—Albert Einstein

—Moses ibn Ezra (1055-1138?)

Lisbon, 1995…

I chanced across a photo of this sugar packet today… an effective visual narrative conveying an important message (in any language) by means of a simple illustration. I had pocketed a few of these in a street cafe in Portugal in the mid-1990s, and one has been pinned to a cork-board above my desk (amidst much other ephemera) for many years.

Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba

If you’re in Manitoba or NW Ontario this weekend, please feel free to drop by What? Clay Art & Curios (Evelin Richter’s studio) during the 10th Wave Artists’ Studio Tour… from 10:00 to 18:00 on Saturday and Sunday (3 and 4 September), several dozen Interlake artists and galleries will fling open their doors and welcome you in for an intimate view of how they work.

Ev’s been busy completing a number of figurative ceramic sculptures which will be on display in her studio (and her piece Not Jane Eyre, shown below, is now on exhibit at the Fishfly Gallery as well).

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—Cesare Pavese (1908-1950)

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Cuban postage stamps commemorating the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan—themes include “planning a more satisfying life, towards the better enjoyment of life, and achieving greater understanding….”

(source, thanks to colleague Adrian Shum)

:-/

Røros, Norway

I’m looking forward to giving a talk in October at “Norway’s biggest design conference” in the historic copper-mining town of Røros (where the 3,640 or so modern-day inhabitants still work and live in the characteristic 17th and 18th century buildings, which have led to the town’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

EDIT 2011 : DIG is organized by Grafill, the Norwegian Organisation for Visual Communication. The conference runs from 21-23 October…

—Malagasy proverb

Winnipeg, Manitoba

As I usually do, early yesterday morning I checked my email, and I was delighted to find a friendly message from the optometrist who recently checked my eyes in advance of my ordering some new reading glasses (let’s just call him “Gary” as I’m not sure he’s really supposed to provide me with these files); as per my request he sent me the retina photos that he took during my checkup (large, screen-filling, with incredible detail). As a visual designer, I’ve always been fascinated with the function of vision—which I mentioned to him as he was putting me through the optical steeplechase—but until now I’ve never been able to “peer into my own eyes,” as it were.

The pics he sent are shot through the pupil (the dark, size-changing hole in the center of the iris, which is the structure that gives the eye color and works like a shutter in a camera). After passing through the iris, the light rays strike the eye’s crystalline lens, a clear, flexible structure that works much like the lens in a camera, shortening and lengthening its width in order to focus light rays properly; the light rays then pass through the vitreous, a clear, jelly-like substance that fills the globe of the eyeball (the vitreous humor helps the eye hold its spherical shape), before landing and coming into sharp focus (if you’re lucky (-: on the retina. The bright/orange spot you see is the optic nerve (a bundle of over a million nerve fibers, to be more accurate) which acts as sort of an extension of and connection to the brain, where one actually interprets an “image.”

Pretty cool, eh? Thanks “Gary!”