Best wishes for the Chinese/Lunar New Year!

(It’s the year of the wooden horse, same as my birth year).

(across the United Kingdom)

Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on 27 January every year in the UK. It marks the anniversary of the liberation in 1945, by the Soviet Union, of the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, towards the end of World War II. The Holocaust (or Shoah in Hebrew) claimed the lives of six million Jewish men, women, and children between 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, and 1945, when the Nazis were finally defeated.

The commemorative poster shown above is by my friend Dan Reisinger: “This is a photo of an authentic yellow Star of David we were forced to wear prior to deportation—preserved in my family since 1944.”

(Thanks to Iva Babaja for the link).

—E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977)

Tokyo, Japan

Four years ago today, our friend and colleague Shigeo Fukuda, the great graphic sensei, passed on into the next dimension. Japan’s consummate visual communicator, Fukuda-san is known around the world as a playful prankster, a modern-day Escher, and an imaginative creator who “dramatically shattered cultural and linguistic barriers with his universally recognizable style.”

Perhaps Alan Fletcher described him the best (in Masters of the 20th Century): “Shigeo Fukuda is a star in the design firmament—on second thought, maybe he’s more of a comet.” Fukuda-san—there’s no doubt that you’ll continue to light up our heaven…

Shown above a few samples of Fukuda-san’s engaging posters.

Santander, Spain

By a street artist named Pejak…

—Thomas Merton, 1915-1968 (No Man Is an Island)

Somewhere in greater New York

Matt Hunsberger has been drawing calendars for each of the past 6 years. His 2014 calendar features a different geography fact for each day of the year…

London, UK

Ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden has delivered an “alternative” UK Christmas message, urging an end to mass surveillance. The broadcast was carried on BBC Channel 4 as an alternative to the Queen’s traditional Christmas message. The 30-year-old has temporary asylum in Russia after leaking details of US electronic surveillance programmes.

Snowden opened his two-minute message, recorded in Russia, with a reference to novelist George Orwell, author of 1984, saying the surveillance technology described in his works was “nothing compared to what we have today”.

View Edward Snowden’s two-minute video message here.

“Asking is cheaper than spying.”

Happy Solstice everyone…

Poznan, Poland

Illustrator Pawel Kuczynski portrays today’s social, political, and cultural realities with his thought-provoking work…

See more here.