Can you guess where it is?

I just posted a short article inspired by this sign.  You can read it here…

Chinese Web users, stung by international criticism of China ahead of the Beijing Olympics, have splashed red across the Internet by adding hearts and “CHINA” to their names when chatting online in a show of support.

Several Reuters reporters’ contact lists for online chat programs, such as Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, steadily filled up with red hearts during the day, though opinions differed as to what, exactly, the symbol signified.

Continue reading at globeandmail.com

The new old logo: Starbucks is temporarily using a sanitized version of its original branding on new packaging.

Brown is certainly a color that communicates coffee. So, when you order a cup of the new Pike Place coffee at Starbucks this week, it doesn’t seem out of place to see a special brown logo on the cup and paper sleeve. Except that, as everyone knows, Starbucks’ iconic logo is green. So why change such a successful corporate symbol?

“We will use the colour orange and make it a symbol of the protest against the human rights violations in China. Due to the strict censorship it will be practically impossible for sportspeople and spectators to get into the stadium with obvious symbols in form of text or pictures. But no authority will be able to ban the colour orange, although it is obvious for everybody that it expresses a conspicuous accusation against the human rights violations in China

It is the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot and his art workshop (Art in Defence of Humanism, AIDOH www.aidoh.dk) that is behind the ‘Colour Orange’ project.

Galschiot thinks of art as nonverbal communication and he often uses his art to make international art happenings to place focus on defenders of humanism. He usually uses his sculptures as artistic manifestations, but as a result of the extremely limited Freedom of Speech at the Olympics in 2008, he has chosen the colour orange. He funds his art events himself mainly through the sale of bronze sculptures to art collectors and he is therefore completely independent from political, economic and religious interests.

Jens Galschiot says: “This is not really a campaign in the traditional sense. The project has to work as a catalyst for some kind of wave or feeling that repeats itself over and over again and that flushes all over the world.”

The project will, through its own dynamics, function as what Joseph Beuys has called a “Gesamtkunstwerk” in which the distinction between the artist, the art itself and the viewer has become blurred. Everybody becomes part of the art.

Red – The Color of Romance!
Scarlet, Crimson, Torch Red, Lipstick Red, Red Rose, Paint the Town Red, Red Hot, Red Handed, Candy Apple Red, Fire Engine Red, Blood Red, Red Letter Day, Red Bull. Red is not passive or fluffy. Red is attention-getting. Red is assertive. Red is action and energy. Red is powerful.

However the bright lights have been received with mixed reviews and everyone from statesmen to the people on the street seem to have a strong opinion on the project.