City-dwellers know that we are constantly bombarded with graphic messages. It’s the “white noise” of urban living. Most of us tune it out like the omnipresent sound of traffic and pedestrian chatter.

This 2006 award-winning film, made by Netherlands-based Studio Smack for Museum de Beyerd in Breda, has become a classic. Like an x-ray, the film “Kapitaal” zeroes in only on the graphic stimuli encountered by an “unseen commuter” waiting on a platform for the train, riding the subway and walking through the city. Everything but the graphic information is reduced to black silhouettes. Signage, logos, ads, train timetables, graffiti, posters and packaging labels stand out in stark white contrast. There is no voiceover commentary, just the claustrophobic visual assault pressing in from every direction. It begs the question: How much do people really notice in a world of information overload? How can designers and advertisers avoid adding to the visual clutter and give the public something they really want to see?

Just over a year ago, we ran a story about innovations in 3-D projection mapping. At the time, it was largely a performance demonstration that hadn’t yet become established for commercial marketing purposes. Now it has. This dazzling 3-D mapping stunt was created in Malaysia for the 2012 Hyundai Accent, which will be debuted at the New York Auto Show later this month. The part of the video that is real is the car, which was suspended from the side of a building, and the driver who “walked” to the car and got in to “drive.” The wheels spun, but the rest of the imagery was computer generated. One thing about 3-D mapping films is that they need to show viewers the reaction of the in-person audience and even the behind-the-scene production work to truly appreciate what the producers pulled off. Otherwise, just seeing the 3-D show on a screen would lead many to conclude that the whole thing was done on a computer.

The World Wildlife Fund, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2011, has produced some terrific ads over the years. This is a series that we hadn’t seen, although it was produced by BBH Shanghai in 2008. The ads address the misconception in China that the World Wildlife Fund only protects Giant Pandas that are native to the mountain forests of central China. To raise awareness of WWF’s other conservation activities in the country, this black-and-white print and outdoor ad campaign integrated WWF’s panda logo (and China’s national symbol) into images of antelopes, forests and water.

The headline reads: “Saving Pandas Is Not Our Only Mission.” The text goes on to report that WWF’s environmental initiatives in China sparked the recovery of the Tibetan antelope population, protected over 10 million hectares of forest through sustainable management programs, and reconnected 17 lakes to the Yangtze River and infused new life into the water ecosystem. The creative director was Johnny Tan with lead writer Leo Zhang.

Japanese graphic designer Masaaki Hiromura has made pictograms an integral part of the kanji characters he created for Tokyo’s Kitasenjyu Marui department store to come up with food words that can be understood in any language. The silhouette of the food appropriately replaces a stroke in the word so it can be read as text. Although Hiromura was probably focused on devising a witty and graphically interesting way to communicate to multinational customers who frequent the store, this display seems like the reverse of how written languages began in many ancient cultures. Japanese and Chinese characters started as pictographs, ideographic symbols describing objects and actions. Over time, these characters became less pictographic and ideographic and more visually abstract. What’s amusing about these pictogram characters is that we’ve come full circle.

Typography has always figured prominently in the work of American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, never more so than in this installation at the temporary Stedelijk in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Kruger’s work is part of the series of “Taking Place” exhibitions, hosted by the museum to allow contemporary artists to express themselves in innovative and experimental ways in the unfinished space of the Stedelijk.

For her art installation, Kruger chose the museum’s largest gallery, the Hall of Honor, and wrapped the floor and walls with text printed at a monumental scale. The aphorisms set forth are emotion-charged, powerful and in-your-face unavoidable.

A strong graphic design bias is visible in Kruger’s art. That is understandable since that represents a large part of her career. She worked as a designer, picture editor and art director at such publications as Mademoiselle, House and Garden and Aperture. Earlier while at Parsons School of Design, she had studied with photographer Diane Arbus. This training still informs her work. Known for a style that is both compelling and unsettling, Kruger has perfected the use of tightly cropped, large-scale black-and-white photographic images overlayered with white text in Futura Bold reversed out of a red band, or vice versa. A natural-born provocateur, she has used her art as a platform to make pithy observations on religion, sex, racial and gender stereotypes, corporate greed, consumerism and other hot topics of our time.

