Some of Marc Atlan's Greatest Hits

From I-phones to limited edition Nikes, why has design become this much of a market force? Is it that we're experiencing an on-going visual evolution of contemporary culture in the same way we are under-going a technological revolution? I'm not trying to write a master's thesis. (Part of the discipline of The Imagist for me is to learn to be...succinct). I'm just trying to figure out how the hell the whole world got to be so design sensitive. When did American product packaging start to overwhelm its content? To personalize the issue a little bit... I was out out to dinner last night with a pal from an ad agency, when the subject turned to Fabien Baron and his powerhouse agency Baron and Baron. Its not a company anymore it seems.Its a brand in itself, if you'll pardon that dirty word..."brand".
Baron you know from the firm's traditional image management of magazines : Paris Vogue, the 90's Harper's Bazaar- which obviously I've been looking at a LOT- Interview magazine, Arena Homme +, as well as fashion ads -most notably Calvin Klein. We gossiped a little bit about the influence Le Baron and Karl Templer now had over the direction of Calvin, down to the models, in which that team seems not to be as personally invested in. Certainly not the way Calvin the man invested in Kate Moss and Brooke Shields and now no girl or boy for Calvin is allowed to be a bigger story than the clothes.