Exotic Fights

About three weeks ago, the Toronto office of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) launched an education campaign to raise awareness of the cruelty to animals inherent in blood sports such as bullfighting, bear baiting and cockfighting. One of their eye-popping print ads showed up today in Metro news, the favourite free paper of transit riders.

The smart campaign materials are designed to mimic the old-style circus event posters. At first glance these posters and advertisements seemingly publicize bullfighting, bear baiting and cockfighting events; however on closer inspection they contain clever messaging that indicates these activities are cruel and barbaric.

Created largely pro-bono by award-winning Toronto advertising agency TBWA, the campaign is designed to pique the interest of those individuals who might be attracted to attend these kinds of events with an aim to show them what truthfully happens at these events – hundreds of thousands of animals suffer unnecessarily and die solely for human entertainment.

Exotic Fights dot com.

More about the campaign.

More about the blood sports .

Raven Steals the Sun

This is an ancient story told on the Queen Charlotte Islands about how Raven helped to bring the Sun, Moon, Stars, Fresh Water and Fire to the world.

Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the
guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire.
Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept these things hidden.
People lived in darkness, without fire and without fresh water.

Gray Eagle had a beautiful daughter, and Raven fell in love with her.
In the beginning, Raven was a snow-white bird, and as a such, he
pleased Gray Eagle’s daughter. She invited him to her father’s
longhouse.

When Raven saw the Sun, Moon and stars, and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle’s lodge, he knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of fire also, and flew out of the longhouse through the smoke hole. As soon as Raven got outside he hung the Sun up in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the Sun set, he fastened the Moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he had stolen.

He flew back over the land. When he had reached the right place, he
dropped all the water he had stolen. It fell to the ground and there
became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the
world. Then Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in his bill. The
smoke from the fire blew back over his white feathers and made them
black. When his bill began to burn, he had to drop the firebrand. It
struck rocks and hid itself within them. That is why, if you strike
two stones together, sparks of fire will drop out.

Raven’s feathers never became white again after they were blackened
by the smoke from the firebrand. That is why Raven is now a black bird.

Ravens symbolize many things in different cultures. Native American tradition honors the raven as a symbol of courage and of magical guidance. The Arab culture calls the raven Abu Zajir which means “Father of Omens.” They are seen as oracular birds, used in divination. They are seen as symbols of death, life, the sun, magic, shapeshifting, and tricksters.

Legend from Ella E. Clark: Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, University
of California Press, 1953.

Image:  Raven Stealing Sun, by Ken Mowatt.

Andrew Thornton, jewellery artist, discusses inspiration at Flight of the Raven King. The necklace shown is The Raven Queen.

Raven Frees the Moon, an argillite pendant by Haida artist P.J. Ellis, from Spirits of the West Coast dot com, soon to be part of a Canuck version of The Raven Queen…

Nelvana of the Northern Lights

Nelvana, aka secret agent Alana North, is the daughter of a mortal woman and Koliak the Mighty, King of the Northern Lights. Koliak’s marriage to Nelvana’s mother so angered the gods that his spirit was transformed into the Northern Lights.

Nelvana is able to fly and she can travel at the speed of light on a giant ray of the Aurora Borealis. She can also call upon other powers of the Northern Lights, including Koliak’s powerful ray, which can melt metal and disrupt radio communications. As well, she can make herself invisible.

Nelvana is called upon to assist the Inuit. She discovers that the “evil white ones”, led by Commander Toroff, are destroying fish and other food stocks with time bombs. Koliak assists Nelvana and transforms the Northern Lights into a gigantic magnet which draws the bombs skyward, where they explode harmlessly. Toroff then attacks Nelvana with killer boats armed with Thormite Rays, all the while surveying the battle from his Devil Ship by means of his aeroscope.

Meanwhile, Nelvana discovers that enemy warplanes are amassing for an invasion of the North. The invasion is thwarted by Koliak’s ray, which disrupts communications and leads to the defeat of the enemy force by the Royal Canadian Air Force. As a result, Nelvana’s existence becomes known to southern Canadians and to Hitler, who is so frustrated by “Dis Arctic girl” that he dispatches two agents to the Arctic to foil Nelvana.

