More Thoughts

Roger Mandle is the President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He is pushing RISD to open itself up to the community and become more service oriented. This is one of the big challenges of the next ten years in post-secondary education, to open the doors of the academy to active participation in the community and making the resources of the institutions truly serve the interests of the community. This is not to suggest that universities and colleges don't serve the community now. Rather, service has to be more systematic and in the case of Art and Design Institutions, the relationship to community needs to be more deliberate and carefully planned than ever before.

The spectre of separatism in Quebec is rearing its head again with polls showing that over fifty percent of voters now would support the separation of Quebec from Canada in a referendum. "The outlook for Canada yesterday looked as bleak as Montreal's rainy weather. The Globe and Mail and Le Devoir reported that the Leger Marketing polling firm had projected that 54 per cent of Quebecers would have voted Yes in a sovereignty referendum held April 20 to 24. It was the first time since October 1998 that Leger had found a majority in favour of sovereignty." (Don Macpherson, Montreal Gazette)

I served as a jury member on the panel that chose the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics logo. The reaction to the logo has been divided. To me the emblem represents an excellent neutral ground between design for local consumption and the need to have a symbol that will resonate outside Canada. None of the submitted designs would have been accepted by the public in a universal and homogenious manner.