Beijing, China
I had the privilege yesterday, together with Icograda President Russell Kennedy of Australia, of emceeing the 2009 Adobe Design Achievement Awards (at the National Centre for the Performing Arts). This year the program received a record-breaking number of submissions totaling more than 3,300 from students in 37 countries. Congratulations to the finalists in all 12 categories and to the winners!
Beijing, China
I was honored today to receive the Icograda President’s Award from outgoing Icograda President Don Ryun Chang of Korea. The presentation took place at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (the ultra-modern opera house also known as “The Egg”) here in Beijing, with an audience of several thousand present for the opening day of the Xin: Icograda World Design Congress 2009. It was a bit bizarre (and somewhat overwhelming) to mount the huge stage while an exhibit of photos compiled by Don played on the massive screen.
Beginning in 1970, the Icograda President’s Award has been presented on a biennial basis by the Icograda President. The award honors an outstanding contribution to the work of Icograda.
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(This just in—Don has provided me with his award presentation transcript):
“Before we start the Adobe Design Achievement Awards, I have the pleasure of announcing the second 2009 Icograda President’s Award and it gives me great pleasure to introduce Rob Peters and to recognize his many contributions—from his distinguished stewardship of our council during his term as President and board member, to his numerous published articles featured in important design publications, but today especially his significant role in nurturing and promoting design in China and Asia.
Raised and schooled in Europe, Robert was educated in Switzerland, Germany, and England. He is a graphic designer, communications strategist, and principal of CIRCLE, an award-winning design consultancy he co-founded in 1976. Robert is active internationally as a design practitioner, advisor, juror and lecturer.
Following the 1991 Icograda World Design Congress in Montreal, Rob was designated as the GDC’s official delegate and liaison, representing Canada to Icograda General Assemblies in Glasgow in 1993, Porto (Portugal) in 1995, Punta del Este (Uruguay) in 1997 (where I first met him), and Sydney in 1999 where he was elected to the Icograda board for a six-year term from 1999 to 2005, serving as President from 2001 to 2003. Significant achievements during Peters’ six years on the Icograda board include: development of our first content-rich portal, rejuvenation of the network ‘Friends of Icograda,’ launch of both the Icograda Design Education Network and the Icograda Design Media Network, co-organization of Icograda congresses in Seoul (‘Oullim’ 2000), Johannesburg, South Africa (‘Continental Shift’ 2001), and as President of our Council in Nagoya, Japan (‘VISUALOGUE’ 2003—with some 3700 delegates from 49 countries in attendance, the world’s largest ever congress of graphic designers). Rob also served as official liaison between Icograda and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from 2001 to 2005.
Peters joined the board of the international humanitarian organization Design for the World (DW) in 2000 and was appointed as a Vice President in 2002; in 2004 he was named an Honorary Member of the Brno Biennale Association; he was also a member of the founding executive of the International Design Alliance (IDA) from 2003 to 2005.
For nearly 30 years, Robert has lived in a low-energy, passive-solar house he designed and built in the woods east of Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is an avid climber (rocks, ice, mountains) and he enjoys nature and human-powered outdoor pursuits. His interests include art, architecture, photography, visual language, and travel, and he has written many important articles for prominent design publications such as Communication Arts (like the memorable article that introduced Chinese design to many readers all over the world).
Rob has been a great role model, a friend to me over the years, and he has given me great advice—it is a special honor for me to recognize his achievements here in China today.
It gives me sincere pleasure to present the 2009 Icograda President’s Award to Robert L. Peters.”
Winnipeg, Canada
I recently contributed a two-page piece to the current issue of Geez magazine (#15: The Slippery Issue) on “Good design,” featuring and commenting on several winning posters submitted to Good 50×70, an independent, non-profit initiative that aims to promote the value of social communication, provide charities with a free database of communication tools, and inspire the public via graphic design. (Designers submit their works on a pro bono basis, thereby offering their talent to charities such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund or anyone who wishes to use the posters to further the featured causes).
An effective poster engages (by arousing interest) and informs (by conveying a message) within seconds, though only if the context is conducive to the audience’s understanding. This dramatic poster entitled “It’s High Time” (designed by Pamela Campagna and Thomas Scheiderbauer of Seville, Spain) captures our attention by means of the seemingly absurd juxtaposition of imminently rising sea levels and a long-necked giraffe, allegorically the animal with the greatest chance of “surviving this mess,” as the designers put it.
The decontextualized giraffe draws our immediate empathy. We share the anthropomorphized fear and disquietude of a threatened “figure” removed from its natural “ground,” even as the urgency of a timely intervention ticks on. The poster refers to the upcoming UN conference on climate change. In December, the global community will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to work out a new global climate deal aimed at protecting the future of our planet. The poster’s call to action is for global leaders to heed the warning signs when they meet in Denmark.
Warsaw, Poland
Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980, aka Maria Gorska) was a Polish painter known for the “soft cubism” by which she epitomized the sensual side of the Art Deco movement (her renderings of stylishly sexy, bedroom-eyed women remain unmatched to this day). Tamara attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland before moving to St. Petersburg, Russia (where she experienced the Bolshevik Revolution)— then on to her own bohemian twenties in Paris during the Roaring 20s, where she quickly became the most fashionable portrait painter of her generation (especially among the haute bourgeoisie and aristocracy who both criticized and admired her “perverse Ingrism.”)
