“Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”

(thanks, Chaz)

View larger illustration here, by Patrick Moberg. (Thanks Jan Krause).

Chicago, USA

It’s (finally) a happier and more hopeful day for most Americans as well as billions of others around the world… may the nascent dreams for a better future indeed be realized…

Image from Un Mundo Feliz, here. 

New York, USA

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.” Today, as we approach the 60th anniversary of that momentous occasion, less than 5% of the world’s population even knows that the Declaration exists. Do you know your human rights?

To celebrate the milestone anniversary (coming up on 10 December 2008), designer Seth Brau created an engaging type-based video. Enjoy it, here, and please do what you can to help disseminate the Declaration, an important and timeless treatise for all humankind. You can find over 337 different language versions of the Declaration at the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.

New York, New York

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is more than 10 times that estimate. So what’s behind the ballooning figures? Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme’s exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs Americans will pay for many years to come. Watch the remarkable video/animation (starring Trade Gothic) here.

From the good folks at Good—(thanks Matt).

Lisbon, Portugal

I’ve accepted an invitation from Hector Aruso Ross of OFFF, Post-Digital Creation Culture to present at the next international festival in Lisbon, Portugal, 7-9 May 2009. With the event’s venue the Centro Cultural de Belém Conference Centre and the Leitmotif “fail gracefully,” it looks like it will be a fun festival… find out more about OFFF here, catch the latest event news here, and see the growing list of featured artists here.

India, and elsewhere…

Best wishes to all my Indian and South Asian friends (Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains alike) on this special day, the advent of Diwali, the festival of lights. May you happily celebrate “the victory of good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance,” and also find a “reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill,” all the while celebrating the simple (as well as the not-so-simple) joys of life!

Roslyn, New York

The legendary Lou Dorfsman died last Wednesday at the age of 90. From Saturday’s obit in The New York Times: “Mr. Dorfsman’s work became a model for corporate communications, in the marketing discipline now called branding. In 1946, when he joined CBS as art director for its successful radio networks, the company was already a leader in both advertising and the relatively new field of corporate identity. Frank Stanton, then CBS’s president, understood the business value of sophisticated design and had earlier hired William Golden as the overall art director; in 1951 Golden designed the emblematic CBS eye, among the most identifiable logos in the world. Mr. Dorfsman not only extended Golden’s aesthetic by combining conceptual clarity and provocative visual presentation, but developed his own signature style of graphic design.”

I felt honoured to have met Lou in New York in 1984 (on the occasion of Leo Lionni being granted the AIGA medal, six years after Dorfsman had been awarded the same honour). Mr. Dorfsman’s work has inspired an entire generation of designers—here’s to your legacy Lou!

See some of Lou’s work here, here (Cooper Union article in PDF), or here (with some great links), and read about “the wall that Lou built” on Speak Up here.

“Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.”

—Lou Dorfsman, 1918-2008

Guantánamo, Cuba

Though now heard about infrequently in the news, the United States’ illegal detention center at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the hundreds of so-called “enemy combatants” still held there (some for over seven years without even the basic protections granted by the Geneva Conventions) have not been forgotten—out of sight does not mean out of mind. Thanks to designer colleagues in Spain for the gno! initiative (many more graphic expressions here).

Images: “Guantànamo: an icon of lawlessness” poster; detainees upon arrival at Camp X-Ray, January 2002.

…like this sheep on the famous Kjeragbolten chockstone, a 5 m³ boulder wedged in a crevasse at the edge of Kjerag mountain in Norway—a lofty and breezy 1000 m above the Lysefjorden (fjord).

the Internet, wherever

I gave a presentation today at <head>, as part of the world’s first interactive, real-time, virtual, global web-development and design conference (saving tons of emissions by not flying anywhere). It certainly challenged my Luddite-like tendencies (prior to today I had never even video-conferenced). Learn more about <head> here. Whew. Participants who took in my presentation can contact me here to obtain a PDF transcript of the quotations, etc. I used in my talk.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Old neon signs that have been decommisioned… a great image set here.

Kansas City, Missouri

Several hundred of these ephemeral little beauties in a collection here, thanks to fragmented (a.k.a. the talented Maura Cluthe).

Osaka, Japan

If you like Kanji, typography in general, and/or online opportunities to ideate and compose in real time… fontpark 2.0 by the Japanese type giant Morisawa may be your cup of tea. Check out the gallery first, then “play and create” at will. (thanks for the fun link, Cameron).

Middletown, Connecticut

It was great to hear today from a former Hartford student of mine, Kyle Green (thanks for the Biodiesel photo), who married his college sweetheart two weeks ago (Congrats!) and is now working in Middletown, designing touch screen kiosk interfaces. Two years ago, Kyle was part of Mix06, a collaborative design project undertaken by students in Hartford and Melbourne, Australia that explored similarities and differences between Indigenous and Immigrant cultures in both the USA and AUS.

