A mashup of category rulers… (image found here).

(various and sundry sources—peculiar signs give me little shots of happiness…)

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…this would certainly help explain why the “fasten passenger-side seatbelt” light sometimes flashes on my car dashboard when all I have on the seat beside me (as far as I can tell) is my briefcase.

And, to think that the Americans actually figured this out nearly 70 years ago… quite amazing!

(original image source unknown)

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My dear Dad was a churchman, and somewhat of a crusader as well—no doubt a little like Thomas Fuller. (The brackets in the above quote are mine).

Caution is advised, Gentlemen—from the moment of that first gaze…

Her eye (I’m very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flash’d an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise,
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul,
Which struggled through and chansten’d down the whole.

—Lord Byron, Don Juan (canto I, st. 60)

Original image sources unknown.

Strasbourg, France

A 1979 advert illustrated by the unmatchable Tomi Ungerer…

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A clever (if somewhat passive aggressive) poster designed by Serbian ex-pat artist Vuk Vidor (now living in Paris)… found online here.

(The tongue-in-cheek definitive style of the poster reminds me a little of the short guide to comparative religions [original author unknown] that I e-published last year, entitled An Excremental Exegesis. Both pieces “paint with a large brush,” yet to remarkably telling effect).

London, U.K.

Greenpeace climbers recently scaled the front of BP’s corporate headquarters in London to “brand them with a logo that better suits their dirty business.” Greenpeace “thinks their logo needs a makeover to better suit a company that invests in tar sands and other unconventional oil sources like deep water oil,” and that a company that invests in tar sands—the dirtiest oil there is—needs something other than a nice green flower as their brand identity. “While our effort at a new logo is OK, we think you can do better, so we’re asking you to help us redesign BP’s logo…” More information here.

Several designer colleagues alerted me to this movement to find a more suitable “brand” for BP today (thanks Toze in Porto, thanks JS in Montreal). For years I’ve been showcasing BP’s effervescent floral symbol as the classic example of “corporate greenwashing” at design lectures I give, so I’m neither surprised nor disappointed at what seems to be a growing movement to help this industry-leading company project a more honest image. Just deserts, methinks…

Images: a selection from among of the hundreds of alternate BP logo entries flooding in; more here.