A UNESCO resolution called for 2011 to be observed as the International Year of Chemistry, with conferences, symposia, lectures, expositions, fairs and art exhibitions that focused on “the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind.” UK-based graphic designer/illustrator Simon C. Page (who created the incredible prints for the International Year of Astronomy 2009) was brought in to develop a poster campaign.
To advertise the fact that Amtrak, America’s nationally owned railway, now offers free wi-fi services on 12 of its East Coast routes, Arnold DC agency in Arlington, Virginia, combined an iconic symbol of each regional route and the wi-fi signal. With creative direction by Mick Sutter and illustrations by Andrew Bannecker, the AmtrakConnect ad campaign kept text to a minimum and let the images speak for themselves.
For its first-ever International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in Taipei this October, the organization put out a worldwide call for a poster design. The response was particularly nice. Here are four by Helmut Langer, James Chen, Katsunori Watanabe and Kazumasa Nagai.
What’s intriguing about the IDA Congress, themed “Design at the Edges,” is its cross-disciplinary approach, encompassing industrial design, communication design and interior architecture/design, and its big global-issue program, covering economic development, the Internet, biotechnology, urbanism and international migration. Nothing lightweight about the topics. Not what you expect from a design conference. If the speakers stay true to these subject categories, it may be the first design conference that truly focuses on the role that design can play in addressing the major problems confronting the world today.
These posters won both the Grand Prix for Design in Cannes and the A&AD design awards in 2009. Asked by Nike to create a call-for-entry poster for the Nike Basketball League Competition, Hong Kong’s most prestigious basketball league, McCann Worldgroup turned the poster itself into a spirited competition. McCann selected images of the top 10 players in action to create printing templates and then invited the players to a silkscreen shop in Hong Kong to print their own image randomly on top of one another. The process of overprinting became a battlefield in itself, and the 350 posters made by the team players became one of the hottest Nike collectibles around.
The World Wildlife Fund, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2011, has produced some terrific ads over the years. This is a series that we hadn’t seen, although it was produced by BBH Shanghai in 2008. The ads address the misconception in China that the World Wildlife Fund only protects Giant Pandas that are native to the mountain forests of central China. To raise awareness of WWF’s other conservation activities in the country, this black-and-white print and outdoor ad campaign integrated WWF’s panda logo (and China’s national symbol) into images of antelopes, forests and water.