Winnipeg, Canada

As economies erode and monetary currencies tank around the world, here’s a fun little “value-added” activity you can do with those extra paper bills… Moneygami (money + origami)—lots more here.

Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba

[weird warning—blame it on the fresh air…]

While stacking my girlfriend’s supply of winter firewood in the brilliant sunshine of a perfect October day I found myself thinking about singular vision, the mythical Cyclops, and my dear old cat Erasmus (who departed this temporal realm two years ago), and who I had named 18 years ago after one of my favorite old dead guys (whom I still tend to quote a lot), the Dutch Renaissance humanist Erasmus (Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus)—the man who is credited with the maxim:

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
(from the Latin in regione caecorum rex est luscus.)

Images: The Cyclops Café (below my favorite hotel in Seattle, the Ace, and with such a clever WYSIWYG sign); Cyclops (by Jaime Pitarch); and the mythical Cyclops that has stuck in my mind since first encountering Homer’s Odyssey in grammar school over four decades ago (as envisioned by monsterkid.com).

Makes sense to me… (sources unknown).

Winnipeg, Canada

We’ve been delighted this past week to have Lana Wagner Plant working with us at Circle—Lana is a Danish designer from Krogh&Co in Copenhagen here on an exchange visit. At an informal reception yesterday for our current and past designers, Lana gave a presentation drawing on her diverse design influences (architecture, ceramics, visual communication), extensive international travels, avocations (Capoeira, Salsa dancing, etc.), life in Copenhagen, and the work that she and her colleagues at Krogh&Co are involved in. It was a pleasure to have you with us Lana, and we wish you all best in your future endeavours…

Toronto, Canada

The signs sprang up suddenly under the cover of night. Official-looking and made of hard plastic and aluminum, they were bolted to posts at major intersections along Lake Shore Blvd. Others turned up at busy downtown hubs. “Quiet,” read one, in front of a downtown hospital. “Homeless people sleeping.”

Another advised, “Homeless warming grate. Please keep clear.” For Mark Daye, who created the series of seven signs, it seemed a master stroke of subversion. How do you draw attention to an age-old urban issue, especially when passersby have long been conditioned to ignore the usual signage—those tattered posters glued to poles and construction sites? “I started thinking about the way sign systems work,” says the 30-year-old Toronto student. “There’s official signage. There’s advertising. So I thought, what would happen if I used official-looking signage, but I put an unofficial message in it?”

Read the full article in the Toronto Star here. View more images on Mark Daye’s flickr™ photostream here. (Thanks to Aiden Enns of Geez magazine for the heads-up… I’m not sure quite what to think of this either—will it reinforce stereotypes to people with no homes, or could it actually inspire compassion, raise public consciousness, and increase support for social safety-nets?)

Stumbled across these—on flickr™ here…

Tokyo, Japan

If you’re a fan of jazz and/or Blue Note graphics, there’s an incredible online resource here of album design and artwork (1930s - 1970s).

Paris, France

Though I’d encountered his remarkable aerial photography a number of times during the past decade, I was completely blown away when I received a gift copy of Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s tome Earth From Above as a speaker gift at the AIGA conference in Vancouver five years ago. Two years ago, Ev and I experienced Yann’s work in a large outdoor exhibit installation of 150 prints in Melbourne (an exhibit which will come to New York in May and June of 2009). Yann’s unique views of our planet aim to inspire people to think globally about sustainable living. Read about the upcoming New York show here and watch a video teaser here. Visit the official websites of Yann Arthus-Bertrand here. Download 2000 incredible wallpaper images here.

Images (© Yann Arthus-Bertrand): 1) A mangrove swamp near the town of Voh in New Caledonia, a group of Pacific islands covering 7,000 square miles (18,575 square km)—nature has carved a clearing in the form of a heart. 2) A worker resting on bales of cotton, Thonakaha, Korhogo, Ivory Coast. Cotton crops occupy approximately 335,000 square kilometers worldwide, and use nearly one quarter of all pesticides sold. 

Ljubljana, Slovenia

This just in from my friend Eduard Cehovin in Ljubljana… “You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition on Thursday, 16 October 2008, at 6 pm, at Stritarjeva ulica 6 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The exhibition will be opened by Janez Kozelj, Deputy Mayor of Ljubljana.” Wish I could attend…

THE ZEBRA CROSSING (Eduard Cehovin and Tanja Devetak)

Urban centres offer visual artists a space for free expression and critical reflection of the environment in which they work. The Zebra Crossing project implements the street art concept on the existing street…  the redesigned visual image does not change the functional dimension of the street crossing, and as such creates a space for an art activity in a public area. Innovative expression sets an example for possible further use.