The rest of the story is at Guardians of the North, Library and Archives Canada.

Labradorite, also known as the Shaman’s Stone, or the dark side of the moon, is believed to reveal that which is present but which can not be seen by the light of the conscious mind without reflection.

Labradorite is a crystallized stone belonging to the family of Feldspar. The color is mainly blue, green or gold, but it can also be purple, pink or show interplay of the whole rainbow. The color is due to the presence of microscopic plates of different metals such as iron, copper and nickel and their disposition is strict parallel lines. A piece may look like an ordinary stone until you turn it to catch the light and reveal its many colors.

An Inuit legend recalls a time when the Northern Lights became imprisoned in the rocks of Labrador. An Inuit Shaman saw the lights and struck the earth with his spear and freed them. However some of the lights hid in it’s rocks, but they were discovered by the sun and water, hence we have Labradorite.

Image:  Adapted from Bill Wise, 2006

Inspiration:  The extraordinary gemstones of Bead It, Montreal, Quebec

Budget-savvy fashionistas string their own bling

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Twelve princesses slept in twelve beds in the same room; every night their doors were securely locked, but in the morning their shoes were found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night.

The king, perplexed, promised his kingdom and a daughter to any man who could discover the princesses’ secret within three days and three nights, but those who failed within the set time limit would be put to death.

An old soldier returned from war came to the king’s call after several princes had failed in the endeavour to discover the princesses’ secret.

Whilst traveling through a wood he came upon an old woman, who gave him an invisibility cloak and told him not to eat or drink anything given to him by one of the princesses who would come to him in the evening, and to pretend to be fast asleep after the princess left.

The soldier was well received at the palace just as the others had been and indeed, in the evening, the eldest princess came to his chamber and offered him a cup of wine. The soldier, remembering the old woman’s advice, threw it away secretly and began to snore very loudly as if asleep.

The princesses, sure that the soldier was asleep, dressed themselves in fine clothes and escaped from their room by a trap door in the floor.

The soldier, seeing this, donned his invisibility cloak and followed them down. He trod on the gown of the youngest princess, whose cry to her sisters that all was not right was rebuffed by the eldest.

The passageway led them to three groves of trees; the first having leaves of silver, the second of gold, and the third of diamonds. The soldier, wishing for a token, broke off a twig as evidence.

They walked on until they came upon a great lake. Twelve boats with twelve princes in them were waiting.

Each princess went into one, and the soldier stepped into the same boat as the youngest.The young prince in the boat rowed slowly, unaware that the soldier was causing the boat to be heavy.The youngest princess complained that the prince was not rowing fast enough, not knowing the soldier was in the boat.

On the other side of the lake was a castle, into which all the princesses went and danced the night away. The princesses danced until their shoes were worn through and they were obliged to leave.

This strange adventure went on the second and third nights, and everything happened just as before, except that on the third night the soldier carried away a golden cup as a token of where he had been.

When it came time for him to declare the princesses’ secret, he went before the king with the three branches and the golden cup, and told the king all he had seen.

The princesses saw there was no use to deny the truth, and confessed.

The soldier chose the eldest princess as his bride for he was not a very young man, and was made the king’s heir.

What does it all mean? And who cares about the princesses anyway? What’s really interesting is the trees with silver, gold and diamond leaves!

An Aubrey Beardsley interpretation.

Kay Nielsen illustrations

Magic Forest image: Dwyn Tomlinson

Sakura Night

A common symbolic element in Japanese imagery and poetry, falling sakura petals have several interconnected meanings, depending on who they are falling on and the context thereof.

Cherry trees bloom en masse in early spring in Japan, but the white-to-coral petals shed and die very quickly and the peak bloom is only a week or two. There is a celebration called hanami associated with the peak bloom, which often entails picnics and drinking with old friends under the cherry trees.

