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“X” Marks The Spot! #21
By Le Vin Chin
You already know that Ciba engages actively with the world of design through the XYMARA platform, but it’s not the first time that the company has been involved with design. A new exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung (Museum of Design) in Zürich, “Good Design, Good Business – Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising By Geigy, 1940-1970”, running until May 24, 2009, looks at how Geigy – one of the forerunner companies which became the current Ciba – created a unique look and feel across its activities in graphic art and advertising which contributed significantly to the aesthetic of Swiss design in general.
UPDATE: the book of the exhibition, "Corporate Diversity, Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy 1940-1970" designed by NORM, at the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition at the London Design Museum
| You may have heard the news that human civilization reached a momentous milestone sometime during 2008: more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. Originally reported by the United Nations Population Fund in their State of World Population 2007 report, this change creates new challenges for us all, not least in the realms of infrastructure, social integrity, environmental impact and culture (“Are cities the new countries?” – BBC news Magazine). Here, design must take a leading role in ensuring that the megacities of the future are clean, safe, easily navigable, enjoyable, efficient … livable, in short. |  Picture generated at the Obamiconme website |
The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the organizers of the World Design Capital (WDC) project, have taken this on as their challenge: “to highlight the accomplishments of cities that are truly leveraging design as a tool to improve the social, cultural and economic life of cities”. Held biennially (2008’s WDC was Turin and 2010’s will be Seoul), nominations for the WDC of 2012 are open until March 31, 2009.
All the world knows Jay Leno as a comedian and talk show host. Automobile fans also know him as an aficionado of cars and motorcycles. His website, Jay Leno’s Garage, recently featured his new Corvette ZR1 (being Jay Leno, he got the first one off the production line!), which uses Ciba’s game-changing carbon fiber protection technology, Ciba® XYMARA™ CarboProtect on its exposed-carbon fiber roof.
Ace by "Silsor", King by David Bellot, published under GNU licence
It was no surprise when Shepard Fairey’s portrait of Barack Obama was put on view at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery. The portrait, one of three developed as campaign posters by street artist Fairey, became the key visual identity of the Obama presidential candidature (alongside equally sophisticated branding) and is surely destined to be reproduced on T-shirts and mugs the world over in the same way as other iconic pictures of Che Guevara, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe have been. There has been much internet discussion about the posters’ harnessing of the use of agitprop aesthetic – Fairey’s website is subtitled “Propaganda Engineering”, after all – but they certainly played their part in getting their man into the White House. If you would like your own poster in the style of Fairey’s Obama posters, just as with the Simpsonizeme website we featured in “X” Marks The Spot! #6, the Obamiconme website allows you to upload your own photos and rework them with that aesthetic. Fairey, meanwhile, has continued to be in the news …
 Picture generated at the Obamiconme website | More news about XYMARA friends: Chris Lefteri – “Materials Man” and our 2008 XYMARA Design Award jury president – has launched a new blog on the cool and interesting materials uncovered during the course of research for his projects, and it’s already received a shout-out on the Core77 website. One of my co-panelists at Chris’ "Desert Island Materials" panel discussion at 100% Design, the designer Afroditi Krassa, has had her “The Hidden Agenda” series of light sculptures for Ligne Roset featured on MoCoLoco recently. |
MoCoLoco also has a great interview with Janne Kyttänen of Freedom of Creation, who we interviewed back in 2007.
Meanwhile, our 2008 XYMARA Design Event keynote speaker, Tom Dixon was interviewed by Dezeen’s Markus Fairs at Design Miami last December as part of the “My Design Life in Five Images” series – and here’s the video of that encounter.