We don’t know how to wish you a happy new year in multiple languages, but we found several cats that do. From the team at @Issue, we wish you all the best in 2012 — peace, friendship, health, great collaborative clients, a free flow of creative inspiration, and many many moments of joy and laughter. Thank you for following @Issue throughout the year.

Sometimes a design solution is so obvious that many designers miss it because they are too busy trying to make complex connection to the product attributes, uniqueness, emotional appeal, market positioning, yada yada yada. All the while an elegant solution is buzzing right before their eyes. Such is the case with the packaging for Babees Honey, created by Ah & Oh Studio in Poznan, Poland. The familiar black-and-yellow bands on the bumble bee instantly suggest the product’s original maker, and the handwritten logotype is drawn like a bee merrily flitting from blossom to blossom collecting nectar. Simple. Charming. Sophisticated. Geometric. What’s not to like?

Pssst! Need a legitimate business reason to go to Las Vegas? Come to the AIGA Las Vegas “Return on Design: Business + Design Conference on November 17-18.

According to Patty Mar Simmons, event co-chair and president of AIGA Las Vegas, “We are uniting designers and business leaders to foster a better understanding of how good design can help drive tangible results for any size company.”

On the business/marketing side, speakers include Bill Hornbuckle, MGM Resorts International; Jamie Naughton, Zappos.com; Richard Worthington, Molasky Group of Companies; Vince Alberta, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority; Christina Barr, Nevada Humanities; Brian Gordon, Applied Analysis, and Luke Heffron, Shutterlfy. Design side speakers include Debbie Millman, Sterling Brands and AIGA National board member; Andrew Naudin, ExhibitForce, and yours truly – Kit Hinrichs, Studio Hinrichs and design director, @Issue, and Delphine Hirasuna, editor, @Issue.

The cost to attend is $175 per person and includes a reception on Thursday evening, plus the conference sessions, breakfast and lunch on Friday. Come early, spend the weekend. Support the Las Vegas economy. For more information, visit returnondesignvegas.com.

The wicker basket façade of the Spanish Pavilion, designed by Barcelona-based architects MiralleTagliabue EMBT, for the 2010 Shanghai Expo has appropriately garnered awards and accolades—to the point where the cardboard signage system inside has not attracted much media attention, which it also deserves.

Designed by Isidro Ferrer in collaboration with Valencian designer Pablo Alabau and the Zaragoza Versus studio, the die-cut cardboard typography is the perfect complement to the woven willow stem structure of the building. The unbleached cardboard with its unapologetic rough texture blends harmoniously into its environment. It’s fresh and expressive and, like the wicker walls, the signage feels like it sprung from nature and will dissolve back into it when the Expo is over.

The idea of using cardboard signage for tradeshow booths also has its appeal – it is economical, lightweight enough to lower shipping and handling costs, and relatively sturdy. Plus it is biodegradable, so when you dismantle the show, you can recycle the material on the spot.

Doyald Young, a lettering teacher of mine and mentor to generations of designers died recently at 85. Lynda.com prepared a tribute to him in a most fitting way. Letters and Logos.

Since 1998, Google has been regularly posting doodle logos on its homepage, which is why today it put up a playable and recordable tribute to guitarist Les Paul on what would have been his 96th birthday.

The custom reputedly started when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin designed and posted a doodle of the Burning Man Festival in 1998 to alert users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Since then, doodle logos have appeared to honor the birthdays of famous figures from Gandhi and John Lennon to Michael Jackson and Edvard Munch and to celebrate significant holidays and events worldwide. Lately the doodle logos have become more elaborate. On February 8, Google ran an interactive doodle honoring sci-fi writer Jules Verne’s 183rd birthday, and on April 15th, it commemorated Charlie Chaplin’s 122nd birthday with its first video doodle. As far as we know, the homage to Les Paul is the first playable doodle. As if we don’t have enough reason to go to Google; now it’s to check out its doodle logo for the day.

An exhibition of “The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946” opens today at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C. It is curated by @Issue’s very own editor, Delphine Hirasuna, and based on her book of the same name, which was designed by @Issue’s very own design director, Kit Hinrichs.

The exhibition (and book) features art and objects made by some of the 120,000 ethnic Japanese who lived on the U.S. West Coast and were forced into barbed wire enclosed/heavily guarded internment camps for the duration of World War II. Allowed to take only what they could carry, they were sent to live in remote uninhabited locations in the deserts and swamps.

While this represents a sad and troubling episode in American history, the objects made by the internees truly represent a triumph of the human spirit. Assigned to live in hastily constructed barracks, furnished only with a metal cot and pot-bellied stove, they set about trying to create a home for themselves and their families. Forbidden to take any metal objects into the camp, they made their own tools and scavenged for wood to construct chairs and tables and a way to store their clothes. Then they surveyed the surrounding landscape to find other things they could use. What they created out of scrap and found materials is deserving of consideration in this design blog. It shows problem-solving design and innovation, and a high aesthetic sensibility.

FYI, for those of you who live around Washington, D.C., Delphine is speaking at the Renwick Gallery at 12 noon, Friday (March 5). Her talk will be followed by a booksigning by Delphine and Kit. Come see us and mention that you read @Issue!!!

Click here for next week’s Drawords.