• May 1992 •

Time flies, and if we did not have a calendar, we would not know how much time has already passed.

A calendar, a seemingly harmless sheet of paper, actually maliciously and mercilessly counts off our days. Luckily, we do not know how many days we have left. However, the unkind calendar conceals its true nature; every year it suggests that we have to start from the beginning again. Every month with a new name implies something new and different. Great expectations for a new image of the world that we have when we turn a new page of the calendar make us forget the current reality. We market time – we produce calendars which, hanging on our walls, remind us of our preoccupation with and the transience of life, and yet draw our attention to the bright side of life and the positive implications conveyed by these paper time meters.

Slovenia, which – as a new page on the calendar – seems to have emerged on the political map of the world only yesterday, actually has a history a millennium and a half old. The time which passed during the reigns of Samo, Charles the Great, Napoleon and Maria Theresa did not elapse without leaving a trace. Time never stopped under the rule of the Karadžordžević family or Josip Broz.

And, although it  seems as if Slovene time has only just started, the roots of Slovene history are deep and strong. The light which is cast for the first time upon the eternal darkness of a subterranean cave with its stalagmites and stalactites, did not create this mysterious and beautiful world. The light only revealed what the tiny drops of water saturated with lime created over millions of years. And yet, though we are standing on top of the mountain called The Past, we can only live in the present and await the future.

Calendars measuring the time have just been exhibited in Ljubljana at the first Slovenian Marketing Marathon. The best received the Golden MM reward awarded by the editors of MM Slovenija magazine. More than fifty ambitious participants in the Marketing Marathon – a presentation of advertising agencies, studios and marketing institutions – believe that their effort expended in the filled-up hall has not been in vain, and that they are the heralds of the new economic impetus. Slovene is one of the few languages which has coined a term for “marketing” – “trženje”. Time continues to flow.

From 17^th to 23^rd May, 1992, Slovenia will host a World Congress of Industrial Design which  will be held in the Slovene culture hall – Cankarjev dom. The Congress was supposed to take place last June, but was postponed due to the war in Slovenia. The Congress will unite people who are creating the new image of the world for the time to  come.

To them also we dedicate this issue of our magazine.

Jure Apih