Soren Petersen: Saving the World One Art Poster at a Time
Art is a powerful emotional tool for creating awareness and fostering a commitment to change the world, even if each print makes just a small dent. Think Uncle Sam’s “I Want You For The U.S. Army,” Apple’s “Think Different” and the “Wonderful Copenhagen” poster with a police officer helping a mother duck across the street with her small ducklings. If you want to disseminate information quickly and engage people, thought-provoking art posters are an effective medium.
The “Save The Alps” poster, designed by Per Arnoldi, the Danish designer, artist, and TV and radio host is one such encouraging story. The “Save The Alps” story illustrates how two men engaged the financial elite and made an important and visible difference in a mountain world.
At the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland, 1990, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, then president of the Bellerive Foundation, solicited Arnoldi to create a limited series art poster to elicit funding for saving the Alps. While mountains may look strong, theirs is a very fragile environment. At that time, there were an estimated 40,000 ski runs throughout the seven Alpine countries, carrying 1.2 million passengers to summits every hour during the peak season, and all this activity was threatening the Alps. Exhaust fumes from the traffic going to and from ski resorts were killing off the wildlife and plant life and fifty percent of the trees were dying, causing soil erosion. As a consequence, trees were being cut down increasing the risk of avalanches. Something had to be done to save the Alps and to make the tourism there sustainable.
What Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan and Per did was both very clever and different.
More at: huffingtonpost.com: Soren Petersen: Saving the World One Art Poster at a Time.
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