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Zoo orchestrates exoticism
Aug. 5th, 2007 12:00 amWhile we were at Berlin Zoo on Friday, a baby giraffe was being born. We didn't get to see Inga, but did catch a disappointing glimpse of the last big zoo baby star, Knut the polar bear. Knut is rather disappointing, a dirty yellow colour and already quite big. To see him you have to join crowds held back by crash barriers. Meanwhile, a much cuter baby donkey and baby camel were being ignored, presumably because they hadn't been featured in the media.
My main interest at Berlin Zoo, though, is the graphic design. It hits all sorts of buttons for me:
* Kitschy primitive paintings and diagrams of animals counterbalanced by
* Didactic, restrained, very German 20th century sans serif faces, including some nice Helvetica.
* But also a total eccentric eclecticism -- as at the Natural History Museum in New York, there's no attempt to harmonize the clashing styles of different sections.
* Odd materials -- the history of elephants told with tiles, for instance.
Put this together with the weird national references in the pavilion architecture -- zebras get a mosque-like structure, bulls a teutonic barn, the goats a tiny alp with a tarred wooden hut perched on a crag -- and you get a confection of continuous exoticism, an eccentric spectacle of eccentricity, and strangeness strangely narrated.
My main interest at Berlin Zoo, though, is the graphic design. It hits all sorts of buttons for me:
* Kitschy primitive paintings and diagrams of animals counterbalanced by
* Didactic, restrained, very German 20th century sans serif faces, including some nice Helvetica.
* But also a total eccentric eclecticism -- as at the Natural History Museum in New York, there's no attempt to harmonize the clashing styles of different sections.
* Odd materials -- the history of elephants told with tiles, for instance.
Put this together with the weird national references in the pavilion architecture -- zebras get a mosque-like structure, bulls a teutonic barn, the goats a tiny alp with a tarred wooden hut perched on a crag -- and you get a confection of continuous exoticism, an eccentric spectacle of eccentricity, and strangeness strangely narrated.