related to sex trafficking

and kids. And they think the tunnels are part of that plot. So it sounds like Elliott in keeping Washington tunnels calm up and keeping it full of, you know, relatively mundane information about how these tunnels work is trying to just combat the lunacy that people associate with these tunnels. Yeah, he just wants people to know the true history of the tunnels, you know, in all their mundane glory. You know, if they're conspiracy people who are going to visit this website, I want them

to leave with the most idiot proof unambiguous takeaway of, this isn't secret. This is not nefarious. This is not a sex trafficking tunnel. Like, this is both more boring and more interesting and more complex than I had given a credit for. I've appointed myself as the spokesman of these tools now. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you can ever make it idiot proof, but I appreciate his effort. I know.

Well, that's a fascinating story. Thank you so much for bringing it to us. Yeah, thank you. If you follow architecture news or just use social media at all, you may be familiar with Munger Hall, a proposed building for the University of California in Santa Barbara. The project is being sponsored in part by billionaire Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway. The exterior design is not exactly ugly, it's plain and boxy, it's nothing right home about, but also nothing to get worked up over.

It was the unusual and cramped interior layout that led to headlines like all hail dorm zilla, the monster dorm, the internet hates. Our own Kurt Coles said, came across an unexpected angle to this story and is here to tell us more about what he found. Yeah, and what I found was pretty cool. There wasn't much press about this project until somebody leaked this letter that really ripped into it. And as it turns out, the leaker of that letter, the guy whose intervention sparked this whole cascade of like viral media coverage, is a 9% and visible fan. Oh yeah. And I found that out when he posted a comment about it in our 9% API subreddit. So I went ahead

and reached out to him and I asked if he'd be willing to talk to me about it in more detail. Yeah. Hi, I'm Mark Fuchsavitch. I'm an alumni of UCC and Barbara. I just graduated in June in political science, and I'm a former member of the Design Review Committee. And Mark has a lot to say about this project, starting with some of the big common criticisms. It is a large square structure that is 11 stories tall that will be holding 4,537 students and incredibly high density. Each of these rooms that these students are going to be single-occupancy rooms with no natural light and no fresh air ventilation. Well, there are some in the common areas, but yeah, for individual students, not so much.

Only 6% of the rooms actually face the exterior and have any sort of real windows. The rooms are something along the lines of 6 feet by 10 feet. Maybe it's a little larger, but really small, like prison cell size rooms. I mean, all of that sounds really depressing. When you compare a dorm room to a prison, that does not seem like a very great environment to live in. Yes, and that comparison to prisons is something that a lot of the news media picked up on. And Mark, you know, as a person who's recently lived in dorm rooms, he worries about how these small rooms could impact student mental health. And meanwhile, you meanwhile, the internet at large has taken

to calling this whole thing dorms alone, because it's really kind of a monster, right? In building. And so, it's being planned, I mean, it was vetted by a certain group of people. Why does anyone think that this dorm has a good idea? So the argument in favor, as I understand it, is that if you give people only a tiny amount

of personal space, that will force them out into common areas. And from there, it will force them out onto campus. And so in the grand scheme of things, this would lead to more socialization, which would be good. But that all seems kind of speculative to me. And if anything, you could also imagine the opposite. Having a room to yourself makes it easier to just be by yourself. And folks like Mark and me for that matter worry about the lack of data and theory

that's really driving this approach to design. And so how did Mark find himself in the middle of this? You mentioned he was a student. why was he involved at all? Well, so there's one student representative at a time on the University's design review committee and So he sat alongside faculty and staff and other experts reviewing design proposals for the campus and Those could be anything from bike lanes and you know landscaping to empire buildings like this one. It's a pretty niche position that not a lot of people care about, but through listening to great podcasts,

I've really come to care about design and urban planning. So is he talking about us there? Oh, yes, he's talking about us. He loves us. Oh, it's so nice to hear. OK, so Mark gets on this committee that no one else, no other student, no volunteers for. And nobody cares about it.

So except for Night and P.I. listeners, so that's a great thing that we're putting that out into the world. And so Mark's on this committee, and this project comes up for review while he's on the committee. Well, okay, technically no. I should clarify that he wasn't officially still a member at this point.

