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Nicolaas Wijnberg, 1970
Dick Elffers, 1971
Eppo Doeve, 1948
Anthon Beeke, 1996. All above NEDERLANDS HOOGTIJ, seen here http://www.affichemuseum.nl/index.html
Wim Crouwel, Arlette Brouwers, Total Design, 1981 Here.
By Harry Sierman
Mr Sierman again, both above via grainedit, here.
Lies Ros en Rob Schröder , 1987 also from the dutch poster museum
India is an endless bonanza for a photographer. These are from a flickr set of photos of Kerala by one Peter Ashton. Go see more here.
This is from a flickr group called Success by Mail. You’ll find lots and lots of clippings there from newspapers and magazines, all of which offer to help you get more from your life by learning to play a musical or weightlifting or selling a wonderful product or training for a new occupation, like crime investigation. From a world when a better life was yours for just mailing a coupon. MAIL NOW!
Public markets are great places, no matter where you find them . I think the first I ever visited is the lively one in Seattle, image above from here
The Public Market on the waterfront in Seattle is known as Pike Place Market, and it’s been going for more than 100 years. Image above from here.
In my town, we have several farmer’s markets that show up around the city bringing the freshest, tastiest, most interesting food to hungry and appreciative people on pre-determined days.
And every day of the week, you can go to the Granville Island Public Market, image above, from here
Our market is blessed with a wonderful waterfront location, above, and it attracts, they say some 10 million visitors a year. Which can make it hard to buy a zucchini some days.
Great cities have great public markets, above is in Chicago, on the South side seen here.
And so does Boston, above. This market, known today as Haymarket, is on sacred land where food has been sold and bought, fresh and direct, for more than 200 years. Left image, the start of the day, seen at Boston.com. The nice shot of the fresh Atlantic fish on the right from the swell Boston blog, clueless in Boston, seen here.
The Boston.com piece reminds us: “Haymarket is iconic, but it’s also messy, loud, and funky”.
Markets that evolve naturally–because people who have food to sell want to connect directly with people who need food, i.e. everyone–seem to be the best. Some turn out to be loud and funky, and some turn out to be beautiful, bliss markets. Which brings us to Paris.
Above is Marché Richard Lenoir, image from a nice article in the Guardian here. As the article says: “Every Parisian neighbourhood has its own “marché volant” – a flying
market – where hundreds of food stalls magically appear on a street for one or two mornings each week.”
Many agree that the Sunday Marché Richard Lenoir is in contention for the best in the city of light. Above image of Richard Lenoir found here.
Another contender among Paris markets is Les Enfants Rouges that has its origins in the early 1600′s and is named for a hospice near the site for orphans who wor red uniforms. Image of the Gate here.
Inside Les Enfants Rouges image here.
Above is a photo that reminded me of something else about Paris street markets. They provide more than just food. I went to a food market and chose one tomato to make a sandwich. I held it up and asked, “how much’? The tomato seller, who looked a lot like this guy, waived me away with disdain, saying something like: “take it, I can’t be bothered”, then he smiled a big warm smile that said: “it’s yours my friend”. Image found here
But wonderful as they are, the markets of Paris have competition in other places. In Italy, in Rome, there is Piazza Campo de’ Fiori.
Above image of Campo de Fiori from a couple named Larry and Jill who’ve been there.
And this view, closer, from here. Italian markets would seem to have the right combination of beauty and boistrousness. It is nutrition plus theatre.
OK we’re all hungry, but before we go to the market, consider a couple of other well regarded choices.
The Market in Cusco Peru.
Montreal, Marche Jean Talon.
Mercat de la Boqueria in Barcelona. Above 3 images from here.
Any of us who are lucky enough to have a Public Market nearby should be counting our lucky stars. The food always tastes better, it’s always more interesting–look purple carrots!–and the food is being dispensed by someone who is either the person who grew it or caught it or made it, or someone who knows who that is. And that makes it taste all the better.
If only the stock market were like that.
Mr Harry Beck thought that riders of the London Underground needed a map that showed only what they needed to know. It was a revolutionary concept. As described on the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum) website for a 2006 exhibition: MODERNISM–DESIGNING A NEW WORLD 1919 – 1939: The iconic London Underground map, which has been in use continuously since 1933, is in fact a diagram of the network. It shows relationships rather than distances to scale and uses only vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, with different colours for each of the Tube lines. The map has become a design classic, implicitly demonstrating the importance of simplicity, economy and utility – all key values promoted by Modernist design. Yet it was devised and produced by an engineering draughtsman, Harry Beck, after he had been made temporarily redundant by London Underground.
Since then (and before then), creative people aiming at showing people where they are and where they might want to go have produced some beautiful maps. For e.g. the image of Manhattan shown above posted on a blog called Aardvaarks (“burrowing through the world of images”, active until July 30, 2008)
Quoted from Strange Maps. The work is credited to Alexander Cheek, Assistant Professor of Design, Carnegie Mellon, and is called Neighborhoods of Manhattan.
And then there are the mapmakers who go beyond the limits of physical geography. Saul Steinberg, a New Yorker from Romania, via Italy, was the artist who, over and over, showed us what we already knew but had never seen.
These examples from Accuracy and Aesthetics.
