ALR designletter [5.3]
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Welcome to a new issue of the ALR designletter. As always we welcome your comments, suggestions, criticism and/or praise. Thanks for reading.
Noah Scalin, president
ALR design
socially conscious graphic design
http://www.ALRdesign.com
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[01] ALR NEWS
ALR’s billboard design for the Richmond Peace Coalition appears in the new book from Rockport: “The Design of Dissent”. The book is a collection of designs for social causes from around the world edited by Mirko Ilic and Milton Glaser.
5 of ALR’s designs are featured in the new book “1000 Type Treatments”. The book, which was put together by the London based marketing firm Wilson Harvey, is also from Rockport.
Also we just discovered that last year’s “Design Ideas with Limited Color” from the Japanese publisher PIE Books includes several pieces from ALR.
[02] ACTIVISM
One year ago artist Steve Kurtz called the police to help with an emergency. However, an art piece he was working on in his home involving Petri dishes and test tubes landed him in the middle of a federal investigation, which continues today. The Critical Art Ensemble has spearheaded his defense and offers people who wish to support Kurtz several options via their website. They’ve even established the Kurtz ShoutOut where callers can record a message that will be uploaded onto the Web site and used in an art installation later on. To learn more, visit http://www.caedefensefund.org/
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UPDATE: In Designletter 5.1 we talked about CHEERS, a controversial study the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to study toxin intake in children. Pressure from the public made the study an issue during Stephen Johnson’s confirmation hearings to become head of the EPA. Two Democratic senators said they would block Johnson’s nomination unless he agreed to cancel the study. Last month CHEERS was officially discontinued. Read more at http://www.epa.gov/cheers/ and http://www.organicconsumers.org/epa-alert.htm
[03] WAR + PEACE
Don’t let the flag draped coffins on the splash page fool you. The five finalists for the National Iraq War Memorial are as humorous as they are heartbreaking. Why not just reappropriate old Iraqi monuments for the White House lawn, as one plan suggests? Or better yet, erect an enormous G.I. Joe who slowly turns red each day as the names of the dead are inscribed on the statue with a red laser reminiscent of Rumsfeld’s notorious auto-pen? Check out these and other proposed memorials for the war at http://www.nationaliraqwarmemorial.org/
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Israel just got a new breed of boarder guards. Machsom Watch is a group of 400 Israeli women who monitor border checkpoints to make sure Palestinians entering Israel are not harassed or violated by soldiers. The site - http://www.machsomwatch.org/ - includes dozens of pictures of the wall and various checkpoints as well as eyewitness accounts of incidents along the border.
[04] DESIGN
Hooters or just an owl? Matt Siber’s online gallery of photography and digital imaging gives viewers a side-by-side look at a text free world by removing lettering and signage from cityscapes and placing the words in the same configuration on a blank page. Check it out at http://www.siberart.com/
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Malas Noticias’ Design for Solidarity project features a gallery of 28 international designers who have created images relating to the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington and Madrid to coincide with the “Democracy and Terrorism” summit in Spain this past March. Check out the designs at http://unmundofeliz.org/version/00/badnews/.
[05] FOOD
The Monfort Boys Town school for boys in Fiji has teamed up with the Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives to make beer into fish. Working together they have set up program where the boys collect sludge left over from a local brewery and plant mushroom spores which break down the barley protein so that it becomes a nutritious food source for pigs. The school then collects the pig poop and run it through a biodigester which allows them to collect gases that can be stored and used for heating and cooking. Finally they spread the remaining material over shallow pools to disintegrate and act as food for algae that in turn feeds a wide variety of fish in the ponds. ZERI has this and other waste reuse case studies on its site at http://www.zeri.org/
[06] RESOURCE
Free the pictures! Designers and others with low budgets in need of images for their projects have a handy resource online. The Wikipedia has categorized listings for tons of public domain images. Plus wiki pages are open to editing from any reader, so check it out or add your own link at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
[07] ENVIRONMENT
And the award goes to…Fred Singer! Singer is the lucky recipient of this year’s Flat Earth award for denying—and even advocating—global warming. He beat out strong competition from Rush Limbaugh and Michael Crichton. The award was the result of a project by students at Middlebury College taking a class on the science of global warming and social networking to stop it. To learn more about the award check out http://flatearthaward.org/
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Oddly enough, the well-respected Scientific American agrees with Singer, that all this hand-wringing about global warming has been overkill. Evolution, the editors confess, is pretty overrated too. Read more from this April Fool’s Day editorial at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?SID=mail&articleID=000E555C-4387-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F&chanID=sa004+
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Luckily some people still think protecting the environment is a good idea. Washington governor Christine Gregoire signed a bill last month that will require public buildings (including public schools and universities) in the state to comply with national Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. LEED emphasizes sustainability, water savings, energy efficiency, safe materials selection and indoor environmental quality. Read more at http://www.sijournal.com/greenbuilding/1439392.html
[08] MEDIA
Stay Free! has a new online sibling. The twice-yearly non-profit magazine of media, politics and culture (and Brooklyn!) has recently started the blog: Stay Free! Daily. The blog, which lives at http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/, explores the same issues as the magazine, just at a faster pace.
[09] ENTERTAINMENT
The U.N. is teaching kids to play with their food. Food Force is a 3-D animated online video game that teaches about famine and the hazards of U.N. operations as players try and distribute food to the fictional island of Sheylan. The game provides a team of virtual experts like Miles the Nigerian Director of Food Purchasing and Joe Kazi, a native Sheylanian and nutritionist. You can find real-world information about famine and food distribution operations on the page too. Start your mission at http://www.food-force.com.
[10] LEXICON
“Word of mouth marketing” (n.) Word of Mouth Marketing is an emerging niche in the field of market research. Outfits like BuzzMetrics monitor blog chatter to get a clearer picture of what real consumers are saying about their clients’ products. Companies can use the information to reverse engineer ad campaigns to include language or ideas initially made popular by blogs. They also hope it will help them shape public opinion by learning which bloggers are sympathetic to their cause or even starting a blog of their own to give the appearance of grassroots support. For the official word you can visit the Word of Mouth Marketing Association website at http://www.woma.com.
[11] NOSH
Utah is landlocked, but it’s illegal to go whale hunting there anyways. So is napping on the floor of a cheese factory in South Dakota. Find out more laws that British students Richard Smith and Luke Bateman broke on their cross-country road trip at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1425731,00.html and http://www.dumblaws.com
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The ALR Designletter is a semi-regular update on the activities at Another Limited Rebellion design, the world of socially conscious design, and beyond. You are on this list because you have worked with, contacted, or have a personal connection to ALR design. The names on this mailing list will never be sold or given away. If you no longer wish to be on this list, just respond with "REMOVE" in the subject section and there will be no hard feelings. Back issues can be found on our web site in the ISSUES section.
Sources are listed when information was found in one specific location. However, articles are not quoted verbatim in this newsletter.
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