What’s intriguing about Kruger’s work is the use of graphic design devices to give her installation immediacy and impact. Even before learning who created the typographic exhibition at the temporary Stedelijk, it was obvious that the artist had to come from a graphic design background.

Over the past couple of weeks two separate stories appeared in the news. One was a report by Amazon that for the first time its e-books outsold its hardcover titles. For the quarter, Amazon says it sold 143 e-titles for every 100 hardcover books.

The other story, which appeared in San Francisco Bay Area newspapers, was about the town of Walnut Creek’s new library, which incorporated 17 original works of art at a cost of $300,000. The neighboring town of Lafayette (population 25,000) spent roughly $400,000 on paintings, photographs, sculptures and prints when it rebuilt its library last year. The local paper described this new crop of libraries with conference rooms, fireplaces, computers and cafes as “community living rooms.” Libraries are not just repositories for books anymore. Some public libraries are redefining their role by positioning themselves as knowledge centers free and open to the entire community – not a museum, not a school, not a social club, but a place that bridges the digital divide and draws together those who share a love of art and learning.

Some people argue that such changes are premature, that traditional printed-book-based libraries will evolve gradually, but they said the same about video rental outlets and CD music stores – and where are they now? The question is: Does the rise in Amazon e-title sales and the public embrace of the iPad signal a tipping point in the physical form that books take – and what does that say about the future of libraries (not to mention publishers, bookstores, authors, designers and suppliers to the publishing industry)?

Some communities aren’t waiting around to find out. The new Walnut Creek library, for instance, strikes a balance between the visual arts and letters to create an intellectually nourishing environment. At every turn, there are intriguing art pieces to view, beginning with a 26-foot-tall art installation created by internationally known artist Christian Moeller for the entrance of the library. Titled “Shh…A Portrait in 12 Volumes of Gray,” Moeller’s work is made from 3,960 books in 12 shades of gray. Perhaps someday people will go to libraries to enjoy the art and stay to read a novel on their Kindle or join a discussion group led by a local author.

We recently ran across this post by Alissa Walker for Good.Is about an artist/motorist named Richard Ankrom who got fed-up with the dangerously confusing wayfinding signs splitting the 5 North onramp from the 110 Freeway to Pasadena. The lack of a 5 North overhead sign often caused drivers to wave their hand frantically to be allowed to switch lanes at the last minute and motorists who were cut off to wave their finger in an upward motion to express their annoyance.

In a bit of public service performance art, Ankrom used his hands more constructively and crafted his own freeway directions. The altered signage, which Ankrom put up in broad daylight in 2001, was appreciated by commuters like Alissa, but was not recognized as phony until Ankrom leaked his prank to local newspapers. That’s how it came to the attention of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which is in charge of freeway signs. Despite Ankrom’s confession, he wasn’t charged with defacing public property because, afterall, how is making something better and safer a crime? For the past eight years, Caltrans let Ankrom’s doctored sign stand. Then recently it removed it, and replaced it with an official sign that looks like Ankrom’s.

Don’t know whether the world is getting dirtier or whether advertisers are looking for a cheaper, more earth-friendly way to get their message across, but “reverse graffiti” is proliferating in all parts of the world. Instead of spray painting words and images on walls, buying billboards or doing wild postings, marketers are using stencils and water to power-wash selective areas of grimey walls and sidewalks to make words and images appear. The technique is being adopted to post silhouetted corporate logos, community service messages and public art murals in sooty places.

Reverse graffiti – also known as clean graffiti – has been perfected by a Brit from Leeds named Paul Curtis, better known as “Moose.” Years ago Moose discovered the amazing design possibilities of grime when he tried to remove spatter from a greasy restaurant kitchen wall, only to note the stark contrast between dirty and clean areas. Since then, Moose has found his calling and has accepted commissions to create art from grime in places as far from home as San Francisco and for institutions as diverse as GreenWorks and the Scottish and English governments.

But it is not just Moose who is practicing reverse graffiti. Now it is occasionally employed as sidewalk signage by small shopkeepers and as a kind of guerrilla advertising. Where there’s dirt, there’s art.

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