Caution: Sign Ahead
We were going to do a post on the importance of thoughtfully designed and placed road signs, showing you some of the best. Then, we decided that these actual signs will get the point across just as effectively.
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Three Canadian Designers Create UNESCO Posters
Give the same creative brief to three different designers and you’re likely to get back three different solutions. Take for example the poster competition sponsored by the Canadian Council on Learning and the Canadian Commission of UNESCO to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mark International Adult Learners’ Week last March. Sixty designers across Canada submitted their portfolios; three were commissioned to design posters around the theme “Learning is a Human Right.” Here’s what the three had to say about their design approach.
Internationally known poster artist Andrew Lewis in Brentwood Bay, BC, explains “Learning takes place deep inside our ‘grey matter’, which, in my mind, is not grey at all, but a fanned out Pantone book, not in any arranged order but an explosion of random colors. Sketching with colored pencils on paper, I developed this image where the left side is a flat range of colors that move right and literally left the page, or the mind. The original image was smack dab in the center of the page, so using scissors, I cut it in half and moved it over, then realized I could make a pattern, suggesting that we as humans become connected through the process of learning.”
Quiz: Test Your Money Symbol Skills
We have all heard of the American dollar, the European Union euro, the South African rand, the Japanese yen, etc., but can you recognize currency symbols on sight? Are you aware that at least 24 countries use the “$” sign to denote that the number that follows has a monetary value? In this global economy, it has becoming increasingly important for designers, editors and proofreaders to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of money marks. Here are a few currency symbols. Using the number beside each symbol, see if you can match the symbol with the country that uses it. Note: Due to space, not all countries that share the same symbol are listed.
Music Icon of an Era
Of all the millions of photographs of superstar Michael Jackson, the photo of a single jewel-encrusted meshed glove encapsulated the voice, the moves, the artistry, the mystique of this incomparable performer. Jackson’s glove had become such a familiar trademark that one blogger lamented “the gloved one” is gone.
Meatpaper Magazine
When people hear of a magazine called Meatpaper, they immediately conclude that it must be a recipe-laden publication for cooks or a trade magazine for those in the livestock and butchering business. Meatpaper is directed at neither. Actually, it is very hard to describe. Created by San Francisco-based Sasha Wizansky, whose background is fine art, graphic design and sculpture, the concept for Meatpaper started as an art project. About four years ago, Wizansky says she was struck by the realization that “everyone had a story to tell about their relationship to meat. I realized that a magazine would be a perfect way to explore this idea.”
Teaming with journalist/radio reporter Amy Standen, Wizansky self-produced what she describes as “the only magazine about the idea of meat – what we call the fleischgeist” — defined as “the spirit of the meat.” She says fleischgeist refers to “the growing cultural trend of meat consciousness, a new curiosity about not just what’s inside that hotdog, but how it got there, and what it means to be eating it.”