OM2 Kevin Finn

Biography

Kevin Finn is the founder, editor and designer of Open Manifesto. Over the past 13 years Kevin has worked as a designer at a number of leading design studios in Dublin, (Ireland), Wellington (New Zealand), and Sydney. Following this, Kevin spent seven years as Joint Creative Director at Saatchi Design, Sydney. He has won numerous awards, including a D&AD Silver in Typography and a Judges Choice award from the Type Directors Club. He currently lives in Kununurra (a remote town in north Western Australia) and is principle of Finn Creative.

Mind your language.

An introduction by K.F.

{29th of October 2005}

Everything we do is a form of communication. Where we live, how we dress, what we choose to do, how we talk to each other. All of these communicate at some level or another and contribute to the story of who and where we are. These stories have shaped our existence and the relationships we have with each other—our past, our present and our future. And we are continually communicating— telling—these stories.

Many of our early stories were visual, recorded in the form of primitive marks, drawings, paintings and pictograms, developing into art, dress, dance and music. But perhaps our most accomplished form of communication is language, written and verbal. Its evolution, complexity and diversity are success stories in their own right—language has the ability to express complex or abstract ideas in a fairly accurate manner. The diversity of language also reflects another success story—the number of different cultures inhabiting our globe.

Language is a primary element, identifier and communicator of culture, but world travel and the workings of global economics have caused the number of languages to diminish. As a result, the strength of some of those cultures is also weakening. Perhaps it is a case of survival of the fittest, but cultural diversity is of immense value. From each individual culture come stories rich with knowledge. At the very least, it makes our world a more interesting place.

Though it is difficult to pin down the exact number of spoken languages currently in use, ‘linguists estimate that there are about 5,000-6,000 different languages spoken in the world today... [but] the majority of the languages in the world are unwritten and many of them are now disappearing.’