Seattle's First World's Fair - from KING 5

Seattle's KING 5 television has a segment about the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition on their Evening Magazine:

http://www.king5.com/video/eveningmagazine-index.html?nvid=345269

It's a great synopsis of a little-known exposition that has since become overshadowed by the 1962 Century 21 Exposition.

With plans to celebrate the centennial, I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more about the A-Y-E in the months to come.

Expo 2010 United States Pavilion Press Release

"US Must Act Rapidly to Ensure Participation in China's 2010 World Expo or Risk Major Diplomatic Blunder, Says Consortium"

That's the headline of a press release today from the BH&L Group, of which I'm a member of its advisory board. We're hoping to save the troubled efforts to create a United States Pavilion at Shanghai's Expo 2010, China's first world's fair.

To that end, I created the website UnitedStatesPavilion.com. I'm hoping this might finally get the ball rolling.

The press release can be found at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1702724.htm.

International Exposition Identity and Branding

In January 2008, I was invited to guest lecture a graphic design class at Cal Poly Pomona. The class project is to study the history of Olympic games identity. Each student then creates a branding strategy for an Olympic bid.

I spoke about the history of international expositions and their identity and branding strategies since 1958.

Here were the supporting visuals (with no audio):

Milan, Italy to Host Expo 2015

It was announced in Paris today that Milan, Italy will host Expo 2015
under the theme "Feeding the Planet / Energy for Life." It was
selected by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) over rival
city Izmir, Turkey.

Small Moments - Expo 98 Philippines Pavilion

We usually think of world's fairs as collections of large grandiose events, but talking with colleagues recently, I found myself reminiscing about some of the smaller, impromptu interactions I've had at various pavilions.

I've discovered, when visiting world's fairs in countries where the primary language isn't English, that English speakers get noticed, particularly since many pavilion hosts are perhaps more familiar with English than they are with the local language.

I suspect this was the case when we visited the Philippines Pavilion at Expo 98 in Lisbon, Portugal. Waiting to enter, a staff member approached us asking where we were from. I replied "San Francisco," knowing that I usually get a very positive response. Everyone loves San Francisco, after all.

Her eyes lit up and she responded that she'd "always wanted to visit... Daly City!" This was the first time I've ever gotten this particular reaction, but understandable since Daly City is known for it's large Filipino population.

Daly City is one of the few communities in the United States with a population mostly of Asian descent, but most San Franciscans think of it as an inner suburb with lots of free parking and chain stores.

In many ways, it was a wonderful reminder that living in multi-cultural city like San Francisco can be like living in a world's fair itself.

Expo 2012 Wroclaw Video

The folks in Wroclaw, Poland bidding for Expo 2012 have updated their web site and added this amazing video. A larger size with better resolution is available on their site here.

A Wroclaw world's fair would certainly be the first to feature a Hall of Serious Fun. It makes me wonder what 19th Century world's fair designers would think of us in 2007 as they designed their Halls of Agriculture and the like. I, for one, am ready for a Hall of Serious Fun. In many ways, that's what I like about world's fairs. They're serious fun!

The Hall of Tranquility reminds me much of a trend I've seen in recent years in exposition design. World's fairs can become one building of overstimulation after another. Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany featured a chill-out space called Scape, which was a welcome respite from the rest of the pavilions. I noticed that same year that Austria and India both included areas where you could relax and escape lights and sounds. I hope to see this trend continue.

Wroclaw is competing against Yeosu, South Korea and Tangier, Morocco to host a small 3-month exposition in 2012. So far, I've been impressed with all three presentations, although the new Wroclaw video presentation doesn't seem to match the bid logo that was created earlier.