Visual Culture

In honor of tax day the people over at GOOD visualize ‘how our taxes are spent’. To view the infographic in actual size, you know what to do.

Team Romney appears to be pulling out all the stops to assure victory next year. Recently he unveiled the brand new Mitt Romney logo which a New York Magazine staffer likened to the Aquafresh emblem. The commentary is as follows:

You know [Romney's] pretty serious about this because he’s already come up with a slogan (“Believe in America” — unlike Obama!) and a logo: a wavy, tricolor R that, as our video editor Sarah noticed, is reminiscent of Aquafresh toothpaste. Probably so that every time you brush your teeth, you’ll associate that fresh, clean feeling with the fresh ideas and clean break with the past that Romney will bring to Washington. Or maybe Romney’s logo people waited until the last minute and then frantically looked around the apartment for inspiration. Either way, the Aquafresh people are probably pretty pumped about all the free advertising they’re going to get when Mitt runs.

Touché…

Only time will tell if the Romney brand will have the same impact and momentum on the American People as the Obama brand, but we’re not holding our breath.

Valerie Pettis has just been selected as a winner of Poster for Tomorrow’s international competition advocating the abolition of the Death Penalty. Her poster, entitled “Legal Murder Is Not Justice,” was chosen from among 2094 entries submitted by designers worldwide as one of the ten most outstanding (the highest category of the competition). Pettis’s stark, black and white design replaces the Greco-Roman columns of a hall of justice with coffins.

Poster for Tomorrow is an organization that promotes activism through socially relevant design and is currently touring both the top ten and top one hundred posters in thirty-five venues across the globe.

However, the posters have sparked controversy and of the roughly one hundred countries originally scheduled to participate many have now declined. Clandestine exhibitions were mounted in many of these places, including Syria, China, Malaysia and Iran where promoters (more…)

Howard Zinn the Author of “A Peoples History of the United States” has passed away at the age of 87. His writing on history will continue to educate, inspire, and raise a more conscious awareness of our history. He will be missed.

Update:
Big Think the online think tank whose mission is to deliver progressive insights from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, had a chance to sit down with Howard Zinn—being one of his last public interviews. Go here to view all three.

Acclaimed writer and educator Cornel West shares his thoughts of the state of the nation with an open letter to President Obama. It has just been a year since he took office and people have put him under a microscope since day 1. Yes, things could be better—but we would like to ask were people this critical of Bush this early on? Cornel’s poetry as always is critical and respectful, but a bit self-serving.

GOOD Magazine states:
There are 1.4 million active duty soldiers in the U.S. military. Of those, 117,000 soldiers are currently serving in Iraq and 68,000 are currently serving in Afghanistan.

Where arew the other 1.2 million?

Circa the 2008 presidential election, VC presented an iconic poster series that examined some of the most pressing issues of our time. To mark the occasion, which sparked a fascinating dialogue amongst Visual Culturists, we’ve decided to pull it out of the archives, dust it off and place it back on display for the sake of exploring just how much progress, if any, we’ve managed to make since then. To view the original post go to “Freedumb isn’t Free”.

Thanks James Victore.

The Rolling Stone cover story, appearing on newsstands Friday, examines the issues testing Obama in his first year in office. The image above was created by Shepard Fairey the artist behind the iconic “Hope” poster.

“The future is unwritten.” In my illustration I make reference to Gilbert Stuart’s famous unfinished portrait of George Washington to capture the idea that, although we’re quick to judge, it’s too early to tell how Obama’s presidency will turn out. Hopefully Obama and all of us who have stood behind him will do everything we can to fill in our incomplete future the way we’ve pictured it.

Pentagram takes on tobacco.

This month the Senate approved new legislation that will heavily restrict the nicotine content and marketing of cigarettes, including the requirement that colorful ads and displays be replaced with black-and-white-only text. The bill is expected to pass in the House and President Obama has said he will sign it. For a piece in its Sunday Perspectives section, the St. Petersburg Times asked DJ Stout what cigarette companies might do to follow the new marketing rules. (The full article is print only; we’ve posted it here.) Stout suggests that to comply with the new crackdown, cigarette manufacturers like Marlboro should embrace the restrictions and make cigarettes look truly dangerous. This, of course, will still appeal to a core group of smokers. (more…)