Celebrating industrial design creativity… (from a selection of images provided by Nils J. Tvengsberg, IDSA—designers unknown).

Somewhere in the great beyond, presumably…

George Carlin, who could speak colourful truth to power with rhetorical mastery and hyperbolic mirth like few before him, passed on a year ago this week… thankfully we can still enjoy samplings of his caustic brilliance such as this (language warning) online.

Austin, Texas

Yesterday President Obama signed new legislation that will heavily restrict the nicotine content and marketing of cigarettes, including the requirement that colorful ads and displays be replaced with black-and-white-only text. For a piece in its Sunday Perspectives section, the St. Petersburg Times asked DJ Stout (of Pentagram’s Austin office) what cigarette manufacturers like Marlboro might do to follow the new marketing rules… Stout suggests that to comply with the crackdown, tobacco companies should embrace the restrictions and make cigarettes look truly dangerous. This, of course, will still appeal to a core group of smokers.

“Over the years there has been an onslaught of public awareness messaging about the evils of smoking,” says Stout. “Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 50 years you are very aware that smoking is not only bad for you, it could very likely kill you. All smokers know this for sure but it doesn’t deter them.”

“Our marketing advice to cigarette companies in the new heavily regulated era is to fully accept the new aggressive anti-smoking restrictions and wallow in the government’s apocalyptic health warnings. Don’t make excuses or dance around the stepped-up marketing regulations, just transform the whole cigarette pack into a three dimensional warning label.”

Images above: Some of DJ Stout’s cigarette packages for an exercise in the St. Petersburg Times.

(Thanks Adrian for the link).

Hartford, Connecticut

That’s a parental dictate that Kevin Van Aelst obviously never took to heart… see more of the man’s quirky (and often edible) oeuvre here. Shown above: Apple Globe (2007); Oreo Yin Yang (2005).

(Thanks for the link, Gerald).

(Thanks David Ronnie… via Swissmiss).

Wherever…

A nice collection of quirky signs from around the globe here, submitted by readers of the UK’s Telegraph… a sampling above from Paris, the UK, India, USA, and South Africa.

(thanks to Gerald Brandt for the link)

(all discovered via today and tomorrow; e.g. here...)

Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba

Yesterday evening I had the chance to install the Fishfly Weathervane I built a few weeks back… it’s now swiveling atop the Fishfly Gallery (where Ev exhibits some of her ceramic works). About two meters in overall length, the assemblage piece incorporates a variety of found junk and old objects—the body is a piece of driftwood decorated with brass strips from a hideous old wall clock, the large wing is cut from an old steel snow shovel, the two smaller wings are halves of a hammered brass plate, the head is a copper bowl (with drilled looney-coin eyes), antennae are the ends of two fishing rods, legs consist of old bits of rusted pliers and a rod handle, the hollow aluminum tail strands are from Ev’s old TV antennae (she tossed her set out years ago). The gleaming beast straddles an old railing banister tipped with a wood-fired ceramic arrowhead, and the swivel mount re-purposes an old roller-skate wheel (with nice friction-free bearings).

A number of people have already expressed interest in other commissioned weathervanes… time will tell where this may lead.

(thanks, Banksy)