He had just graduated, but he still got the meeting invites. And so he went to this meeting. And the meeting felt really different to him. He recalls the committee basically being told, your feedback isn't going to matter. It seemed to him that the monger hall review was more about rubber stamping the design. And after a slideshow, he recalls the organizer

saying something like, any feedback that you guys give will be taken as suggestions, and will likely may or may not be incorporated in design. You have this meeting is not to have any upper-down vote on this project. So, it's a radical departure of what previous procedures were and how a building gets designed and come about. And so, after this meeting, he sends an email to the whole Review Committee's member list,

expressing his frustration about how the meeting went. And he wasn't the only one with strong opinions. This other member responded to the thread, explaining that he was actually quitting the committee entirely because of this project. When Dennis McFadden, the architect, sent his resignation letter, she sent it in reply to my email

that I sent the entire committee. And McFadden was this consulting architect on the committee, he'd been there for over a decade. But his resignation letter went into a lot of detail about issues he had with the building and the review process. And some of the stuff is pretty damning. Like, quote, the basic concept for mongerhal as a place for students to live is unsupportable

from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being. End quote. OK. Right. So Mark saw this and he basically agreed with the sentiments and decided to post McFadden's letter online and he had no idea this was gonna become this huge story. I posted his letter on the UCSB Reddit thinking it would get

attention of some alumni and maybe get the attention of some like local journalists, nothing more than that. But of course it went much bigger than that. And after it went viral, he had some regrets about not asking for Madden's permission first. I feel bad about that and I do feel bad about at least not asking for consent to Dennis before I leave his letter, because I'm sure it destroyed his phone in his email for a few days. In any case, it's all out in the open now. And Mark agrees with critics who have pointed out the lack of natural light, the lack of air circulation, but he also thinks that there hasn't been enough coverage about some other important issues,

like how the building might impact student health. Needless to say, overall, he has this very negative feeling towards the project. So it was actually a bit of a surprise to me to learn that his position isn't entirely one-sided on it. So what is he, what is he like about dorms all of them? Well, it's not so much about liking the building itself, but it is about liking the fact that there's an attempt to address a huge student housing crisis on campus. And just to put the scale of this in context, the whole UC system had to put more than 15,000 students on a housing waiting list this past fall. Wow. It is really like a worry of mine that this might derail 4500 units, which are severely needed in the area. 4,500 units is a big chunk out of 15,000 on a waiting list.

It is. It really is. And so you can see why this is not exactly a clear cut case of just, you know, like, let's just stop this project. And Mark himself, he's got a lot of personal familiarity with this housing crunch. You know, he knows students who have been put in crisis housing, and he's seen other students trying to figure out how to effectively live out of their cars. Hey, if I live in my car, can I use your bathroom? You know, I'll pay rent for just the bathroom in the kitchen.

I mean, that situation just sounds terrible. Yeah, it does. And it isn't just an informal or a one-off thing at UCSB. There's one California University that has actually put up a parking area for students who can't find housing. So they're basically encouraged to go and take their car and sleep there on campus. Wow. I mean, I guess that's better than them sleeping someplace that isn't to hear and might be more dangerous, but that is not a long-term solution. I mean, I guess that's better than them sleeping someplace that isn't to hear and might be more dangerous, but that is not a long-term solution. I mean, that's terrible.

Yeah, not at all. And so, in light of all of these housing issues, Mark still hates the design, but he has concerns about the side effects of this story that he helped break. There's another part of me that understands the housing prices that we're in. So I can see now why he is up to minds about this. So what's his take on this larger crisis? So in part, he blames the university for not spending up housing sooner, for waiting this long, for letting it become a crisis.

But he also points to the role that the ultra rich have in shaping academic institutions. In this case, not only is Charles Munger, the largest single donor, backing Munger Hall, but he's also been a driving force behind its architectural design. And remember, Munger is an investor, like his boss, more and buff it.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem like he has an architectural expertise in that case. That's right. And so part of the issue here is that he put up this fraction of the amount needed to fund the building, which did get the project started, which on some level is good. But somehow, despite only putting up some of the money, he's getting essentially a controlling interest in the design. And obviously, this kind of influence,

amateur sort of architects designing buildings, like having this kind of level of control over our academic institutions, you can see how that would create some problems. Our institutions of higher learning are essentially guided now by not just millionaires in Rich and Rich and Bull. We're talking about billionaires, like essentially guided now by not like just millionaires and rich people. We're talking about like billionaires,

people who have enough money that they can play God. That, yeah, it worries me. And Mark sees this economic and political moment were in as a factor in the story blowing up like it did. You know, a lot of people are concerned with wealth inequality and who has power via the money in America. I really think this is like a testament to what billionaires are doing in our society that the story from a little area of Santa Barbara would go this viral. I mean, I think

that's why the story had so much resonance with people was that it was it was the Charlie Munger part of it that really made it viral as much as anything else. I understand that you need dense student housing and that needs to happen. It seems clear that this building is not the proper holistic solution to that problem. So like I'm not sure what is the most important part of this. Anybody who's sort of interested in the pros and cons and the debate over this, I'd really encourage you to read Big Fadden's letter. It's really powerfully written. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Kurt. It's a great story. I'm so glad we got a little bit more perspective into it.

