The Lists of Lists

Posted by Rowland on January 2 at 6:41 PM Every editorial director from blog to magazine and national newspaper ends the year on the "best of" lists. I think this little editorial calendar standard serves an important anthropological and historical purpose: what do we believe, in our cultural short term memory, are the important and defining moments of the year?

So, I've created a little round-up of these lists. The 2007 list of lists. Not an exhaustive meta look at lists--although I wish someone would do that--just a snap shot of what I thought was of note.

Fortune keeps it light with the 101 Dumbest moments of 2007. Humor, as a professor of mine would remind us, is a great insight into the tropes of an era. With the mortgage crises finding multiple spots in the top 10, and some stories I hadn't read before about ebay pulling all thier ads from Google for a week, you might also be struck by certain industries most in need of better PR firms: airlines, banks and, well, PR firms.

At DMD we are deeply involved in the world of architecture. The year in Architecture is well highlighted here, and maybe with equal glee video of imploding architecture all year long here.

Marketers, looking back, would like to know their customers better, move out of traditional marketing tactics and focus more on core business rather than innovation. (The report calls this the "woulda coulda shoulda"...love that).

The year in logos--which was linked to by numerous blogs--is nicely document by Logo Lounge.

Best/worst Movies. Best/worst videos online.

Top 10 discoveries in Archeology.

If we began with humor in business, let's look at a more sobering list of trends for 2008 from Harvard Business School Conversation Starter. Including India, Google, and a very good piece on scale, by the author of Everything Is Miscellaneous.

Happy New Year! Topics: architecture and design, branding, public relations        SHARE: