Holzen-Kandern, Germany

It’s OK, bro… getting older is the most natural thing in the world. Best birthday wishes, Phil! May your coming year be filled with fine days, good health, and great happiness…

Vatican City

Methinks a good defrocking is good and necessary now and again… (just a hunch—I predict a string of significant defrockings in the Holy See and assorted outlying provinces, and likely sooner rather than later). I’m guessing that as you read this, “God’s Rottweiler,” aka Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, also now known as “Pope Benedict XVI,” is busy bracing himself for the pending “fall from grace”—with regard to the plethora of child-abuse cases by priests worldwide bubbling to the fore—possibly even foreshadowing the implosion of the Catholic Church.

Maureen Dowd (whose column I read occasionally by dent of following The New York Times) makes this astute suggestion: “If the church could throw open its stained glass windows and let in some air, invite women to be priests, nuns to be more emancipated and priests to marry, if it could banish criminal priests and end the sordid culture of men protecting men who attack children, it might survive. It could be an encouraging sign of humility and repentance, a surrender of arrogance, both moving and meaningful.”

I know, this is a bit heavier than most of my posts, but the sheer hypocrisy currently on exhibit is deeply vexing to say the least. But hey—the Vatican has some terrific art… and as if to distract and mesmerize the unwashed masses, you and I can now zoom back and forth (click and drag) through the Sistine Chapel with virtually angelic grace, here. (I promise the experience is worth it—be patient as the site loads [because patience is a virtue, don’t you know]. An extra bonus is the background music provided by—you guessed it—choirboys!).

Thanks to friend Oliver Oike for the link.

Randburg, South Africa

Check out a great feature article about the work of ex-pat Zimbabwean designer/educator Chaz Maviyane-Davies in the handsome online edition of DESIGN> magazine, here.

View a bunch of previous posts about Chaz and his graphic activism here.

A good idea, no?

(image by Darren Scott—thanks Toze)

Toronto, Canada

Sorting through some old files at the office this week I came across a one-page response that I’d submitted to Applied Arts back in 2001—in answer to the question posed by Sara Curtis, the magazine’s editor at the time: “What do you keep in your work space to inspire you?” The resulting piece was featured as the last page of the May/June (Vol. 16, No. 3) issue…

“What inspires me most are encounters, experiences, and exchanges with other creative people I meet around the world. When I travel, I collect meaningful mementos, visual artifacts, and small mnemonic objects—steeped in memories, rich in semiotics and ready to trigger recall in an instant. Back in the studio, these tactile little collectibles act as icons for experiences and invite the Muse. Here are some items from my bulletin board and the corners of my office…”

(you can see the full page as a PDF and read the image captions or by clicking on the image below — Sorry, links broken).

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

THE HAITI POSTER PROJECT (link broken, sorry) was launched three days after the January 12th, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, as a “collaborative effort by the design community to help effect change through our work.” Signed and numbered, limited edition posters have been donated by designers and artists from around the world. All money raised will be donated to Doctors Without Borders. Check out the project’s onlin gallery of posters (ranging from refreshingly naive to remarkably refined) here.

(thanks to friend Martyn Schmoll for the link)

Berkeley, California

The talented folks at Free Range Studios (who previously produced highly effective viral narratives that I’ve blogged about such as The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff) have just released their latest—The Story of Bottled Water. Once again, Annie Leonard delivers an important message with remarkable clarity and focus. View it here.

It’s high time that this story of the evils of bottled water be elevated and shared more broadly. I never have, nor ever will, buy bottled water. Local well or tap water suits me just fine—bottle your own (in a perpetually reusable container). I carry a Sigg bottle with me in my car, and there’s always one on my desk. When traveling in regions of the world where drinking free local water might present a health hazard, I carry an effective, compact, light-weight water filter with me as well—one minute of light pumping provides a liter of clean, refreshing, potable goodness.

Oh, today also happens to be World Water Day.

(now everywhere on planet earth)

Best wishes on this astronomical vernal equinox, recognized for the first time this year by the United Nations General Assembly (as decided during the meeting of The Inter-governmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage of the United Nations held last September in Abu Dhabi) as the “International Day of Nowruz.” Nowruz (literally “new day”) marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the new year in the Iranian calendar. As well as being a Zoroastrian holiday and having significance amongst those of Persian descent, this day is celebrated throughout the Indian sub-continent as the new year.

Today, the sun can be observed to be directly over the equator, and the north and south poles of earth lie along the solar terminator—as a result, sunlight is divided exactly between the north and south hemispheres (with daylight and nighttime of equal length everywhere). Some great diagrams showing equinox day arcs at various latitudes are shown here.

I’ve posted about Nowruz in previous years here and here.

Västerskog, Finland

Finnish type designer Ossi Gustafsson of Hiekka Graphics has released Sketchetica, a rendered font that reminds me of my early days as a graphic designer (back in the 1970s when we would laboriously copy-fit typography by hand and sketch out our layouts on vellum for reference by the typesetters). Though slow in comparison to the instantaneous iteration of today’s communications, an advantage was that a person actually had to take the time to think about the message being typeset (you know, think before you speak). Another benefit of hand-rendering type was the inevitable finesse and sensitivity one developed regarding letter-spacing.

The light weight of Sketchetica is available for free here. Thanks Ossi!

Somewheregrad… in Russia

Hello, lovely ladies… interesting, I must say, to receive (completely unsolicited) the almost daily communiques from you by e-mail. Please let me be very upfront and straightforward with all you would-be Russian brides though (Anastasia, Ekatarinna, Irina, Izabella, Katerinka, Katushka, Luliya [and your remarkably attractive gymnast cousin], Oksana, Svetlana, Vikulya, and Yana… forgive me if I’ve missed a few)—while I am predictably flattered at your charming overtures and bold offers of intimate relationships and marriage, I’m honestly “not looking” (if you know what I mean), and I think it’s only right to suggest that you expend your energies more productively elsewhere.*

It’s nice to know that you think I am an interesting person (your stated reason for deciding to get to know me better—though how you know this is still a mystery to me) and it is very thoughtful of you to wish that I could be truly happy (I actually thought I was until you pointed out that perhaps I wasn’t). It’s quite generous for you to share all that personal information about yourself (with interests including ballet, fencing, music, reading, books, equestrian sports, theater, computers, old movies, gourmet cooking, good conversations,“and the many other things that make life beautiful”—you sound like the real Renaissance woman) and the fact that you have never been married (I have—did you know that?), that you “do not have a boy friend at this stage of your life,” that you work for a living (a real asset, I’ll admit), and that “all you miss is a beloved person” with whom to “have a family in the future.” I agree that “we should use every chance we have to find happiness…” (hard to argue with that logic), but back to the point I was trying to make earlier, “I’m really not looking”… and I suspect that if you really did your homework well, you’d find that I’m likely considerably too old for you anyway. |-:

Oгорченный. (that’s Russian for “sorry,” right?)

*On the off chance that a third party with more nefarious motives is using your likeness and good name in a solicitous manner, I thought you’d want to know…