Sakura season is a highly visible sign of spring, the beauty of nature, renewal of life, and first love…but can also represent the transience and fragility of beauty, life, and love.

Japanese mythology often also connects cherry blossoms with death;  according to legend, the flowers of the tree were originally white; after a body was buried beneath it, the petals turned pink.

Sakura evokes both the new beginning of spring and the transience of passing from one stage of life to another.

Image:  Woodblock print Shidare Sakura 2 by Hajime Namiki, 2005

101 Dalmatians or Faux Fur?

Pongo and Missis Pongo are a pair of Dalmatians. They live with the newly married Mr and Mrs Dearly (their “pets”).

Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies. The Dearlys are concerned that Missis will not be able to feed them all and Mrs Dearly looks for another dog to act as a wet nurse. By chance, she finds an abandoned Dalmatian mother in the middle of the road in the pouring rain. She has the dog treated by a vet and gives her the name Perdita, from the Latin for “lost”. Later Perdita tells Pongo about her own lost Dalmatian love and the circumstances that led to her being abandoned in the middle of the road.

Mr and Mrs Dearly are invited to a dinner party hosted by Cruella de Vil, an intimidating and very wealthy woman with one side of her hair coloured white and the other side coloured black. They meet her furrier husband and her abused cat, and discover her  fixation with furs.

Shortly after the dinner party the puppies disappear. The humans fail to trace them but through the Twilight Barking, a form of communication by which dogs can relay messages to each other across the country, the dogs manage to track them down to Hell Hall, in Suffolk.

We keep 7.5 million cats and 6.1 million dogs as pets but do we know where that fake-looking fur trim comes from? Today in China over two million cats and dogs are killed each year for their fur and for their skins. Among other things, these furs are used as linings in boots and gloves, jackets and coats, blankets and rugs.

Pongo and Missis try to explain to the Dearlys where the puppies are but fail. The dogs decide to run away and find them.

After a journey cross country, they are met by Lieutenant Pussy Willow, a tabby cat and the Colonel, an Old English Sheepdog who shows them Hell Hall, the ancestral home of the de Vil family. He tells them to rest overnight and that they will see their puppies the next day. They then discover there are 97 puppies including their own 15 and many others who later turn out to have been legally bought. They also discover that the puppies are being kept in Hell Hall by Saul and Jasper Baddun, two crooks who work for Cruella de Vil as caretakers of Hell Hall.

According to government estimates, 500,000 garments sold in the United States every year are trimmed with bobcat, fox, rabbit, or other animal fur, potentially with nothing on the label to indicate there is any fur on the garment. With the labeling loophole in place, consumers are left in the dark; they have no idea that their new clothes may contain fur from animals—even dogs and cats—whose treatment can include being skinned alive, anally electrocuted, or held struggling underwater to drown.

Cruella de Vil appears in the middle of the night and tells the Baddun Brothers that the dogs must be slaughtered and skinned as soon as possible because of the publicity surrounding the theft of the Dearlys’ pups. Pongo and Missis devise an escape plan and agree that they must take all the puppies with them, not just their own 15. They escape on that same night, the day before Christmas Eve.

Pongo says that they need a miracle and find one when they are offered a lift in a removal van. The Dalmatians have rolled in soot to disguise their white hair, and they are able to hide in the darkness of the removal van with the help of a Staffordshire terrier whose pets are the movers.

The fur trade does not deny that it deals in dog and cat skins and it is quite legal for products made from this fur to be sold in Britain and Europe. Fur products do not have to be labeled by species. One cat fur coat alone requires the killing of up to 24 cats. 12 to 15 adult dogs are killed to manufacture each coat made from dog fur – and a horrific 40 or more if puppies or kittens are used.

Arriving back in London, they go to Cruella’s empty house. Her cat is still there and invites them in to destroy Cruella’s collection of animal skins, fur coats and mink bedsheets.

When the Dalmatians return to the Dearlys’ house where they are not recognized because of the soot. Once they are cleaned up, Mr Dearly sends out for steaks to feed them.