And I'm so glad that somebody took this sort of 99 PI spirit to examine, deeply examine the built world and then realize that there was something they could do about it. And that's just, uh, that just pleases me to know, Ant. Yeah. Well, thank you, in the next video. of the show and Eagle Ear listeners may recall that I've talked about his band Beauty Pill a couple of times over the years. I love them. Beauty Pill has a new 12-in-single called Instant Night. It has four songs and they're all available as digital downloads on Bandcamp. But what is particularly notable about this release and one of the reasons Chad and I were talking about it on the phone one day was because they decided to create really striking and beautiful vinyl and CD packaging for the songs. It is an entirely translucent, basically invisible, I'm putting that in quotes record. It's a design experiment. It doesn't look like other records. The designer Nora McKelvie created a clear

vinyl record and a clear plastic sleeve with silver foil typography. It is a gorgeous thing. in a clear plastic sleeve with silver foil typography. It is a gorgeous thing. But the economics of a 12 inch single are complicated, particularly when they're made to be beautiful design objects. So bands don't tend to release a lot of them. But I love the idea of a 12 inch single because I love New Order.

Which brings us to Chad Clark's mini story about the best selling 12 inch single of all time, which Legend Goes was also a complete financial fiasco because of its design. I'm talking about New Order's Blue Monday. A blue Monday for people who don't know it. Actually, I'm going to just be bold enough to say you do know Blue Monday whether or not you think you know Blue. You think that's exactly right.

You've heard it in some way. Yes. It's the song that goes you've been in a dance, a school dance, you've been in a club, you've heard it in some way. Honestly, if you've been in the supermarket, you've heard the song. The 12 and single for Blue Monday came out in 1983 and the cover was designed by the brilliant Peter Savall. He designed the Blue Monday cover to resemble a floppy disk. People who are younger won't know what that is, but a floppy disk was the way the data was beginning to be stored actually at that time.

When he used the floppy disk as an iconic image, it was actually cutting edge at that time. It was a new thing, and it was considered very futuristic. The story goes that Peter Savill was visiting new order in the studio as they were just beginning to experiment with electronic music. And he saw a five inch floppy disk on the table and he was like, what the hell is this thing? But it totally inspired him.

I don't think he even understood what it was. Peter's new was something exciting and odd looking. Floppy disks are square, but they have little cutouts. And that actually brings to a really important part of the Blue Monday Fable. Peter is a very exacting designer, and he insisted that the form of the 12 inch had to mimic a floppy disk exactly. And floppy disks have what they call die cut poles in them, basically, where you can see the data exposed. In this case, in his design,

the data being the vinyl record, which is, I'm sorry, that is just genius. I mean, take a moment to really know for real. But just take a moment to be like, he is essentially one of the semiotics of this design, is he's saying there is data in this music. And that's just that's just heavy and beautiful to me as an artist that's very inspiring.

But so and insisting on the die cut, it was a very unusual cut. The pressing had to be custom designed and it was expensive to produce. In addition to the custom cuts, it also has a full color banding on the edge, which added to the expense. It was so expensive to produce that the label ended up selling the record, not at a profit at all. There was a significant loss of money attached to Blue Monday, which is part of, to me, the romance of its fable, these people cared so much about being specific, about the design of what they're doing,

that they forgot the bottom line. And for me, again, as an artist, I just find that very inspiring and very cool and very romantic, I guess. But it wasn't meant to be a romantic gesture. It was just an oversight. And it's been reported that the label lost about seven cents each time a copy of Blue Monday was old. What I've seen of them talking about it, I think they feel a little embarrassed, or maybe a little bit sheepish about the mistake that happened. I think factory records was a notoriously chaotic business operation, and there was a lot of drugs and deboutry and all sorts of craziness.

