Taipei, Taiwan

As I write this, I’m sitting in the shadow of Taipei 101 (until earlier this year, the world’s tallest building). I’ve been staying at the Grand Hyatt Taipei directly at the base of this colossus for the past few nights, with full days spent in consultative sessions with the organizers of next year’s 2011 IDA Congress Taipei / design at the edges event, as well as jury duty for the Taiwan International Design Competition (multidisciplinary) and the 2010 Golden Pin Design Award (product design recognition scheme).

Thanks go to my kind hosts and the local organizers, and thanks as well to friends Alice Chen and Enrica Hsiao who met up with me for a lovely sashimi lunch yesterday… now it’s off to the airport and back to winter.

New York Berlin

Christoph Niemann is a talented, award-winning illustrator with a great sense of humour who recently moved to Berlin with his family. His illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek, Wired, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. He is the author of many books, among them The Pet Dragon, which teaches Chinese characters to young readers, I LEGO N.Y. and, most recently, SUBWAY, based on The Boys and the Subway, the first entry of his Abstract City blog.

Christoph’s web site is christophniemann.com (I’ve posted about his work previously, here and here).

Montreal, Quebec

Submissions have been coming in nicely from around the globe to INDIGO’s Mother Tongue project. There’s still time to submit, anyone can participate… submission deadline is 1 December 2010.

Shown above: three recent submissions, from Belgium, Australia, and Italy. 

Brooklyn, New York

‘American Kills’ by Chilean-born New-York-based artist Sebastian Errazuriz is a public installation showcasing the suicide rates of US soldiers.

(source)

source: Shorpy

If you like high-resolution photographic images from the past (albeit predominantly American), this archival site is a great resource. Enjoy.

Thanks to Jeope Wolfe for the link.

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Louis David Riel was a Canadian politician (elected three times to the Canadian House of Commons, although he never assumed his seat), the leader of the Métis people of the prairies, and is considered to be the true founder of the province of Manitoba (in these parts he’s now regarded as our greatest folk hero). Today marks 125 years since he was hung for treason… his body is buried here in the churchyard of Saint-Boniface Cathedral.

“My people will sleep for one hundred years,
but when they awake, it will be the artists
who give them their spirit back.”

—Louis Riel

Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba

This is one of a series of 25 “What?” greeting-cards we designed for Evelin Richter’s studio, What? Clay Art & Curios, two years ago (cards range from nonsensical and cheeky to puzzlingly contemplative). See a few more here.

Montreal, Canada

Just a reminder that the submission deadline for INDIGO’s Mother Tongue exhibition is two weeks from now—1 December 2010.

(from Facebook—who knew?)

Today I chanced across a lovely collection of Vintage Advertising and Poster Art, here. Much, much, more along the lines of the thumbnails above at the site… enjoy.

Manitoba, Canada

Three days ago I joined some 500 million others who already use Facebook. The jury’s still out on whether or not this was a good decision (apologies to those who have steadfastly warned me against this), but “what’s done is done”… unless of course I decide to bail ship. (On the bright side, I can hardly be accused of being an early adopter).

In case you’d care to connect in that strange new world of ever-lowering common denominators, you can find me here.