Presently, China is the second biggest commercial partner of Canada. According to Industry Canada, the Canadian fur and retail industry imported $5 million in animal pelts and $28 million in fur trimmed apparel from China in 2004. Despite the distinct possibility that many of these imported furs are from dogs and cats, the government has indicated that it has no intention of prohibiting these imports. By the year 2010, the Canadian government hopes to double commercial trade with China.

Later, the cat drops by to tell them Cruella has fled. The shock of discovering her furs have been destroyed has turned the black side of her hair white and the white side green. The Baddun Brothers have also been arrested. Hell Hall has been put up for sale and Mr Dearly buys it with a sum of money he has been given by the government for sorting out a tax problem. He renames it to Hill Hall and intends to use it to start a “dynasty of Dalmatians” (and a “dynasty of Dearlys” to take care of them). They adopt the cat, and promise her a white persian husband.

The import, export and sale of dog and cat fur was banned in the United States in 2000. Effective January 1, 2009, the European Union joined the ban. In Canada, buying and selling dog and cat fur is still legal.

Finally, Perdita’s lost love, Prince (the one hundred and first Dalmatian) shows up. His “pets” can clearly see that the two wish to be together and allow him to stay with the Dearlys.

101 Dalmations was originally written in 1956 by Dodie Smith, and illustrated by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.

Bill Peet and 101 Dalmatians

Bill Peet storyboards for 101 Dalmatians.

Ecological Fur

Faux fur or not?

Helvetica

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type. The film had its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2007.

Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.

Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Edüard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas’ director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas’ German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.

Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.

More about the film.

What font are you? Take the quiz!

This blogger is Courier. Like a type-writer font on a computer, Courier goes proudly against the grain.

Mirvish Books Leaves the Village

David Mirvish Books is closing its doors after more than three decades as one of Toronto’s premier spots for art, design and photography books.

The bookstore has been stitched into the fabric of the Bloor and Markham Sts. area since 1974. David Mirvish opened the store as a part of the Mirvish Gallery, which showcased the work of colour field sculptors, painters and abstract artists. In the heart of one of Toronto’s Victorian-style neighbourhoods, the establishment became a landmark in the Mirvish Village.

Store manager Eleanor Johnston said the doors will close Feb. 28.

“We are moving all of the inventory online. We’re not going to be like Amazon, that just lists everything. We will only list things that we have. It’s just another part of the world of selling retail. This is the transition that we’re taking. We’re not doing it with an aim of saying this is a better business concept.”

Frances Wood, the co-owner of Southern Accent, a restaurant across from the bookstore, said losing the 34-year-old establishment will change the face of the Village forever.

Mirvish Books is not the first independent bookstore to close in the area recently. Ballenford Books, specializing in books on architecture, on Markham St. just two doors away from Mirvish, closed last year after 29 years.

Mirvish’s closing has left some customers asking what will happen to the 50-foot-long painting by Frank Stella that dominates the store’s interior. “We don’t have any plans to do anything with it,” said Johnston.

For customers like Tracy Dalglish, who has been coming to the store since it opened, losing the building will end the romantic experience of visiting the store. Dalglish remembers visiting with her father as a 13-year-old in the late ’70s.

“I would come down with my dad for the Boxing Day sales,” she said about her trips from Rosedale to the store. “I found my love of books in this store with my dad. It’s sad when you see places you love disappear.”

Susan Warner Keene was a curious student in her mid 20s at the Ontario College of Art when she discovered the store in 1974. She has been coming ever since. She said it was the most beautiful physical space any bookstore in Toronto had to offer back then. She finds inspiration for her work with hand papermaking from reading a variety of books the store offers.

“I’ve found books here that have been tremendously helpful in my own work,” she said at the store yesterday.

“It’s probably my favourite bookstore, so it will be very sad to lose it.”

Obama Hope at National Portrait Gallery

You might remember that red, white and blue illustration of Barack Obama, staring off into space with the word “Hope” underneath his face.

That illustration got a lot of attention during the presidential campaign. Now people visiting Washington can see the original, up close and in person, at the National Portrait Gallery.