I presume that label adjusted the manufacturing cost or the price to get it all into balance eventually, but still. There's just something beautiful to making a statement even when it hurts financially. And so when you hear the statistic that this is the best-selling 12-inch of all time, that statistic has an asterisk to it, which is like it's one of the most money-losing records ever. And just speaking as an independent musician who has made a lot of choices, artistic and otherwise, that have not led me to getting rich. There's just something really just,

I don't know, just something kind of beautiful about it. So that's my, um, Blue Monday take. Let me in your cowards let me in I swear you're gonna like me Let me in your cowards let me in You don't know nobody like me Maybe I could be your friend Could you see me as your friend? Let me in your cowards let me in, you don't know nobody like me. You need a better mind, honey, someone I can tell you. You need a better mind, honey, that's okay, I'll teach you. You need a better mind. Tchaikovsky is the chief songwriter of the band PewDiePie.

The new 12-inch single is called Instant Night. I'm really partial to the B side. It's called, You Need A Better My. Something is missing in your life What has it's been the hardest time? The loneliness now and at your heart has also been knowing about it Maybe we could get along Tell me how could that be wrong? The loneliness now and at your heart has it's all so been on in mine.

You need a better mind. I need someone I have to tell you. You need a better mind. I need a hot, so good, I do too. Coming up after the break, an indelible design featured on disposable cups. Stay with us. Okay, Christopher Johnson, what do you have for us?

The late 80s Roman. How well do you remember the late 80s and the early 90s? I would say I remember them very well. That was like, that was prime Roman time with like kind of 13 to 17, you know, I like that prime Roman time. So do you remember how everything was like all bright and poppy and neon or damn near neon? Electric and busy with squiggles and squaggles and shapes and you saw it on on skater shoes and in music videos Company logos. I remember James shorts remember those Remember those from the Mood 80s?

Absolutely. Like, very bright shorts with lots of socks. Yeah, absolutely. And so nothing was safe, right? Everything had this aesthetic on it. And nothing says to me, late 80s or early 90s, more than this paper cup design, those called jazz. So I'm going to show it to you.

And how, so take a look at this, how would you describe this jazz cup? Well, I know this cup very, very well. So it's, it is a broad, wide turquoise kind of zigzag stripe. And it's overlaid with a thinner purple zig-zag stripe. And it is just, it is just something else. But you really, it is like ubiquitous. These cups are everywhere. They're a staplet conferences and in break rooms all across America. So where does the jazz cup come from? So design geeks have been obsessed with figuring out that question. And they want to know who came up with the jazz cup for years. So, design geek has been obsessed with figuring out that question. And they want to know who came up with the jazz cup. For years, no one could figure out who designed it. It was this big

mystery. And then in 2015, a reporter at the Springfield News Leader in Missouri tracked down the woman believed to be the creator of this iconic piece of disposable tableware art. My name is Geina Iqas. I'm the creator of the jazz cup design. Just recently became another sensation. Geina lives in Aurora, Missouri, and she's been doing art since she was a kid. As far back as I can remember, I've been drawing and painting and getting into trouble because of it, just things like that.

My mom, when I was five, she painted the bathroom cabinetry white. And to me, that was an open invitation. So I drew pictures all over it and she was not very thrilled. So when my dad got home, he pulled me aside, he said, well, here's your options. I can either give you a spanking or I'm going to take your crayons away for a week. I said, I'll take the spanking. That's a woman who loves her art, a girl who loves her art, and a woman who loves her art.

And she stuck with it. In the late 80s, she graduated from college with an art degree, and she landed her first job at Sweetheart Cup Company in Springfield, Missouri. And she became what was called a general line artist. That's someone who designs their cups and bowls and plates and stuff like that. And they had clients that include a Taco Bell, McDonald's and even little mom and pop stores.

The company was doing really well, but there was one area where it was struggling a bit. See, like sweetheart also put its own designs on paper products. And those designs weren't very interesting. And in the late 80s, Ika says that the company decided that it was time for a new look on its own products, which makes sense.

It's about to be a new decade. Let's kick in the door. The 90s with something that's fresh, or the picnics and the office parties of the computer age. And she says that first, sweetheart hired outside contractors for this makeover. But the company wasn't getting what it wanted. So, sweetheart turned to its own internal art department.

And they made it a competition. And the winning design would become the company's brand new signature stock art. Whoa, okay, so how did that work? Like, were there kind of rules for the competition? Yes, so the specs were make it a one or two color design, something that was fairly clean, right? But also something that could be easily reprinted

without any mistakes, and it's got to fit on curved surfaces like plates and bowls and stuff. But, Guyna says that even inside of those parameters, she felt like sweetheart was willing to be a little bit adventurous. I thought immediately they're wanting to do something fresh and different.

