Memorabilia: Keeping the Expo Alive After Closing Day

My eighth post for the official Expo 2012 blog talks about souvenirs... a broad topic, I admit...

http://2012expo.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/memorabilia-keeping-the-expo-alive-after-closing-day/

Estonia at Expo 2010

As far as I can tell from an online translator, "varjatud linnad" means roughly "interurban undercurrent." That would certainly match the visuals and Expo 2010's theme.

Estonia always has great world's fair pavilions and this preview of their Expo 2010 pavilion looks to be no exception.

As a graphic designer, my favorite world's fair pavilion brochure of all time was the Estonia Pavilion's brochure at Expo 2000 in Hannover entitled "A Dozen Questions about Estonia." It was very colorful, clever, and tongue-in-cheek.

CORRECTION: I've since learned that this was only a proposal for the Estonia Pavilion and that another entry won. Still, if one of the losing entries is this interesting, we can only guess how compelling the final pavilion will be.

48 Hours in Zaragoza

Britain's The Independent published a great short video guide to Zaragoza, Spain and someone was kind enough to cut it into two parts and post it to YouTube.

With so many readers planning to attend Expo 2008, I thought I'd share it here.

Part 1:


Part 2:

1900 Exposition Universelle and Video

With the popularity of YouTube, it's amazing what's available about world's fairs in video. Folks are putting up their old home movies of world's fair visits as well as news accounts of Expo 2008 progress. I remember years ago waiting in the mail for brochures to get even a glimpse of what Expo 88 or Expo 92 might be like. Now, I can see footage of construction progress in Zaragoza!

Among the newer videos is some historical footage like this one.



It's great to glimpse into a world's fair from 107 years ago. I'd seen drawings of Paris 1900's moving sidewalks before. they had multiple parallel conveyors running at different speeds, so you'd jump from slow to fast and vice-versa grabbing poles along the way. However, I'd never seen video of it in action. Not only was it quite a marvel at the time, but I found myself wondering this: If a multiple-speed moving sidewalk were to be exhibited now, it would still be a marvel... and (at least in the United States) a lawsuit waiting to happen.