Vinyl Album Cover Art Awards

Man, there are some truly wonderful artworks in the world today. And some of the strongest can be found in the cover art for vinyl albums.

and

for example.  These are just two nominees (Robert Beattie, top; Rutherford and Mason, below) for Vinyl Album Cover Art of the Year Award.

They are taken from an excellent article in CreativeReview which covers the short list in detail. Well worth it both as a good read and as a display of the images themselves.

Calendar Date: COPE Issues Meeting

On Sunday 29th November, from 11:00am to 4:30pm at the WISE Hall, the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) will be holding their annual Issues Meeting.

“The main purpose of this meeting is to provide a forum for discussion of issues that are important to our members and the citizens of Vancouver and so a large part of the agenda will be devoted to hearing input from members. If there are any particular issues on which you would like to hear also from invited speakers, please let us know (by email to cope@cope.bc.ca ) and we will try to arrange them.”

This might be an excellent forum for discussing the demolition of the Viaducts (to the significant advantage of developers, and to the detriment of Grandview travelers), the growing gentrification of Commercial Drive, the refusal of Vision Vancouver to conduct serious and meaningful neighbourhood dialog prior to approving area-changing developments, and the apparent inability of governments at all levels to deal with the question of housing affordability.

Ethical Design Manifesto

I have been reading about the Ethical Design Manifesto put out by Aral Balkan.  The Manifesto reads as follows:

 

Design, don’t decorate · Design without ethics is decoration. Decoration makes inequality palatable, design challenges it.

Be diverse, not ethnographic · Design without diversity is imperialism. Diversity is not altruism, it is competitive advantage. A diverse team designing for themselves will meet the needs of a diverse audience. You cannot compete with a competent design team designing for themselves if you are designing for The Other.

Design the organisation, the product will follow · Ethical Design is holistic or it is nothing. Ethical Design is not what ethical designers do, it is the system of values and processes at the heart of ethical organisations. It begins with the design of the organisation itself.

Design your organisations so that your core values are respect for human rights, respect for human effort, and respect for human experience.

 

That’s it. Hard to argue with the philosophy, I believe.

Of course, this is merely the latest in an attempt to bring ethical design into practice. A Google search for “ethical design manifesto” reveals 47,000+ hits, many referencing ideas that go back to the Enlightenment. This current manifestation seems both clear and do-able, and I support it.

Image: Las Vegas, The Venetian