Canal+, the French television network and film production company, promoted its familiarity with every aspect of the filmmaking business, in every genre including porn, by creating a detailed flow chart of the process. Developed by Euro RSCG, the Canal+ infographic/advertisement is fun, fascinating, a great primer for novice filmmakers, and a convincing argument for why filmmakers would benefit from Canal +’s knowledge and support.

A UNESCO resolution called for 2011 to be observed as the International Year of Chemistry, with conferences, symposia, lectures, expositions, fairs and art exhibitions that focused on “the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind.” UK-based graphic designer/illustrator Simon C. Page (who created the incredible prints for the International Year of Astronomy 2009) was brought in to develop a poster campaign.

Page’s approach was to feature the achievements of some of the world’s greatest scientists through bold graphic images. Beautiful when viewed simply as abstract art, the posters convey their own scientific story of atoms, ions, buckyballs, H2O and the like to knowledgeable chemists and physicists. You don’t have to know chemistry to appreciate these prints.

To advertise the fact that Amtrak, America’s nationally owned railway, now offers free wi-fi services on 12 of its East Coast routes, Arnold DC agency in Arlington, Virginia, combined an iconic symbol of each regional route and the wi-fi signal. With creative direction by Mick Sutter and illustrations by Andrew Bannecker, the AmtrakConnect ad campaign kept text to a minimum and let the images speak for themselves.

While this marriage of location and wi-fi signal may seem simple, the challenge was to find the one image that people immediately associated with the region — e.g., Maine lobster, Philadelphia Liberty Bell, Adirondack mountains – and then make the wi-fi mark an integral part of the silhouetted image and not feel like a forced and clumsy “add-on.” This they did. Nice.

For its first-ever International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in Taipei this October, the organization put out a worldwide call for a poster design. The response was particularly nice. Here are four by Helmut Langer, James Chen, Katsunori Watanabe and Kazumasa Nagai.

What’s intriguing about the IDA Congress, themed “Design at the Edges,” is its cross-disciplinary approach, encompassing industrial design, communication design and interior architecture/design, and its big global-issue program, covering economic development, the Internet, biotechnology, urbanism and international migration. Nothing lightweight about the topics. Not what you expect from a design conference. If the speakers stay true to these subject categories, it may be the first design conference that truly focuses on the role that design can play in addressing the major problems confronting the world today.

These posters won both the Grand Prix for Design in Cannes and the A&AD design awards in 2009. Asked by Nike to create a call-for-entry poster for the Nike Basketball League Competition, Hong Kong’s most prestigious basketball league, McCann Worldgroup turned the poster itself into a spirited competition. McCann selected images of the top 10 players in action to create printing templates and then invited the players to a silkscreen shop in Hong Kong to print their own image randomly on top of one another. The process of overprinting became a battlefield in itself, and the 350 posters made by the team players became one of the hottest Nike collectibles around.

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.

A project by Happiness Brussels designed by Anthony Burrill in London, this limited edition poster was made to benefit the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. The poster’s message is simple and direct, but it takes on an emotional resonance when viewers learn that it was silk-screened using oil collected off of Louisiana beaches after the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the years some artists and artisans have let the choice of material imbue their creation with symbolic significance – e.g., guns melted down to make a peace sculpture; pottery made from the volcanic ash of the Mount St. Helens eruption; objects that incorporate pieces of the Berlin Wall, etc. It adds another dimension of meaning to the object and makes you think.

www.gulfofmexico2010.com/

What does it feel like to be a stranger in a foreign land? If you could communicate in the simplest, clearest language, what do you want others to know about you? Established in Berlin by two women from Argentina – one an artist, the other a journalist, Migrantas is a collective project that helps immigrants in Germany give voice to their concerns.

In conducting workshops for immigrants, Migrantas asked participants to make drawings inspired by their own reality and emotions. From the drawings and thoughts common themes emerged. These were distilled into pictograms and turned into posters put on display in bus shelters and on subways “to make visible the thoughts and feelings of those who have left their own country and now live in a new one.” Migrantas adds that “mobility, migration and transculturality are not the exception in the world, but are instead becoming the rule….We, the immigrants, are always the ‘others.’” Although the pictogram posters are a one-way dialog, they are meant to make passersby who see them reflect on the immigrant experience and see the world from their perspective.

The remote reaches of the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest are rumored to be Bigfoot country — the place where a gigantic creature, called Sasquatch, has been photographed by people with vivid imaginations and blurred-focus cameras. Every Memorial Day weekend since 2002, music lovers have descended on Bigfoot’s stomping grounds, setting up tents and RV’s near the lake to enjoy the three-day music festival. The closest town is George, Washington (yes, you read right) — population 528, give or take one or two people, about a three hours drive from Seattle and five hours from Portland, Oregon. The music is lively and eclectic, the scenery sublime, and the posters made for each performing act are the next best thing to a Bigfoot sighting. Here are just a few.

USA
This take-off on the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware during the Revolution against Britain alludes to the fact that Team USA will face a formidable challenge in the opening group stage matches against England. The team USA boat bears the nation’s motto “E Pluribus Unum,” Latin for “Out of Many, One.”

Denmark
The heist film “Ocean’s Eleven” inspired this poster showing coach Martin Olsen and the team from Denmark ready to steal the trophy.