(found at @issue | written by Delphine Hirasuna)
The Leo Burnett India ad agency commemorated the 141st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth (on 2 October 2010) by creating an alphabetical font in the Devanagari script in the style of Gandhi’s trademark wireframe eyeglasses. The special typeface was the brainchild of Burnett’s national creative director KV “Pops” Sridhar, who wanted to inspire younger generations with the teachings of Gandhi. The glasses symbolize Gandhi’s vision and his visionary thoughts on truth and nonviolence.
Sridhar explains, “The way he saw the world is completely different than the way we do—and hence the glasses, to subtly nudge people into thinking like him again.” Gandhi had originally given the glasses in the 1930s to an Indian army colonel who had asked the great leader for inspiration. Gandhi reportedly gave him his glasses and said, “These gave me the vision to free India.”
Burnett staff designers and typographers spent several weeks working on the digital eyeglass font. Visitors to their site can download six posters, each featuring one saying of Gandhi, as well as the font as wallpaper or a screensaver. (Originally only in Devanagari, the font is now also available in English). The educational website also made Gandhi’s eyeglasses interactive. By clicking on the glasses, different parts fly off to become part of the font, forming a mantra or a letter of the alphabet. The site also contains a message board so people can specify which Gandhi saying they want on their poster, or make their own Gandhi sayings and proverbs for use in a nameplate or other medium.
Leo Burnett India is also promoting the font on Facebook, Twitter and other social network platforms and allowing Facebook users the option of having their profile page transformed entirely into the Gandhiji font. Plans also call for the creation of typeface imprinted merchandise such as postcards, mugs and T-shirts…
Inspired words from the great Rumi…
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, جلالالدین محمد بلخى
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Love is the Water of Life.
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I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you.
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Speak a new language
so that the world
will be a new world.
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You were born with wings.
Why prefer to crawl through life?
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Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.
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The way you make love
is the way God will be with you.
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Only from the heart
Can you touch the sky.
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The moon has become a dancer
at this festival of love.
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They will ask you
what you have produced.
Say to them,
except for Love,
what else can a Lover produce?
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I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty and wish
to see you with a hundred eyes.
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Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.
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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
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I was you
and never knew it.
Karaj/Tehran, Iran
Vitrin Rooz is a “virtual exhibition platform” for graphic design and designers with the stated intention to “show the right path and deepen insight on visual communication.” After a period of restructuring, Vitrin Rooz is now back with an engaging new website offering solo exhibits, group exhibits, workshops, and more… (I’ve posted about Vitrin Rooz and designers it has featured a number of times previously, here).
(thanks to Madge H. Vosteen for the quotable)
(found in Design Observer)
Steven Heller had heard from various designers and design historians over the years about the existence of a Nazi graphics standards manual. No one could say they actually saw it, but they knew of someone who had… so it grew into something of a Big Foot or Loch Ness Monster tale, until one day he actually saw it too—and it had been right under his nose the whole time…
Thanks to friend Ian McCausland for the link (unfortunately, now broken).
(from Creative Review)
In death as in life: Peter Saville and Ben Kelly’s memorial to their friend and collaborator Anthony H Wilson is three years late, but it was worth the wait. Factory Records founder Anthony H Wilson died in August 2007. Just over three years later, a memorial headstone designed collaboratively by Wilson’s long-term associates Peter Saville and Ben Kelly with Paul Barnes and Matt Robertson, was unveiled in The Southern Cemetery in Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Manchester.
The black granite headstone carries a quote, chosen by Wilson’s family, from The Manchester Man, the 1876 novel by Mrs G Linnaeus Banks (aka Isabella Varley Banks), the story of one Jabez Clegg and his life in Victorian Manchester. The quote is set in Rotis.
Found here.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
If you’re in or near the ’Peg on Saturday, 12 March, please consider coming out to this gig at the West End Cultural Centre in support of the West Central Women’s Resource Centre—a community-based initiative in the diverse West Central neighbourhood of Winnipeg that is empowering women to help themselves, their families, and their community to safer, healthier lifestyles.
The fundraising concert features hometown girrrl Romi Mayes (pronounced “raw me”) along with the flamboyant Flying Fox and the Hunter Gatherers. Local crafts will also be in abundance; all proceeds go to WCWRC.
Image: the event poster we designed for WCWRC at CIRCLE.
