Earlier this summer I admired the logo for the southern American supermarket chain Food Lion, a proud blue lion in a square lozenge.  I was enchanted by its graphic clarity and its Euro-regal pretensions.  It all seemed a bit much, and also exactly right, for a supermarket that stocked buckets of lard and a thousand varieties of barbecue sauce.  So I was surprised to spot the logo gracing a supermarket called Delhaize in Brussels.  It turns out that Food Lion is a subsidiary of the Belgian conglomerate (also called Delhaize) that owns the chain.  When they built the Food Lion brand they reused the same logo.

I imagined that the Food Lion lion had been concocted, “Mad Men” style, by an enterprising, low-ranking manager at the American headquarters in Salisbury, North Carolina sometime around 1962.  In a way the lion has become the mascot for my peripatetic summer.  What was there tying together my small-town Arkansas days and big-city European adventures?  “Le Lion,” was right there, all along, looking over me, and keeping me well.

There is nothing that distinguishes one Waffle House from the next.  Each of these coffee shops I’ve visited while driving through the south is similarly located (tucked in the awkward corner of a highway exit or entrance ramp) and similarly finished (with flat brick facades and a low yellow roof).  The interiors have an authentic, sleepy, diner feeling, with sweet waitresses, mild coffee, and a mess of cooking paraphernalia (including professional waffle grills) visible behind the counter.  There are red plastic banquettes, counters with spinning stools, and low-hanging white globe lights.  The store’s signature feature is the mile-high sign out in front, which frames each letter individually, Wheel-of-Fortune-style.  It’s a beautifully balanced graphic.

McDonalds used to provide the most consistent presence on the highways.  But nowadays you don’t know what you’ll find when you step into one: a large restaurant with a giant play area, a fancy one-off prototype (like the one in Times Square in New York), or an old design with depressing, out-of-date finishes.  In comparison Waffle House provides a comforting predictability.  Forget the golden arches–

My friend Natasha is visiting India for the first time and emailing postcard-ready images of palm tree-lined beaches, rainbow-colored bungalows, and cows roaming the street.  But none of it conjures India for me like this happy, dopey painting from a slideshow of Indian street art compiled by graphic designer Meena Kadri.  I like everything about it: the pre-Renaissance perspective, the orangey colors, the girl’s crazy hairdo, and her mannish, moonish face.

The painter commissioned to make a sign for the roadside phone booth (they’re called, alarmingly, STD’s) that’s being advertised probably wasn’t given complete instructions but just told to make something attention-grabbing.  So he imagined this girl having a conversation with a friend.  The simplicity and exuberance of the message shine right through.