They're wanting to kind of hit on a younger crowd of either vendors and or customers. They're wanting to kind of hit on a younger crowd of either vendors and or customers. People were wanting something a little live layer. So she pulled out some of her old college portfolios and she found some old designs that she could experiment with and she started tweaking them, playing with chalks and charcoals and pastels and paints. And so I just, I set there for hours and just made different swashes with the space of

charcoal until I got one that I liked. And then I got another type of charcoal, smaller piece, and experimented with the purple. Then I overlayed them and that's how it came together. Guyna's flying free hand sketched out those two zigzags, the skinny one in purple, and the big fat one in turquoise blue. Those were two of her favorite colors. Hmm. I mean, you know, the zigzag turquoise purple is like, that was everywhere that color. That was a real favorite of the moment for sure. At that time, it was peaking everywhere. Everybody had wild colored jogging suits and sneakers and things like that.

I just thought, I want to pull this color. It's so different than anything that the corporation had printed before. And they were really, you know, saying they wanted to go in a new direction and drawing a lively or crowd or clientele. So I thought, well, if we're going to go all out, let's just go all out. I mean, there's a word to live by. If we're going to go all out, let's go all out. I mean, there's a word still live by. If we're gonna go all out, let's go all out. I mean, it sounds like she was encouraged internally to go all out, but I'm still actually kind of surprised now that I think about it.

How bold it is. Yeah, it's true, and there was no guarantee that the company was gonna go for it. Everyone was allowed to submit up to four designs. And Gaina did that. She turned in her four sketches, crossed her fingers, and then the boss has come by her desk, and they say, we want to see you. And they just called me into the office and said, you know, this is what they've decided

to go with. It's your design. It is. I was shocked. I was thrilled, but I was shocked. So Guyna was standing there in her boss's office. She's happy, she's shocked. And then they hit her with some more asks.

And then they're like, now we're kind of on a short time span here. We've got to get this into production. So we've got to come up with a name for it because they want to start advertising our new design. And I thought, how do I go about picking a name for a line of cut where I, you know, I'm right out of college. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. So now she's got to come up with a name for this thing. And that's really outside of her area of expertise. I mean, I mean, I think they gave her the opportunity to name it, but still,

that's so funny. So she does for the name exactly what she did for the design itself. She goes back to her old portfolios and she finds that design that she'd done for college. And the name of it had been Razi, R-A-Z-Z-I. And I said, well, what about like Jazzy or Jaz? And they were like, yeah, let's try that. Okay. Okay, so she comes up with both the design and the name. And this design is everywhere for decades at this point. Right, right.

Yeah. Did Guyna get anything for coming up with jazz? Honestly, not a whole lot. I mean, she says she got a $50 gift certificate. She got some swag with jazz printed on it and she got bragging rights. And that's it. Because she worked for sweetheart.

So she says she signed papers that said that the design belonged to sweetheart. Yeah. And so Jazz gets copyrighted in the early 90s and it just takes off. And Gynast says she hasn't been able to escape the design since. I mean, I've seen like fake fingernails,

men's underwear. I mean, it's just anything fake fingernails, men's underwear. I mean, it's just anything you can imagine and a lot of things you can't imagine. I've seen it printed on. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, you know, my son came home for Christmas two years ago. He had the sweatpants, the sweatshirt.

His girlfriend had the jazz mask. I think it's funny that her kids are kind of trolling her with her own design. Chris, this morning, that's hilarious. I mean, but she's totally right. You've seen it everywhere, even if you're just talking about cups and plates, you've seen it everywhere. And then it has totally transcended that. So she didn't get any real money for it.

And she didn't get credit for it because it was a mystery until recently. What happened to Gynah after she came up with this design? So about a decade after the design comes out, Sweetheart gets bought by Solo Cup. Gynah's office in Springfield closes down, and she moves on to other jobs. She painted murals, she ran a landscape supply company with her husband, and today she's got a job at Hobby Lobby,

but she's also making her own art. Well, I, it sounds odd, but I collect old cowboy boots and I make them into purses. I've had several ladies from, you know, all over the United States, like their husband might have passed. They send me his boots and I make them a purse out of them so they can carry it. That is a very specific form of art. So the jazz cup is still everywhere, the design is still everywhere. Do you have any idea why you think that is?

