radial stripes

The brand design for Vic­tro­la Cof­fee on 15^th is beau­ti­ful:

There’s a sense of con­fec­tion about it.  It prints nice­ly, it exudes a Capi­tol Hill-ish steam­punk sen­si­bil­i­ty, and it rhymes with those radi­al­ly-striped teacup designs which are so much more inter­est­ing than the more com­mon sort with hor­i­zon­tal stripes.  There’s a fla­vor-sound synes­the­sia of music in the cup.

Anoth­er detail I noticed at Vic­tro­la on my last vis­it was the treat­ment of com­post and recy­clables.  Most of the Seat­tle cof­feeshops are now mak­ing a rea­son­able effort to sep­a­rate their trash, but whether it works or not depends in part on the recep­ta­cle design.  Aside from usabil­i­ty, there’s a dif­fi­cul­ty with what to call that thing that’s nei­ther com­postable nor recy­clable.  Who remem­bers the dif­fer­ence between trash, garbage, refuse, rub­bish, etc.?  None of these terms are the same part of speech as “com­post” or “recy­cle”, which speak to the fate of the thing you throw away.  Because the vaguer terms give the onto­log­i­cal sense of a super­set, when ranged along­side “com­post” or “recy­cle” they sug­gest a default option: some­thing is “trash” first, and one should then think about whether it might be com­postable or recy­clable trash.

Call­ing the third option “land­fill” solves the prob­lem ele­gant­ly, and I’m fair­ly sure has a major effect on both increas­ing the use of the oth­er two and improv­ing sep­a­ra­tion.  This would be a good result to doc­u­ment.