Images above: Lempicka’s iconic Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti and Saint Moritz from 1929, Young Lady with Gloves from 1930, and The Refugees from 1931 (drawn from an impressive online collection of 149 works, here).
Vancouver, BC
Leo Obstbaum, the creative mastermind behind the designs of the Vancouver Olympic Games, died suddenly in his home of natural causes in the early hours of Friday, 21 August 2009. Leo was just 40 years old, and left behind his beautiful wife Monice and young daughter Dakota. Leo was admired and respected by everyone who knew him, as was demonstrated by the hundreds who attended his funeral and remembrance celebration.
Mark Busse has written a moving and beautifully illustrated tribute to Leo here, and the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) has awarded Leo with posthumous professional membership (MGDC). A poignant description of Leo comes from one of his colleagues at VANOC, designer Ben Hulse:
“The brightest of eyes. The biggest of smiles. The warmest handshake. The proudest father. The cool hunter. The king of design. The king of the party. But most of all a dreamer. He helped each of us realize a dream, and how fortunate that the biggest dreamer realized so many of his. He remains an unstoppable inspiration to all of us. Leo, you are an icon. You will be missed dearly, but through us your dreams live on.”
View a beautiful video tribute put together by his colleagues here. Read a nice article in Shift here.
Rest in peace, Leo… forever young!
Be present. I would encourage you with all my heart—just to be present. Be present and open to the moment that is unfolding before you. Because, ultimately, your life is made of moments. So don’t miss them by being lost in the past or anticipating the future.
Don’t be absent from your own life. You will find that life is not governed by will or intention. It is ultimately the collection of these sense memories stored in our nerves, built up in our cells. Simple things: a certain slant of light coming through a window on a winter’s afternoon. The sound of spring peepers at twilight. The taste of a strawberry still warm from the sun. Your child’s laughter. Your mother’s voice.
—Jessica Lange’s 2008 commencement address to the graduates of Sarah Lawrence College
(photo: Ernest Hemingway kicks a can…)
Kabul, Afghanistan
It’s eight years ago today(!) that the United States, backed by coerced “coalition partners,” launched its war in/on the hapless nation of Afghanistan under the moniker Operation Enduring Freedom. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, and tens of thousands more have been seriously injured. There are no clear indications of what it would take to actually “win” this particular war (which suits the hawks and those who continue to profit from ongoing conflicts such as this manufactured, never-ending “war on terror”)—in fact it’s unclear such a misadventure even can be “won” or how one would measure such a victory. The majority of the world (including most U.S. citizens, of late) is firmly opposed to the ongoing military operations and occupation of Afghanistan. It’s time to finally end this senseless conflict!
(I know my expressing a pacifist stance here, on my blog, is “safe” and does not involve a lot of effort or courage—yet it is at least something that I can do. I hope that many of the two-hundred or so of you who visit this blog each day will, if you agree, also take action and lend your voice in opposition to this inane war—and I welcome you to let me know what you are doing in this regard… please do contact me. While a solitary voice here and there may seem quiet and weak, many voices joined together can have the powerful and moving influence of a mighty choir).
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
—Jeannette Rankin
Whenever you’re tempted to put up another sign, just remember—
the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Brooklyn, New York
Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist noted for his conceptualization of a “hierarchy of human needs”—today he is considered the founder of humanistic psychology. Born into an uneducated family of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Maslow was raised in Brooklyn as the eldest of seven children. Reportedly he was slow and tidy as a youth, spending his time in libraries and among books, and largely without friends.
Maslow was encouraged to actively pursue an education: after initially studying law at the City College of New York, he transferred to Cornell University in 1927, and then on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin where he entered the field of psychology (pursuing an original line of research in the investigation of primate dominance behavior and sexuality). He went on to further research at Columbia University, where he was mentored by Alfred Adler, one of Sigmund Freud’s early followers. From 1937 to 1951 Maslow served on the faculty of Brooklyn College, where he blossomed under the mentorship of anthropologist Ruth Benedict and Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer—these two were so accomplished and such “wonderful human beings,” that Maslow began taking notes about them and their behavior (most psychology before Maslow had been concerned with the abnormal and the ill—he turned the tables and concentrated on observing the healthy). This inspired shift in focus became the basis of his lifelong research and thinking about mental health and human potential, which he wrote about extensively.
Simply put, Maslow saw the needs of human beings arranged like a ladder (ergo, his pyramidal Hierarchy of Needs). The most basic needs, at the bottom, were physical. Then came safety needs, followed by psychological or social needs, then esteem needs, and at the top, the self-actualizing needs of self-fulfillment—“to become all that one is capable of becoming.” Maslow felt that unfulfilled needs lower on the ladder would actually inhibit a person from climbing to the next step (proof of concept: someone dying of thirst quickly forgets their thirst when they have no oxygen).
We celebrate Maslow today for his surprisingly original thinking, and for changing the way that modern-day physiologists understand the world. Without his creative mind and critical circumspection, humanistic psychology would certainly not have become what it is today. You rock, Abraham!
Here are some of my favorite “quotables” by Maslow:
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Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards self actualization.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he (or she) is to be ultimately at peace with himself (or herself).
If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.
We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.
One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.
A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
The fact is that people are good. Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.
It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
The sacred is in the ordinary, in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard.
We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.
You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
