Mexico 68 poster by Lance Wyman, with artistic direction from Eduardo Terrazas and Pedro Ramirez Vázquez, © courtesy of the artist/IOC/V&A

Despite the protests, Olympic fever is slowly starting to build, and the exhibitions are beginning. This weekend, at the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, a show looking at 100 years of Olympic posters will open which will run (no pun intended…) over the summer to coincide with the Beijing Games. Here are a few extracts from the selection that will be shown - included are posters by artists such as R B Kitaj, as well as much-loved design classics such as Lance Wyman’s poster for the Mexico 68 Olympics, shown above.

The May issue of Creative Review (above) features 100 pages of work selected for this year’s Annual. The very best of those make up our Best In Book section: details of the winners here…

Lam Hung’s Peace of Mind poster for a Zen Buddhist centre, Hong Kong, 2001

The V&A’s current flagship exhibition has a very clear, chronological layout, which is a little surprising considering its slightly clumsy title. The show itself begins in Shenzhen – the site of the first McDonald’s in China – and, perhaps more significantly, the birthplace of contemporary Chinese graphic design. Throughout the exhibition, China’s lust for iconic style and mischievous trends is depicted via a dazzling array of poster designs, illustrations, animations and quirky films: many of which frequently reference, on the one hand, the Buddhist way of life and, distinctly on the other, the visual potency of Maoist China.

Anthony Burrill’s Work Hard And Be Nice To People poster was a feature on the walls of CR Towers for a long time, providing valuable words to live by for all who labour here. An unfortunate Blu-Tac-related accident put paid to our copy so we were pleased to hear that its no-nonsense message will be reappearing on the cover of next month’s Wallpaper*

Are publishers the new record labels? Barely a week goes by without news reaching us of some new lavishly packaged re-releases, while there seems to be a spirit of innovation in book marketing that has been sadly lacking in the music business. Chuck “Fight Club” Palahniuk’s new book Snuff (out 20 May) is a case in point. Honest have been asked to direct three spoof porn movie trailers to help flog it, the first being The Wizard of Ass (above).

Tax disc holder by Sir Peter Blake. Yep – that’s right – a tax-disc holder

They’re a little bit tacky and verging on the ridiculous, but these tax disc holders add a sprinkling of creative spice to the dreary necessity – and otherwise creative blackhole – that is car tax. And among a new range from Pretty Taxing are some new designs by artists Sir Peter Blake, Mat Collishaw and Ian Munroe.