Abu Dhabi & Jerusalem

Greetings on this fine day to both Muslim and Jewish friends around the world… Eid al-Fitr for the former  (a Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy/fasting month of Ramadan), and Yom Kippur for the latter (also a fast and the most solemn day of the Jewish holidays). Father Abraham (along with son Ishmael/Isaac) looms large in both belief systems… and of course in Christianity as well. Best wishes to all… let’s give peace a chance, eh?

Image: detail from Laurent de LaHyre’s 1650 painting Abraham Sacrificing Isaac, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans. See the full image here.

Monte Rosa, Switzerland

“This remote alpine retreat calls to mind classic James Bond architecture, complete with a futuristic design, advanced building technology, and killer views of the Matterhorn. Can’t you just see Bond skiing down the glacier in a white ski suit, stealthily approaching his enemy’s headquarters? You could imagine that the top of the roof pulls down to reveal a giant laser, which is used as a tractor beam to smash the moon into Earth as the villain demands 700 million 700 billion dollars from the US Government. Oh wait, sorry, we’ve been having nightmares about the economy. But seriously though, this hut outside of Zermatt in the Swiss Alps is for real. It’s the Swiss Alpine Club’s new Monte Rosa mountaineer’s hut, and it’s 90% energy self-sufficient.”

From Inhabitat—read the whole story here. (That’s the Matterhorn on the left edge of the upper image).

From all over the USA…

Chaz Maviyane-Davies writes: “Tell me it can’t be true. Following 8 years of disastrous governance, the Democrats field the best candidate this country has seen in generations, against one of the worst the Republicans have ever mustered, and the media’s political pundits would have us seriously contemplate more of the same. Is anyone ever going to learn?” From ‘30 Reasons,’  a 30-day email and internet campaign to encourage people to vote for Barack Obama.

“Our goal is simple: Use design to build a logical, multi-faceted argument for Obama and make it easy to share each reason with another person… We enlisted 30 graphic designers to create a poster that represents a reason to vote for Obama. Starting on October 5th, we will post a new poster online every day and email it to our list. Recipients can easily share the email with other supporters and friends who are undecided.”

See all the posters (to date) here: or sign up at www.30reasons.org to receive a daily email.

…in Italy after a two-year trip to the United States—corporate sponsors are acknowledged. For comparison, see a photo of David taken just over two years ago, here. (Sent to me individually by several friends in Europe, so I know it really must be true :-)

Le David de Michelangelo est de retour en Italie après 2 années passées aux USA—merci aux sponsors…

Brooklyn, New York

Check out this engaging “public interactive art project” with the self-descriptive title Parts of a Character. Typographic fun with body parts… here.

New York, USA

I met Dana Bartelt by chance on an airport shuttle bus to downtown Prague in June of 2002, during my first year as Icograda president. Two days later we crossed paths again at the Icograda Identity/Integrity Conference in Brno, Czech Republic, held in conjunction with the 20th Brno Biennale. Dana handed me a disk of images from Don’t Say You Didn’t Know/Posters for Palestine, an initiative she had spearheaded using propaganda art to shed light on the sustained (some would say nefarious) support the U.S. provides to Israel in its ongoing occupation of Palestinian land and its oppression of the Palestinian people. Among the images in the collection, Rajie Cook’s The Star stood out for the power and clarity of its statement re: organized Zionism as an internal force in American political life… a topic often considered taboo (and quick to trigger accusations of Antisemitism).

Here’s a snip about Rajie from The Electronic Intifada: “Born in 1930, Palestinian-American artist Rajie Cook has had a very successful career in graphic design. The ‘Symbol Signs’ that hang in airports internationally, communicating purely through icons rather than text, were designed by Cook and his design firm. He has been honored by President Reagan and the ‘Symbols Signs’ project has been acquired into the Smithsonian’s collection. However, Cook is not done creating work that intends to communicate. Born in the United States to parents originally from Palestine, the violence and continued injustice that consume his homeland spurs him to make Joseph Cornell-inspired boxes that comment upon various aspects of the conflict…” Read more about Rajie’s passionate work here, and visit his website to see more of his assemblages and posters here.

Poster images: The Star (1996) and The Dollar (2007), both © Rajie Cook.

Winnipeg, Canada

Travel details are confirmed, and the Poet is making final preparations for his trip to the prairies. For friends, family, and poetry fans in the Manitoba area, here are the dates, times, and venues of Sam W. Reimer’s confirmed book launches, poetry readings (and signings) during the second week of October:

Winnipeg - 8pm on Monday, 6 October,
McNally Robinson’s Grant Park store,
(The Prairie Ink Restaurant).