The work by artist Shepard Fairey can be seen in the gallery’s new arrivals section. The Los Angeles artist presented the illustration to the gallery on Saturday, three days before Obama’s inauguration.

Fairey says he made the image in mid-January last year, and then the posters were distributed at campaign events and made available to download online.

Source: Christine Simmons, AP

In related news, here in the Great White North, the Stephen Harper Conservatueurs have cancelled plans for a National Portrait Gallery.

And I quote:

The Harper government has abruptly cancelled plans for a National Portrait Gallery that has been in the works for years.

Newly minted Heritage Minister James Moore announced Friday that none of the proposals received from developers is acceptable to the government.

He said it’s important for the government to act prudently in a time of economic instability and the project cannot go ahead.

He made the announcement after 5 p.m. on a Friday — a tried-and-true strategy to minimize bad press.

And, if you’re a design aficionado, head over to Art Threat to see the Stephen Harper portrait contest. The prize is $1,000 (Canadian), but hurry, the deadline is March 1, 2009!

Revolutionary Type: Ecofont

In the midst of all the printing companies offering recycled paper, vegetable-based inks and e-waste management, one firm in the Netherlands is backing up for a second and asking consumers to consider switching to a greener font.

Yes, we’re talking about the carbon footprint of Times New Roman, Helvetica and Gil Sans. But don’t roll your eyes just yet. Although it may seem silly, the new Ecofont, created by SPRANQ, could have major sustainable ripple effects and potentially kick-start a different approach to how we design typefaces, and why.

For instance, rather than ask a questions such as, “What makes a font look good?” this Dutch design team asked, “How much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability?”

The answer, deduced after many trial runs and much coffee: 20%.

“We started off looking at Verdana, the most-used font in Holland,” says SPRANQ co-founder Gerjon Zomer of the creative process behind Ecofont. The Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans, an Open Source letter, and is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

The team then deleted thin vertical strips within each letter to produce as much negative space as possible – doing this saved about 50% of the ink but also left them with a font that was unreadable on most computer screens. They tried cutting out a series of square shapes and even stars, but in the end, circles proved most effective.

Finally, the designers switched from Verdana to Vera, and declared they had a winner. It’s now available for free downloading at Ecofont.eu.

“I think the power of Ecofont is its simplicity,” says Zomer. “There are a lot of complicated technical solutions out there to save ink, but they don’t usually appeal to people. We decided it was important to see the effect, right there in front of you.”

Some environmentalists argue that if renewable vegetable- or soy-based inks are used, it hardly matters how much is printed.

“But those still require cartridges,” Zomer says, “which need replacing, and each cartridge can require up to three and a half litres of oil to ­manufacture.”

Another advantage to the Ecofont is that it’s free.

“We found that most things to do with the environment right now are still very money-related,” Zomer says. “If a business is going green, it’s usually just for publicity’s sake and for customer reassurance. If the cost is too high, it won’t be successful.”

Reaction to the Ecofont, which unfortunately isn’t refined enough yet for book publishing or other high-end printing projects, has been mixed.

For whatever reason, North Americans tend to embrace it, but the European community has been more cynical, claiming it’s nothing but a cheeky marketing ploy.

Writers at Treehugger.com, for example, gave it a test-run and had mostly positive results, but they also point out that one could simply adjust the printer settings – think options such as low-resolution, fast draft mode or grey-scale.

Meanwhile, in a Jan. 2 National Public Radio broadcast in the United States, the host quipped, “We’re doing something similar here in our offices – our printers no longer use vowels.”

Still, despite all the criticism, there’s something to be said for green initiatives taking hold in unexpected places. The Ecofont proves that a seemingly inconsequential, small white dot on the stem of a 6-pt letter F can have a positive effect on the earth, one that’s hard to measure in quantitative terms but that perhaps signifies something greater.

And a small leap forward is always better than standing around doing nothing, so at the very least, the Dutch deserve a pat on the back for tackling the green movement in a unique way, choosing to think small in a world of big problems.

Source: National Post, January 15, 2009.