Melbourne, Australia

My good friend Russell Kennedy (Icograda President from 2009-2011 and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology) has launched a website to help promote a proposal for a new Australian flag. This comprehensive study features an integrated system of ensigns which represent unity through design and diversity through colour. The proposal is that the Advance Australia National Flag replace the current Australian flag by the year 2020.

“Many people now acknowledge that he current Australian flag is not a unique design and agree that it is not suitable as a national flag—it is actually a colonial flag/ensign. To feature the flag of another country on our flag is perceived as subservient and illogical. And to claim that the Union Jack on the Australian Flag symbolises the historical origin of our people is highly disrespectful to Indigenous Australians. The Advance Australia National Flag both acknowledges and proudly celebrates indigenous Australia as the world’s oldest, continuous living culture.”

Learn lots more about this interesting proposal here. Watch a brief video clip here that shows how the kangaroo on this proposed flag design literally leaps in the wind… beautiful!

from Singapore…

This lovely poster caught my eye… “The lives of animals revolve around their living space, the rainforest. And since animals are not able to speak for themselves, the destruction of their habitat leaves them suffering in silence.”

(source)

London, U.K.

Ronald Searle, the British cartoonist and caricaturist whose outlandishly witty illustrations for books, magazine covers, newspaper editorial pages and advertisements helped define postwar graphic humor, died on Friday (3 January) in Draguignan, in southeastern France, where he lived. He was 91.

Lampooning the foibles of the English class system as well as clerics, politicians and even other artists, Mr. Searle was often described as a latter-day version of the 18th-century British graphic satirist William Hogarth. His cartoons combined an ear for linguistic nuance with a caustic pen and brush. With just a few well-placed lines, he pierced the facades of his targets without resorting to ridicule or rancor…

Read the rest of a tribute by Steven Heller in a New York Times obituary here. View a wonderful, recent interview with Ronald Searle here.

Berlin, Germany

An impressive joint venture of the Buchstabenmuseum (Museum of Letters) and a dozen dedicated students from the University of Applied Sciences in Coburg has transformed a former beauty salon into an impressive museum experience in the heart of Berlin. An elevated walkway in the museum serves as a central element and leads the visitors throughout the exhibition spaces where “the letterforms are featured as heroes.”

What began as a school assignment developed into a thesis exhibition and leaves a lasting legacy for the benefit of anyone interested in typography and signage. Beyond ideation and design, students also gained valuable hands-on experience by spending a week at the Lichtenfels Innovationszentrum (a makerspace) building and assembling fittings and display components.

Read a full account of this great student-led project here.

The Buchstabenmuseum was founded as a nonprofit organization in 2005. Its founding was inspired by an enthusiasm for typography and a passion for preserving typographical signs and characters. The museum aims to collect, restore and exhibit letters and characters from Berlin and around the world. Hundreds of letters have been saved from neglect or destruction and placed on display in the museum. Through the systematic preservation and documentation of these historical objects, the Buchstabenmuseum has become both a reminder of past eras and a laboratory for ongoing discussions. It is currently the only museum that focuses exclusively on individual letters as symbols.

Buchstabenmuseum — Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13, 10178 Berlin-Mitte

(from today’s San Francisco Chronicle)

Yesterday, an Ecuadorian appellate court upheld a historic $18 billion award against Chevron for the company’s deliberate contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The decision is the largest environmental award ever handed down and the result of an 18-year legal battle brought by some 30,000 indigenous peoples and farmers seeking a clean up of contaminated sites, clean drinking water, and health care.

Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network, which have spent years fighting on the side of the Ecuadorians in their effort to hold Chevron accountable for these egregious environmental crimes and human rights abuses, released the following statement in response to the verdict:

“For a second time, in a jurisdiction of its own choosing, Chevron was found guilty of widespread oil contamination in Ecuador’s Amazon. It is a historic triumph for the thousands of victims who have suffered for over four decades from Chevron’s drill-and-dump practices.

“Yesterday’s ruling, based in large part on Chevron’s own evidence, once again proves that the company is responsible for deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste sludge into local streams and rivers, which thousands depend on for drinking, bathing, and fishing, and created a public health crisis in the rainforest region.

“Chevron has spent more than a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars in a vain attempt to evade accountability and in doing so exacerbating the suffering of thousands of rainforest residents. The company says it will continue deploying its armies of lawyers with yet more legal stonewalling tactics, still hoping that its unlimited resources can outspend and outlast the course of justice. But the guilty verdict sends a loud and clear message: It is time for Chevron to clean up the Ecuadorian Amazon.”

The Ecuador decision comes at a time when Chevron also faces criminal charges and fines up to U.S. $11 billion in Brazil for its negligence in its operations. If convicted, the company will be permanently banned from doing business in the South American country.

See images here from a recent trip into the Amazon rainforest near Lago Agrio, Ecuador looking for crude contamination and open toxic waste pools abandoned by Texaco (now Chevron) after three decades of oil drilling operations. Open unremediated pits of crude oil and toxic waste water are easy to find scattered throughout the jungle even today.

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Rural Manitoba, Canada

Happy New Year! And thanks for the 121,613 visits to this blog (from 191 countries) in 2011—with over 82% from first-time visitors. Thanks also to each of you who has contributed ideas, inspiration, suggestions, and comments.

Warsaw, Poland

Neon signs, made using electrified, luminous tube lights containing rarefied gases, were introduced in December, 1910 by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show. Claude’s associate, Jacques Fonseque, subsequently realized the possibilities for a business based on signage and advertising—by 1913 a large sign for the vermouth Cinzano illuminated the night sky in Paris, and by 1919 the entrance to the Paris Opera was adorned with neon tube lighting.

A decade later, in 1929, the first neon sign in Poland went up in Warsaw. Popular from the start, the earliest neon signs were made to order—free in design, shape, and color, and significantly influencing other forms of advertising like poster design and typography. Designed and built by prominent architects, graphic designers, and artists, and overseen by a chief graphic designer in the state-run company Reklama, Polish neon signage was renowned for its outstanding technical and artistic qualities.

A new book, Polish Cold War Neon, tells the fascinating story of neon in Poland by preserving and celebrating the remnants of this rich and influential history. During its peak, Reklama maintained over 1,000 neon signs, whose playfulness and folly stood out in dark and oppressed Poland, ornamenting otherwise drab cities and towns. The book offers stunning photographs by British photographer Ilona Karwińska, along with archival images, original neon designs, and interviews with their designers to reveal the untold story of Polish neon.

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Finale Ligure, Italy

Social Design Poster is a concept launched by Sergio Olivotti in 2009. An invitational design competition on the theme of “Autism” drew in some 300 posters from around the world and began a social network of more than 2000 designers. An exhibition of selected submissions subsequently traveled to Spain, Bolivia, Venezuela, France, and Italy.

Shown above is a small sampling of the posters from 2009…

—from Herman Hupfeld’s As Time Goes By, 1931

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Catrin Welz Stein is a German graphic designer and freelance illustrator now living in KL. She draws on a wide varieties of inspiration including fantasy, folklore, medieval history, surrealism, and Jugendstil in compiling her digital collages. “Because of my children (4 and 6 years old) I can go through childhood again and I can enjoy the world of fantasy and fairy tails. I like to look at childrens’ books and let them inspire me…”