The inspirational Oscar Niemeyer has passed on at the splendid age of 104…

The occasion presented itself to take Evelin to my old haunts this past weekend — we spent a day each in the Black Forest (Germany), Basel (Switzerland), and Strasbourg (Alsace, France). Ev’s admittedly a bigger fan than I of Christmas celebrations; I’d been feeling a bit of Heimatschmerz (homesickness) of late — this quick romantic sortie to the Weinländer of my youth fit the bill for both of us, providing reminiscent sights, sounds, smells, and tastes (replete of course with raclette, Heisse Maroni, cheese crêpes, local Gebäck and gateau, chocolates, marzipan delicacies, and Glühwein galore).

Our 77 remedial hours in “the old country” included some speedy Autobahn travel back and forth across Southern Germany, ambling through outdoor Christmas markets in Basel and Strasbourg, a museum visit in each of the three adjacent countries, and some time with my kid brother Phil, his lovely wife Tammy, and their two boys (who live in the quaint old village of Holzen in the Kanderntal).

Below are a few pics from the weekend outing. You can view more on my Facebook page here.

Basel, Switzerland, is a humanist city on Rhine located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet. Its famous Christmas market was our destination on Saturday (Ev and I were accompanied by my brother Phil and his wife Tammy); the market now includes the area around Basel’s 1000-year-old Münster (cathedral) as well as the traditional Barfüsserplatz, where we also visited the Historisches Museum (which houses the Upper Rhine’s most comprehensive cultural history collection).

Holzen (bei Kandern) is the quaint old village in the Black Forest where my brother Phil and his family live. We stayed with them for two nights, during which the seasons changed dramatically. We felt fortunate to be able to take in the exhibition “Pop Art Design” and view the showrooms at the Vitra Design Museum in nearby Weil am Rhein (designed by Frank Gehry, the museum is somewhat of a ‘Mecca’ for the worldwide design and architectural community; creations of Charles and Ray Eames such as their famous ‘Lounge Chair’ feature prominently).

Straßburg (aka Strasbourg) is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France, and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Dating back over 3500 years, the city has held Christmas markets since 1570. Strasbourg’s famous cathedral, the world’s highest still-standing structure built entirely in the Middle Ages, was visible from our charming attic room at the Hotel Gutenberg (Strasbourg was also where Johannes Gutenberg created the first European moveable type printing press in the 1400s).

Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage

Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage

Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights

What did they think the politics of panic would invite?

Person in the street shrugs— “Security comes first”

But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Callous men in business costume speak computerese

Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees

Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea

And the local Third World’s kept on reservations you don’t see

“It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”

But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Fashionable fascism dominates the scene

When ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means

Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream

As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream

Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

—Bruce Cockburn, 30 June 1981, Toronto

Moscow, Russia

Best wishes and congratulations(!) to my longtime friend — Александра Санькова (Alexandra Sankova), Director of the new Moscow Design Museum — re: the opening on Thursday, 29 November 2012, of their first exhibition: SOVIET DESIGN 1950 – 1980

The Moscow Design Museum is the first and only museum institution dedicated to the discipline of design in Rusia—a “live, changing, mobile space… to collect, promote, popularise, classify, and initiate.”

Learn more here.

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There’s less than a week left in Movember!

And Canada is once again leading the world in this awesome, quirky, follicly-driven global fundraiser to fight prostate cancer… with over $24 million raised so far this month.

I have grown one hell of a lot of facial hair over the past four-plus decades (as anyone who knows me can attest to) and this year I’m once again doing my “stiff-upper-lip” bit for this very important cause… please consider making a donation through me or one of over a million fellow Mo-Bros or Mo-Sistas around the world…

Thanks in advance…
here’s a big hug, along with
a big old scratchy smooch!

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(aka ‘Black Friday’ in the USA)

Buy Nothing Day — participate by not participating.

—Robert Louis Stevenson (a diptych)

(Can you tell that I have become re-enamored with RLS? I came to love his books half a century ago…).

