Tuesday 7 August 2012
citius, altius, fortius
Here is a collection of icons or pictograms designed for the different venues of the 1968 summer competition. This set of symbols made for the host Ciudad de México established an international standard that’s prevaded all sorts of gatherings, pointing the way and demarcating usage. I wonder if, given an expansive palette and canvas and absent the potential babel of diplomacy, language would have gone retrograde with such expressions and signs and would have invented or re-purposed them even if the need was not there. Most platforms, real and virtual, have liberal margins and encoding and masking is not necessary but logos are still invented and postal and area codes are as much identifiers as the localities that they stand for. The capacity for meaning to remain recognizable and immediately intelligible while curling in on itself, I think, is a hallmark of good and enduring design.
catagories: graphic design, language
Monday 6 August 2012
viva lars vegas or norwegian photo round-up
I just wanted to take the opportunity to share a few not orphaned but as of yet unused photographs from our Norwegian adventure. On our way home, passing through Stavanger, I caught out of the corner of my eye a street called Lars V--, which naturally I dubbed Lars Vegas.
It was truly a fantastic trip and with a different motif around every turn, it is impossible to distill or censor ones impressions to just a few iconic images. Nonetheless, here are a few.
It was truly a fantastic trip and with a different motif around every turn, it is impossible to distill or censor ones impressions to just a few iconic images. Nonetheless, here are a few.
milkman or pfandtasic
For several years now, there has been a campaign against litter and to promote recycling in many parts of Europe by imposing a deposit on beverage bottles, from a few cents to a significant portion of the cost—like with bottled water when the empty bottles can be worth more than their contents. This is called Pfand in the German Sprachraum.
Speaking of masking with bar-codes, as those QR-codes, able to tag one’s phones, are becoming more and more prevalent on billboards and signage, I began to wonder whether such inscrutable things are for one always connected with what they appear to be, could guerilla marketing be appropriating advertising space and redirecting people to a competitor or something completely different, and whether such codes could be made invisible and less voluntary, forcing one to like something just for glancing at it, tricking someone with crypto-sponsorship into buying one product over another for snapping a photo of some scenic view, in reality brought to you by corporate and not just nature or history. It’s a scary thought—to sway ones gadgets with subliminal messages and what is seen that cannot be unseen
catagories: ♻️, 🇩🇪, 🇳🇴, 🌍, 📐, food and drink, networking and blogging, travel
from russia with love or ladies-in-waiting
Over on the side bar, are you seeing those solicitations for romantic services for those wanting to meet women from Eastern Europe, too—or is that just a glitch in my own marketing algorithm? Those advertisements are prejudicial and tawdry and I think reinforce negative and unwarranted stereotypes, and makes one wonder about the threshold for promotion and sponsorship quality. Still, seeing such ads made we wonder what people might say about the girls from this particular Ukrainian locality.