Morden - 7pm on Tuesday, 7 October,
Pembina Hills Arts Centre (wine & cheese, etc.).

Steinbach - 7:30pm on Friday, 10 October,
Mennonite Heritage Village museum.

More information is available at www.samwreimer.com. A bit of background on Gray Matter Graffitti (the poetry book I edited/published with Sam W. earlier this year) is available at this post. Photo credit: Dan Schellenberg.

Lucknow, India

…Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi was born 139 years ago—on the eve of the anniversary of his birth, Indian children dressed as the Mahatma pose for photos. On 15 June of last year the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish 2 October as the International Day of Non-Violence. (Photo from The New York Times slide show here: by Pawan Kumar/Reuters)

…you know you want to (click on the image above or use this link). Turn up the sound and enjoy some virtual stress relief in your choice of normal or ‘manic’ mode—admittedly a bit like fiddling while Rome burns.  (Thanks, Guy)

Somewhere in the USA

Ohne Anmerkung… aucun commentaire… an oil painting by Ron English (propaganda.com) available in many resolutions here.

Toronto, Canada

Designer/cyclist Simon Farla (about whose FontBike project I posted back in April here) has recently taken over design duties for Mr. Something Something—he’s given me a heads-up re: the band’s innovative new pedal powered, off-the-grid show format—all the power comes from bicycles! The format was launched in conjunction with International Car-Free Day 2008 (a week ago) in Toronto. Check out the band’s new online promo/demo here; read about the Toronto street event (with video link) here.

London, England

Kudos to Catharine Brandy (nee Hildebrand; originally from the rural hamlet of Plum Coulee Manitoba; and a senior design colleague at Circle for over a decade) on the rocking success of the UK’s Beatles stamps—not only have these become the country’s best-selling (non-royalty) postage stamps, they have also won a Gold Cube at this year’s New York Art Directors Club (87th Annual Awards), and have been selected as ‘best of category’ in I.D. magazine’s 54th annual design review. Cath has been a design director with Britain’s Royal Mail for the past half-dozen years—for this issue she worked with the talented designer Michael Johnson of London’s johnson banks.

The six stamps (marking the 50th anniversary of Lennon and McCartney’s first meeting in 1957) portray the ‘Fab Four’ in casual stacks of LPs, each topped with an essential album from the band’s brief history. Read I.D’s description here, and more on the johnson banks Thought for the week blog here.

Poster image by Josh MacPhee of justseeds.org

Following is an alphabetical list of the countries bombed by the United States since the end of the Second World War (the citizens of these countries represent roughly one-third of the people on earth)…

Afghanistan 1998, 2001-present
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Cambodia 1969-70
China 1945-46, 1950-53
Congo 1964
Cuba 1959-1961
El Salvador 1980s
Grenada 1983
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958
Iran 1987
Iraq 1991-present
Korea 1950-53
Kuwait 1991
Laos 1964-73
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986
Nicaragua 1980s
Pakistan 2003, 2006-08
Panama 1989
Peru 1965
Somalia 1993, 2008
Sudan 1998
Vietnam 1961-73
Yemen 2002
Yugoslavia 1999

Louisville, Kentucky

From the “a picture is worth a thousand words” file… flashback to a 1937 Margaret Bourke-White photo from the Great Depression. No further comment necessary…

Winnipeg, Canada

Here’s a cool ‘tool’ that my friend and colleague Adrian discovered recently…

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. (from the Wordle website)

You can either enter text yourself or submit a blog/RSS feed for the Java applet to draw from. Visit http://wordle.net/ to learn more or to make your own “word cloud.”

Image shown: the “word cloud” image above was created using the Wordle applet and text from Circle’s website. You can view the image larger here on Adrian’s flickr site.

Winnipeg, Canada

If you’ve ever sat through one of my lectures (or read my book), you know that I frequently quote Marshall McLuhan (an ex-Winnipeger). Enjoy these quick quips of his…

+  +  +  +  +

Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay.

Money is the poor man’s credit card.

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.
We march backwards into the future.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?

Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth.

The trouble with a cheap, specialized education
is that you never stop paying for it.

People don’t actually read newspapers.
They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.

The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.

News, far more than art, is artifact.

When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body.

Tomorrow is our permanent address.

All advertising advertises advertising.

The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.

The missing link created far more interest
than all the chains and explanations of being.

When a thing is current, it creates currency.

Food for the mind is like food for the body:
the inputs are never the same as the outputs.

The future of the book is the blurb.

The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.

A road is a flattened-out wheel, rolled up in the belly of an airplane.

I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.

This information is top security.
When you have read it, destroy yourself.

More here.