Greenpeace UK is hosting a competition to redesign British Petroleum’s logo. Entries are due by June 28th; the winning design will be used as part of their international campaign against the oil company.
A few years ago, BP rebranded themselves as ‘beyond petroleum’. And yet BP is pursuing ‘unconventional oil’ – the Canadian tar sands and deepwater drilling, despite the massive environmental damage that’s being caused by their business.
That’s why we want you to rebrand them. Your brief is to create a logo for BP which shows that the company is not ‘beyond petroleum’ – they’re up to their necks in tar sands and deepwater drilling. – Greenpeace UK
The image above shows 2 logo designs already submitted. You can check out the rest on Greenpeace UK’s flickr stream. For more information and downloadable BP logos in “easy-to-edit formats,” visit the org’s “behind the logo” page.
(Thanks to Treehugger for the original announcement about this competition.)
The Guardian has selected political artist Michael Rakowitz as their artist of the week. Although this American of Iraqi-Jewish heritage has drawn inspiration from sources as diverse as Arab newspapers and eBay, Guardian arts writer Skye Sherwin is drawn to Rakowitz’s constructive solutions to public problems, such as ParaSITE, his custom built homeless shelters.
Often he has devised practical, creative ways to get discussion going at ground level: public art projects that directly involve people. Begun in 2004, a project he called Return saw Rakowitz relaunch in Brooklyn a version of his grandfather’s import/export business; the local Iraqi community were invited to send items to Iraq for free, testing channels of communication at a time when there was almost no postal infrastructure. For another of Rakowitz’s projects, Enemy Kitchen (2006), cooking classes became a way to broach cultural boundaries, teaching school kids family recipes with the help of his mother in workshops staged in California and New York.
Rakowitz’s latest exhibition, The Worst Condition Is to Pass Under a Sword Which Is Not One’s Own, is at Tate Modern until May 3.
Atheist bus advert in London. Photo: Reuters.
An idea imported from the UK and sweeping many of the world’s larger cities has come to Canada: adverts on public transit vehicles suggesting there just might not be a god. The advertising campaign has been turned down by some, and in most cases organizers were forced to insert ambiguous words like “might not” or “maybe” in the adverts, lest believers should feel slighted. La Presse reported that the ads would run in Montreal for the month of March, while the Montreal Gazette reported two days ago that Toronto and even Calgary have joined the list of cities willing to reap advertising dollars from a campaign that questions divine creation.
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Screen grab of the Laboratory of Insurrection Imagination site
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination presents C.R.A.S.H: A postcapitalist A to Z. Take part in a free course combining art, activism and permaculture or get paid to actively imagine a postcapitalist world!
“We are looking into an unprecedented abyss of economic and social turmoil that confounds our previous perceptions of historical risk. Our vertigo is intensified by our ignorance of the depth of the crisis or any sense of how far we might ultimately fall.”(Mike Davis, Historian and social commentator.)
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Paper waste is a common office culprit. Despite being a web geek who keeps nearly everything in the cloud, I admit to printing off more than I need to. I know that wastes paper, and the trees and those who love them hate me for it.
Paper would be pretty dull, however, if it weren’t for ink. We use lot of ink printing documents, and we often don’t think twice about it, especially at the office. But it takes a lot of materials, energy, and often toxic chemicals to produce an ink cartridge, not to mention the landfill waste once it’s tossed in the trash. Cutting down on ink use couldn’t hurt, then, could it?
The folks at Spranq, a Dutch communications firm, took a unique but simple approach to the ink conservation situation: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? Apparently punching little circles out of each letter is the answer, resulting in a font that uses up to 20 percent less ink.
Behold the Ecofont. It looks a touch funky when blown up, but when used at 10pt it is practically indistinguishable from Verdana, the popular office font upon which it was based.
So download a free copy of Ecofont, and give thanks to a simple design concept that will give you more blotch for the buck, and keeps cartridges out of the landfills a little longer.
The Design of Dissent
Nearly two years after this incredible, indispensable, 230 page book was released in paperback I have finally got my muckraking hands on it. Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic’s The Design of Dissent is a phenomenal repository of political poster art (and more) that I’ve now realized is an essential addition to any shelf, coffee table, library, or revolutionary basement on the planet.
The book is visually stunning – a keen eye for layout, mixed with a healthy dose of breathing space and exceptional curatorial decision-making make for 200+ pages of explosive and provocative political art.
Divided into sections that range from “Ex-Yugoslavia” to “Food” to “U.S. Presidential Election” this offering from Rockport Publishers is one of the best books illustrating the collusion/confusion of politics and art that I have seen.
The images are part historical testament, part marginalized voice, and part pop culture intervention. Together they make up a book that is an essential for anyone interested in political art, dissent, democracy, and the spirit of creative visual production to pry open the closed spaces of culture and community.
The school of visual arts in NY has also created a site highlighting some 100 of the political posters curated by Glasher, you can view it here.
It might be a fortnight late for Christmas, but you can still embrace some fun free of consumerism with Readymech. These free, beautifully illustrated flatpack toys are designed by Fwis and can be printed on any old printer. All you need is some double-sided tape, 15 minutes, and the burning desire to embrace the arts-and-crafts kid in you.
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