Klimcentrum Bjoeks, Groningen, the Netherlands

For a flatland nation with no natural outdoor climbing opportunities, the “Excalibur,” a 37-meter-high climbing wall (121 feet for my non-metric US friends—almost a rope-length, with an 11-meter overhang) makes an impressive vertical offer. I’ve designed (and built) several climbing walls and structures in my time… but very puny in comparison to this. (More, better pics taken from a kite, here).

Climb on…

Stuttgart, Germany

Literal enjoyment takes on a new meaning when typography and chocolate meet. Tasty one-liners, two-liners… letters, words, quips—your choice, from Typolade.

Thanks to Gerald Brandt for the link.

(growing facial hair for a cause—I could Do this!)

Congratulations to the many friends and colleagues who have been growing an upper-lip-sweater over the course of this past month, as part of the Movember fund-raising initiative (for prostate cancer research). Don’t know how I missed taking part this year (growing hair is one of the things I actually do quite well), but guaranteed… I’ll be pushing out the facial follicles 11 months from now.

Image: thanks to friend Celia Clucas (Joburg, South Africa) for the cheesy snapshot of yours truly sporting a porn-star-type moustache and hamming it up with the likeness of a recently-departed simian colleague—ten years ago, if memory serves.

New Delhi, India

French graffiti artist C215, aka Christian Guémy, has left his mark on walls near and far… the US, Brazil, Israel, Morocco, Poland, France, England, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands… and now India. Read more about him and see a good collection of photos documenting his street art here.

Taipei, Taiwan

As I write this, I’m sitting in the shadow of Taipei 101 (until earlier this year, the world’s tallest building). I’ve been staying at the Grand Hyatt Taipei directly at the base of this colossus for the past few nights, with full days spent in consultative sessions with the organizers of next year’s 2011 IDA Congress Taipei / design at the edges event, as well as jury duty for the Taiwan International Design Competition (multidisciplinary) and the 2010 Golden Pin Design Award (product design recognition scheme).

Thanks go to my kind hosts and the local organizers, and thanks as well to friends Alice Chen and Enrica Hsiao who met up with me for a lovely sashimi lunch yesterday… now it’s off to the airport and back to winter.

New York Berlin

Christoph Niemann is a talented, award-winning illustrator with a great sense of humour who recently moved to Berlin with his family. His illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek, Wired, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. He is the author of many books, among them The Pet Dragon, which teaches Chinese characters to young readers, I LEGO N.Y. and, most recently, SUBWAY, based on The Boys and the Subway, the first entry of his Abstract City blog.

Christoph’s web site is christophniemann.com (I’ve posted about his work previously, here and here).

Montreal, Quebec

Submissions have been coming in nicely from around the globe to INDIGO’s Mother Tongue project. There’s still time to submit, anyone can participate… submission deadline is 1 December 2010.

Shown above: three recent submissions, from Belgium, Australia, and Italy. 

Montreal, Canada

Just a reminder that the submission deadline for INDIGO’s Mother Tongue exhibition is two weeks from now—1 December 2010.

(from Facebook—who knew?)

Today I chanced across a lovely collection of Vintage Advertising and Poster Art, here. Much, much, more along the lines of the thumbnails above at the site… enjoy.

Manitoba, Canada

Three days ago I joined some 500 million others who already use Facebook. The jury’s still out on whether or not this was a good decision (apologies to those who have steadfastly warned me against this), but “what’s done is done”… unless of course I decide to bail ship. (On the bright side, I can hardly be accused of being an early adopter).

In case you’d care to connect in that strange new world of ever-lowering common denominators, you can find me here.