"Dying is easy, comedy is hard," the famous quote goes. Similarly (albeit ungrammatically), you could say, "design is easy, logos is hard." What Paul Rand called "the rabbit's foot" is a difficult conceptual design process even for masters of the form. But that doesn't stop designers from making logos, companies using them, and competitions from showering them with kudos when kudos are due--or not.
    After viewing the international winners of this year's Wolda, the Worldwide Logo Design Annual, I was a little dismayed by what the jury awarded "Best of the World" in the categories of both "Talent" (above) and "Professional" (below). The former was designed for a Japanese music label, Atsushi Yamamoto Records Tokyo KK, by Daniel A. Becker; the latter was designed by Landor Associates Sydney for News Limited's One Degree initiative to battle climate change.
    Although the upside-down elephant is amusing, and the One Degree mark (looking like a supplicant with bended head) gets the message across, I question whether they are indeed the "Best in the World" or just the best of what they had to choose from--a fundamental problem with all competitions. In fact, with the exception of the "Best of Malta" (below middle), designed for Safeguard by Bulldog, and the unreadable though nonetheless clever "Best of Serbia," (bottom, see the chairs?) designed by Kontra Studio, the rest of these "Bests" are rather lackluster. Maybe "Best of" is too loaded a term. Perhaps "Good of ..." would be safer.

With the U.S. economy going south, we may be forced to do what the Germans and Austrians did during their incredible inflation after World War I: Each city and town designed and printed their own emergency (or ersatz) money called Notgeld (above and below). It turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for designers to start from zero and create unprecedented currency. The value of the Mark or Pfenning in Germany and the Heller (yes, you're reading that correctly) in Austria (bottom) may have been worthless, but the bills were extraordinarily beautiful and often witty.
    Incidentally, the city of Great Barrington, Mass., has been circulating its own Notgeld or barter money called BerkShares for the past year.

One of the most heartbreaking, memorable images from my childhood was the photograph (above) of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on their way to prison, convicted of atomic spying for the USSR and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Their guilt or innocence was always a matter of fierce debate, and many artists, like Picasso, saw them as scapegoats and created art in response (below). The French political cartoonist Louis Mittelberg, also known as TIM, drew a barb at President Eisenhower--pictured with electric chairs for teeth (bottom)--for allowing them to be executed.
    Last week Morton Sobell, a co-defendant who served 30 years in prison, and whose son I befriended when we were teenagers, confessed that he and Julius did indeed spy for the Russians. I was reminded of the emotional impact this case had on many of us in New York. On Tuesday, the Rosenberg's two sons, who had adamantly fought to vindicate their parents, finally admitted to The New York Times that they now accept their father had spied, but their mother had not and was used as a tragic pawn in the case.
    I was also reminded how as a teenager, I protested for Sobell's release by carrying handmade signs at the courthouse in Foley Square, perhaps my first use of graphic design.