CR’s Mark Sinclair is blogging from the Icograda World Design Congress in Havana. In this post, he visits the Cuba Gráfica exhibition, a retrospective of Cuban graphic design from 1959-2007 and talks to Eladio Rivadullo, the designer of the very first poster created for the Cuban revolution of 1959 (shown above).

In addition its seven day conference, the Icograda Congress boasts a range of satellite events and exhibitions. With Cuba hosting the Congress this year, many of the country’s designers have taken the opportunity to show some of their best work in a host of different venues around Havana. The largest show, Cuba Gráfica, was a comprehensive retrospective of Cuban visual communication design, and included examples of editorial and identity design, posters, websites, motion graphics, packaging and stamps from 1959 to 2007. Curated by Pepe Menendez, Pedro Contreras and Hector Villaverde, the exhibition is currently on show in the stunning setting of publishing house/gallery, Casa de las Americas, in the Vedado district of Havana. The opening night was popular with Icograda delegates and Cuban designers alike and I also had the pleasure of meeting a special guest, too – Eladio Rivadulla, the man behind the first poster ever designed for the Cuban revolution of 1959.

The November issue of CR, out tomorrow, is all about Work In Progress. All our features will look at the rocky road that is the creative process, from initial idea to finished work. As a taster, here’s James Jarvis describing how his latest vinyl toy, YOD (shown above), came into the world

Apple’s new Leopard desktop

As I write this, Apple’s Mac OSX Leopard is nine hours from launch. The new operating system bulges with new features, many of them superfluous, others that will, in the terminology of these things, no doubt be considered “neat”. But if you were hoping that it would LOOK any better, you will be sorely disappointed. Leopard is even shinier, even more bevelled, even more everything than its predecessor. Surely it’s time that Apple offered us some more tasteful alternatives?

In an unusual promotion for Douglas Coupland’s new novel, The Gum Thief, publisher Random House Canada approached production company Crush Toronto to make a series of nine short film clips based on the book. The clips, all with narration by Coupland himself, are posted on YouTube (all nine shown above).

All this week, CR’s Mark Sinclair will be blogging from the Icograda World Design Congress in Havana. In this first post, he attends an open day at the city’s Instituto Superior de Deseno Industrial, where (above) delegates were greeted by the students

El Instituto Superior de Deseno Industrial is Cuba’s one and only design school. Based in Havana, the ISDI is in the central part of the city, west of Habana Vieja, the old town, where most foreign visitors to the Cuban capital spend their time and tourist’s pesos.

Stanley Donwood has been hard at work of late, firstly on the artwork for Radiohead’s eagerly awaited In Rainbows box set, and also on his new book Dead Children Playing, which is published this week.