—Martin Luther King Jr. (‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ / 16 April 1963)

Johannesburg, South Africa

Two good designer friends of mine have launched the Mandela95 Poster Project : the basic idea is to collect 95 exceptional posters in 60 days that celebrate Nelson Mandela’s life and his contribution to humanity. The collection will be launched online on Madiba’s 95th birthday, 18 July 2013.

Great support has already been received from both the local and international design community, and many exhibition opportunities are arising. What started off as a small personal project, conceptualized by Mohammed Jogie and Jacques Lange three weeks ago, has turned into something much larger than what they ever anticipated or intended.

Apart from many close Icograda friends, Designmatters (Art Centre, Pasadena) and Bruce Mau Design Inc. have taken it on as special studio projects. Invitations have already been received to exhibit the final collection in Mexico, USA, Egypt, Cuba, and China (which is amazing because the collection does not exist yet and exhibition plans have not yet been promoted).

Details are being finalized with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Trust to collaborate on an international travelling exhibition for the Mandela95 Poster Collection, as a means to assist the Trust in raising awareness and funds for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, currently under construction in Johannesburg. (The hospital is Madiba’s final wish and his wife Graça Machel is personally chairing the Trust and its development). There are currently only three dedicated, specialist children’s hospitals in the whole of Africa and it is Madiba’s wish to provide a fourth where in his words, “no child will ever be turned away for inability to pay.”

To contribute your own poster design, access the Mandela95 Poster Project Brief here (94K PDF, deadline for confirmation of participation is 5 June; poster submission deadline is 21 June). Review the latest Stakeholder Update from the Nelson Mandela Chilren’s Hospital here (1.8MB PDF).

Warsaw, Poland

Michal Krasnopolski’s concept was “to create a very modernist, minimalist poster series for movie enthusiasts. The idea is based on a very simple grid: a circle and two diagonals inscribed in a square. It surprised me how many posters I could create based on this very simple approach; the possibilities are theoretically unlimited…”

 (Thanks to Nancy Wu in Vancouver for the link).

More than 400 events in over 45 countries… today.

Zwolle, Netherlands

Redmer Hoekstra creates fanciful drawings of a strange world where nothing familiar is quite as it seems. See more of his morphed visions in pen and pencil here and here.

Rome & St. Petersburg

I love these conceptual illustration-compilations which strive to “investigate elements of mental disorder…” See more here.

Pyongyang, North Korea

“North Korean women are encouraged by the state to choose from one of the 18 officially sanctioned hairstyles, as shown in this display on the wall of a salon in the capital…”

(source, via Marian Bantjes)

—The Hausa of Nigeria

(the lastest poster from my friend Chaz Maviyane-Davies)