But that’s assuming publishing and design history will remain the same: locked in this proprietary-design expert-driven-over-strategic-editorial-reviewed-and-expensive-printing paradigm.

Transparent, de-centralized and inexpensive ways of history writing are gaining ground, without necessarily loosing quality of content or “professionalism” – from blogs (like this one) to wikipedia, and glossy yet cheap DIY printing methods.

Maybe people who get their hands on this will have a great interest in mainstream “corporate” culture – visual, verbal or otherwise. People “love” this stuff. I’m thinking of projects like Corpoetics and books like No Logo, whether celebratory or critical.

Who knows what we’ll be writing about in the future, marbles included.

Nick – I think you’re right, thankfully.

I doubt the marbles will be considered representative of this era. Design history generally ignores the mainstream, documenting the “avante garde”, which is more accurately an ongoing “diversionary skirmish”, a parallel narrative of what the trade finds worthy, a consensus best represented by awards shows, and recorded in their annuals. Unless this kind of identity design wins awards, which seems unlikely, it will be relegated to a footnote.

The xerox logo is a step. Just like all the steps in the xerox ident over time. The last update (the alleged classic design) was only 13 years old — and even thus it looks vaguely 1980s.

I take a break from the boxes to wander over to Tony’s office. As I walk in, I notice something pinned to his letterbox. “POSTMAN,” it reads. “Please put all mail in the white box under the colonnade across the courtyard to your right.”

It is not a remarkable note except for one thing. The typeface Tony used to print it is exactly the same typeface Kubrick used for the posters and title sequences of Eyes Wide Shut and 2001. “It’s Futura Extra Bold,” explains Tony. “It was Stanley’s favourite typeface. It’s sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant.”

“Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?” I ask.

“God, yes,” says Tony. “Sometimes late into the night. I was always trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to his sans serifs.”

Tony goes to his bookshelf and brings down a number of volumes full of examples of typefaces, the kind of volumes he and Kubrick used to study, and he shows them to me. “I did once get him to admit the beauty of Bembo,” he adds, “a serif.”