Beijing, China

In mid-October, the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University hosted a 50-year retrospective exhibition featuring the work and distinguished career of my good friend (and former Icograda board colleague) Professor Yu Bingan. Widely known as “the godfather of Chinese type” and “a pioneer of visual communication design in China,” Bingnan has had an interesting and prolific career as both a designer and a design educator.

Originally from Shanghai, Bingnan moved to Wuxi at a young age to escape political turbulence. After initially attending Lu Xun Art Academy in Yan’an, he moved to Europe for six years and continued his studies at the Leipzig College of Graphic Design and Book Art, in what was then East Germany (it’s by dent of this that Bingnan and I can communicate in German, as I am practically illiterate in Mandarin).

Since 1962 he has been a lecturer at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University (the former Central Academy of Arts & Design) and from 1985 to 1990 he served director of the Book Art Department. Bingnan has served for decades as an international design juror for arts & design competitions, his works have won distinctive international and national prizes, and he has published numerous articles and books on design theory. Bingnan became the first Chinese member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), he served as a vice president of Icograda (2001-2003), and he continues to represent Icograda in China as a special liaison and through active promotion of Chinese graphic design associations.

Read an interview with Professor Yu Bingnan here; view more images from the retrospective exhibition here.

Among the artifacts on display at the retrospective was this newspaper article from 2009, when the Icograda World Design Congress was held in Beijing. (Thanks to Sophia Shih for sending me the images for this post).

Seattle, Washington

Modern Dog is a design firm in Seattle that was founded in 1987 by friends of mine, Robynne Raye and Michael Strassburger. In 2008, they published a very cool book entitled Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art. For the end-papers of that book, they illustrated a bunch of “dogs we know” and another bunch of “dogs we don’t know” (clever, right?). The book was a relative success… then fast forward to 2011, when they heard from someone that had seen a Disney™-branded T-shirt for sale at a Target™ store that appeared to feature “their dogs!” Here’s a little video that explains what happened next (watch video).

So, Modern Dog did what you would expect proud and proper dog-owner-artists to do… they complained that their work (and the likenesses of their own dear pooches) had been stolen, and then filed a lawsuit “against the Target Corporation, The Walt Disney Company and a few of their subsidiaries who sold the T-shirts” as is explained in this Huffington Post article (read the article).

Thing is, it’s “allegedly” quite well known that Disney et al “allegedly” employ a very large number of lawyers to dissuade little folks like Modern Dog whose work has “allegedly” been ripped off from successfully suing the large corporations for exploitative profits and resulting damages — because hey, that could set a disturbing precedent of “creators” like Modern Dog actually being able to protect their very own creations(!).

In June of this year, Modern Dog felt they had no choice but to sell their dear Greenwood studio home (the most valuable thing they owned) to relieve some of the growing financial burden of the stretched-out legal proceedings. That’s a damn gutsy thing to do, to protect the rights of “the little guy.” But that wasn’t enough (law suits in the USA are damn expensive), so Modern Dog has also launched a crowd-funding effort (visit it here). As Christopher Simmons puts it succinctly in a piece he wrote, “If they win, we all win. Modern Dog’s stand against copyright infringement benefits all designers and anyone who makes a living by creating.”

So, now there’s just over two weeks left until the Friends of Modern Dog online fundraiser wraps up, and they’re still in need of $15,000. That’s where you and I come in. Please consider making a donation (even $5 helps, and it sends a very clear signal to Disney, Target, et al…). Please also share this story of these brave “little dogs”  and their loving caregivers who won’t back down from doing the right thing—even in the face of teeth-baring hegemonic corporate behemoths.

Thanks in advance!

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Above, you see the end-papers of the book with the original doggie illustrations. Below, you can see the dogs that appear on the T-shirt… need more proof? Take a look at this comparative video.

Dublin, Ireland

A week ago, Ireland’s creative community got together to release a lot of pent up anger and sadness through the medium of the A3 poster, all in aid of Temple Street Children’s Hospital. Ad creatives, designers, animators, directors, illustrators and more have taken time out to dress up their favourite “worst feedback from clients,” transforming quotes that would normally give you a twitch, into a diverse collection of posters.

Very cathartic, methinks. See more posters here.

(thanks to David Coates of Ion for the link)