Celebrating industrial design creativity… (from a selection of images provided by Nils J. Tvengsberg, IDSA—designers unknown).

There’s a list here of industrial design-related events around the world today.

Image: poster for the new film by Gary Hustwit, Objectified.

(source unknown)

PostSecret is an ongoing (by now international) community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. I have posted about PostSecret before here and here… the clandestine collective catharsis continues with gusto.

Karlsruhe, Germany

(found at slanted.de)

Paquetville, NB / Timmins, ON

On 2 July 2009 the latest set of commemorative stamps we’ve designed at Circle for Canada Post will launch concurrently—in the small Acadian village of Paquetville, New Brunswick, where chanteuse Édith Butler was born and raised—and in Timmins, Ontario, where renowned folklorist Stompin’ Tom (Connors) was first granted a 14-month contract to play at the city’s Maple Leaf Hotel. The set of four stamps also includes international rock superstar Bryan Adams and Robert Charlebois, a pioneer of French-Canadian rock.

Building on the market success of the Canadian Recording Artists series we designed two years ago (featuring Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, and Paul Anka) this set of stamps adopts the round CD-shape precedent for booklets (each artist is featured on a separate booklet cover) and the gummed souvenir sheet (popular with collectors and philatelists)—the latter also appears with dual cancellations with date of issue on the Official First Day Cover (OFDC). Booklets of pressure-sensitive stamps include envelope seals and information about the individual artists.

We also designed a set of postcards—each of these includes an additional performance image of the featured artist. We initially decided to create monochrome portraits for the artists (using a vector-conversion process based on sourced photography of dramatically varying quality levels) and then brought them all into the same dynamic visual “performance space,” a spotlit simulation of how they might appear live and on stage. As we did in the 2007 series, we incorporated a distinctive MetalFX® process of under-printed metallic inks into backgrounds and selvedge areas, adding a lustrous sheen that helps convey the feeling of shiny vinyl and “gold album” prestige.

These limited edition stamps will be available through post offices across the country as of 2 July 2009, can be ordered online by following the links at Canada Post’s website www.canadapost.ca, or by calling toll-free: 1-800-565-4362 (Canada and the United States), or 902-863-6550 (from other countries).

Images: the round souvenir sheet; the four postcards, each featuring an enlarged stamp/portrait; the OFDC with dual cancellations.

Somewhere in the great beyond, presumably…

George Carlin, who could speak colourful truth to power with rhetorical mastery and hyperbolic mirth like few before him, passed on a year ago this week… thankfully we can still enjoy samplings of his caustic brilliance such as this (language warning) online.

Here’s lookin’ at you (and your social justice legacy) Herb…

Above: a sampling of the remarkable editorial cartoons of Herbert Lawrence Block, commonly known as Herblock (October 13, 1909 – October 7, 2001). Lots more good stuff left us by Herblock here.

Portage la Prairie, Manitoba

The Manitoba Agricultural Hall of Fame has officially announced its inductees for 2009—among the nine individuals “judged to have made a significant and lasting contribution to agriculture in Manitoba within their lifetimes” is my dad’s older brother, my ‘Uncle Pete,’ Peter Jacob Peters, now 95. He’ll be giving a 5-minute speech (though he insists he needs 20 :-) at 1:30pm on 16 July at a ceremony open to the public at the William Glesby Center (11-2nd St. NE) in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.

Peter J. Peters immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine with his family at age eleven (when my father was six). He took his schooling at Gretna in Southern Manitoba, and later enrolled in teacher training. At the outbreak of World War II, Pete enlisted in the RCAF—upon his eventual return from overseas service he attained his BSc. in Agriculture. Following graduation, he worked with the Extension Service of Manitoba Agriculture as a potato specialist (where he became known as “Potato Pete” to those in the field)—among other significant achievements he is credited with paving the way for the commercial potato industry in Manitoba. He also applied himself to the Strawberry Experimental Demonstration program at Hadashville in Eastern Manitoba, and as a direct result of his efforts, the Strawberry Growers Association of Manitoba came into being. Pete served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Manitoba Horticultural Association, was President of the Western Canadian Society for Horticulture, revitalized the periodical The Prairie Gardener, and wrote and published A Century of Horticulture in Manitoba. Aside from his horticultural pursuits, Pete is also a prolific poet (with too many published books to list here) and was active throughout his adult life in church and community activities, renowned for his entertaining hundreds with his photography-poetry-musical presentations.

Photo: Peter J. Peters in 1945 (while requisitioned to serve as a tri-lingual interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials after the war [on account of his fluency in Russian, German, and English]—a time he prefers not to speak about to this day). Thanks to my brother Jim for the scan from an old photographic print.