Tehran, Iran
An exhibition of graphic works by the great Finnish designer Kari Piippo is currently on display at vitrinrooz.com. I had the pleasure of spending a week with Kari in Moscow in 1994 (we were both jurors of the 2nd Golden Bee) and we crossed paths again a few years back in Taiwan (this time as jurors of the Taiwan International Poster Design Awards). Kari is one of our generation’s outstanding visual minimalists… conveying much with a real economy of means.
A good idea… thanks, Gerald.
Hiroshima, Japan
For those involved in the peace movement around the globe, thoughts this week turn once again to the horrors of Monday, August 6, 1945—when at 08:15 the first nuclear weapon ever deployed on human beings (a bomb named Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Three days later, at 11:02 on Wednesday, August 9, Nagasaki was the target of the world’s first plutonium bomb (named Fat Man) dropped by the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Bockscar, flown by the crew of 393rd Squadron.
In 2005, I was one of 24 designers invited to contribute posters for Lest We Forget: Canadian Designers on War, an initiative marking the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I’ve posted on that previously, here). Michael Surtees attended that show opening at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton—see his flickr photo gallery from the evening here.
Image above: a moving poster designed by the late great Yusaku Kamekura, considered by many to be the father of graphic design in Japan. The poster “depicts a cluster of multicoloured burning butterflies falling from the sky, caught in the flash of an atomic blast, their wings alight with hot red and orange flames burning like streaks of blood from their delicate wings—the beauty and grace of the image serves to undermine the horror and tragedy of war.” Hiroshima Appeals is a poster series that appears annually, initiated by Japan Graphic Designers Association for the Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation.
This just in from the talented and tireless Chaz Maviyane-Davies…
Give the same creative brief to three different designers and you’re likely to get back three different solutions. Take for example the poster competition sponsored by the Canadian Council on Learning and the Canadian Commission of UNESCO to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mark International Adult Learners’ Week last March. Sixty designers across Canada submitted their portfolios; three were commissioned to design posters around the theme “Learning is a Human Right.” (Read what the three designers had to say about their individual approaches in the @Issue article here).
Posters by Andrew Lewis, Sergio Serrano, and good friend David Coates. Thanks to Oliver Oike for the link…
Jane Birkin (in a mini), a Citroën DS… sometimes I miss the 1960s!
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian politician (1889-1964)
And here’s another wise quotable from the great man…
Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
Image: a Russian stamp honouring Nehru, issued 25 years after his death.
Stuttgart, Germany
Heinz Edelmann, the multifaceted graphic designer and illustrator who created the comically hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film “Yellow Submarine,” died on Tuesday of this week in Stuttgart, Germany. He was 75…. A highly successful advertising and editorial illustrator in Germany, England and the Netherlands, Mr. Edelmann was known for combining Impressionist and Expressionist sensibilities leavened with wit, humor and irony. He developed a distinct graphic style that influenced many artists in Europe and the United States…
Read the full tribute written by Steven Heller for The New York Times here. See some of Mr. Edelmann’s works on Milton Glaser’s Container List here and here.
Images: the mod-psychedelic look of the 1968 Beatles movie “Yellow Submarine;” posters for West Deutscher Rundfunk (radio) from 1982 and 1983.
The moon (the one we see from earth on virtually every other night than tonight, a new moon, go figure…)
I remember vividly the wee hours of Monday, 40 years ago today, when I saw Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon (at 02:56 GMT in the early hours of 21 July—I was living in Germany at the time, so it was already Monday there, while North Americans enjoyed a Sunday night special). Our family did not have a TV and I was quite sick with the flu at the time… but I got up in a fevered haze and walked six blocks to the nearest Radio & TV shop which had TV sets tuned to the moon landing in their display window, with loudspeakers of the English reportage playing into the street. (I ended up translating the action and the English announcer’s coverage into German for an assembled group of Italian and Turkish foreign workers from the nearby barracks, disoriented drunks, and assorted street-people and others too poor to own a TV set—all of whom had gathered outside the shop to take in the spectacle in real time).
That unique moment offered a fresh view of our wee blue-green planet for all of humankind, and triggered Marshall McLuhan’s phrase “Global Village” as well as Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth.” Trivia factoid: it also marked the first time in history that the New York Times used a 96-point headline: “Men Walk On Moon.”
(Thanks to GDC-Listserv friend Marilyn Matty, from New York (fittingly), for pointing out the latter re: the NYT a few minutes ago).
Peace does not require love.
Hate—without weapons—will suffice.
Any dialog—even if only accusations, denunciations and vituperation—is preferable to bullets, bombs, broken hearts and broken bodies. War (violence) is an incredibly infectious, disfiguring disease for which the only antidote is dialog.
Some of the more rewarding aspects of hosting a blog such as this are the serendipity and unexpected encounters one makes from one day to the next… for example, earlier today I received the thoughtful truism quoted above from a certain Glenn S. Michaels of Phoenix, Arizona… I thank you for sharing your wisdom!