Yeah, well, I think at least part of it is that this design comes along just as the internet is becoming more and more a part of our lives. And so it's been that generation that really took that design and ran with it. Right, right. It's also like that generation got old enough to have nostalgia for things in the late 80s and early 90s. Yeah, they got old enough to go, oh, what about that sort of like fun and, you know, salient but also kind of little cheesy design from my youth

that now I love for lots of reasons, you know, like, and they were also like, we will not rest until we find out who is responsible for this piece of beauty. Yes. And so when it came out about seven years ago that Guyna Iqas was responsible, adoring fans of the design, they were so thrilled. They lost their minds.

And finally, it was so happy to finally put a name and a face to this flying purple and teal zigzag that so epitomized the late 80s and the early 90s. Which was all great, but then there was a problem. My name is Stephanie Miller, and I am the original designer of what became known as the jazz cup design. Oh no. Okay, so this woman's Stephanie Miller

and Gina are both claiming to be creators of the design jazz. Yep. Wow. So when the story came out seven years ago, naming Gina as the originator, Stephanie raised her hand on Twitter and Reddit and said, hold the phone. That's my design. Wow. Okay, so what is Stephanie's version of this story? Okay, so Stephanie lives in Sandesky, Ohio and I gave her a call and she told me, you know, she started off a lot like Gaina. She'd been making art since she was a kid. She went to college for graphic design and she got a job right after graduation at a company called Imperial Cup in Canton, Ohio. For years and years, Imperial had been using a design. It was basically just wheat printed on its cups and plates.

It's wheat. Okay. Wheat. So, there's kind of nowhere to go but up, you know? And again, it's now the late 80s and Stephanie says Imperial was ready to switch things up. So she says she did a few different designs for them, including a paintbrushed thick blue zigzag

with a thinner purple zigzag brushed over top of it. She called her design brush strokes. Imperial cup picked that design, put it on their products, and brush strokes was out in the world. And then, along the holds, and brush strokes was out in the world. And then, lo and behold, a design that was almost identical from sweetheart came out. But basically, the only difference between the designs were the materials used to make it.

I did paint brush strokes, and it looks like she had used charcoal, but it was exactly the same. So Stephanie's hypothesis is that a salesman at Sweetheart saw an Imperial Cup with her design on it and liked it. They took the cup over to Guinas desk, put it down in front of her and said, this is great. Make a version of this for us. And according to Stephanie's version of events, Sweetheart, who would have stolen the design from Imperial, then sent Imperial

a cease and desist letter. Like, stop making the design, we just stole from you, or we're gonna sue. Okay, I think I'm following this. So, if sweetheart sent Imperial a cease and desist letter, is there proof of that? Like, is that show up anywhere? No. Stephanie, so far far hasn't produced any proof. And as for Guyna, you know, Sweetheart still has the copyright on jazz. And another company called Dart Container, that's the company that now owns Sweetheart, they wrote me to say this.

The jazz design was originally created in the late 1980s by Gaina Iqis, a sweetheart company employee, as part of an internal design contest for a new stock image. She chose her favorite color turquoise and purple since it went so well with turquoise. So it seems pretty settled at at this point unless something else comes out. Exactly. That's exactly right. I mean, so I listened to you talking to Gaina and she seemed like she's laughing and enjoying this and, you know, and doesn't seem particularly put out that she didn't make a lot of money for her med or, you know, it kind of seems to enjoy it being seen on, you know, men's box of shorts and things like that. Did you get a sense from her that this was anything but a good memory for her?

Oh my God. What you're hearing is exactly what our one-hour phone call was like. She just seemed so proud of what she'd done and also amused by the fact that it is still getting a lot of attention that it has sort of found the second life in popular culture. I think that it also just means something to her that the perfection of the design is borne out by the fact that other people have picked it up and given it so much love and props, like as a graphic designer, she seems pretty thrilled just by that. And there is also just something really elegant and beautiful in a certain way,

about the way she captures a moment. That's what's crazy is that it really is of the moment that design really does center you in 1990. But it also became timeless because it was so specific, which is a thing I kind of love about a certain type of design is that the the soul of it is its specificity and and therefore it is universal and that's great. Yeah, you nailed it. Well, thank you, Chris, for I love this story. This is so much fun.

Thanks, Roman. 99% Invisible was produced this week by its Laney Hall, Kurt Colestead and Christopher Johnson, mixed in tech production by Amidig Anatra, music-buyer director of sound, Swan Rial. The rest of the team is Vivian Le, Emmett Fitzgerald, Lashma Don, Chris Barouba, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia Klatskuh, and me Roman Mars. We are part of the Citroen Series XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. In beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars

and the show at 99PI orc. Well, on Instagram and Reddit too. You can find links to other n-p-i-dot-org. Duh, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun