Milano, Italy

The aim of Good 50×70 is to use designers’ skills to raise awareness amongst the creative community of the power we have to be a force for good (posters can have a positive impact on thousands of lives). There are 7 briefs from 7 charities on 7 issues that affect thousands of people around the world—participants pick a topic that inspires them and submit a poster on that theme. 210 posters (30 from each brief) are selected by a jury of leading designers, are then exhibited around the world, and are published in a catalogue—more importantly they are presented to the 7 charities for their use in potential campaigns.

(Thanks Adrian and Mark Simpson).

Manitoba, Canada

Well, another day of tornado touch-downs in our northern province… the weather patterns have clearly changed here over the past few years, and it now feels more and more like Kansas (look out Dorothy). Local weather over the past six weeks has been rife with tornado-watch advisories (e.g. as I write this), warnings, and documented incidents… catch a drive-by video of last year’s F5 tornado at Elie, Manitoba here or here (the latter shot by Hutterites from a nearby colony).

(from www.silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com…)

From a remarkable French website featuring thousands of antique postcards (of every genre)… century-old photographs (from around the world), poignant illustrations (like the Raphaël Kirchner above), and delightful ephemera. (Link no longer active, sorry).

…from Frank Chimero’s Inspirational Design Posters.

…by Michael Kenna. Photography as poetic quietude…

…from a beautiful Flickr collection of vintage ephemera, here.

…from The Ampersand blog (& many more there as well).

…with colorflip (beautiful in its high-chroma simplicity).

Washington, D.C.

From the “did you know” and “almost beyond belief” departments… according to the CIA’s “World Factbook,” the United States spent some $623 billion last year on its military (that’s $1.7 billion per day!) which dwarfs the military spending of all other nations combined. Yet this “leading superpower” gun-loving nation of 304 million people is already nearly $10 trillion in debt (view a debt clock here), the average U.S. citizen’s share of this debt is over $31,000 and the U.S. national debt continues to increase an average of $1.6 billion per day! Hmmm…

Image: a page from the May/June #77 issue of Adbusters