Here is New York

I am currently in New York City to meet a publisher and for the ENK Cotérie fashion event. Yesterday I attempted to visit the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, which are immense granite pools cascading down 30 ft the size of the previous Twin Towers, but they are closed to the public now.

I visited a photography exhibition showing at Thomson Reuters building’s historic lobby on 195 Broadway – a block from the World Trade Center site. The mix of amateur, instinctively shot photography displayed through simple inkjet prints, with professional shots by photojournalists, made the space feel intimate and at the same time compelling.

Here is New York: a Democracy of Photographs began as a unique exhibition and sale of photographs taken by amateurs and professionals alike in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Anyone who had taken pictures relating to the tragedy was invited to submit their images to the gallery, where they were digitally scanned, printed and displayed by volunteers alongside the work of top photojournalists and other professional photographers.

I am pleased to share what, for me, were the most striking images.

Package and Design Magazine in China Publication

Package & Design Magazine Front Cover

Green Child, No Smoking and Path To Pictograms earned a honourable mention

A short Chinese printed bio and description – wish I knew what it said!

As written in Package and Design:

AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural Design Competition – Based in the U.S. the AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural design is an AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) community established to foster greater communication between designers across cultures, as well as a better understanding of the interwoven experience of design and culture in our lives.

Many visual communicators will naturally concur with the notion that the audience’s culture is critical to effective communication, but few are truly conscious how much our “melting pot” or “mosaic” environments create visual chimera, or what we call Cross Cultural Design.  To encourage our community to express their experience and aspirations, we conceived “Celebrating the Role of Culture in Design”.  Over a 12-week period, designers were asked to submit print, video, photography or interactive pieces that would answer the question:  How do you express the intersection between culture and design in today’s world?

We received submissions from all over the world including El Salvador, Italy, Iran, Lebanon, Columbia and the Netherlands.  The submissions from the United States reflected the expected diversity of voices, calling on a variety of cultural heritages and social issues.  The work was judged by an international panel selected for their contribution to visual communications and branding work worldwide.