In this video interview filmed by Dezeen for the Design Museum’s Super Contemporary exhibition in London, designer Simon Waterfall of Poke talks about getting around London on his scooter and starting a digital design company. (more…)
The designer of the year installation at Design Miami, featuring the work of Maarten Baas.
What are the boundaries of design? When this question was posed to Charles Eames in 1969, he responded famously in the interrogative: “What are the boundaries of problems?” Forty years later, Design Miami asked Maarten Baas, its 2009 Designer of the Year, the same question concerning where design begins and ends. “Every day there are only 24 hours in which that day has to happen,” replied Baas, 31, in an interview published in the Design Miami catalogue.
The Dutch designer eschews definitions. “I believe in a kind of organic way of seeing things,” he said, “like a super-soup in which everything is moving.” Several of the most recent projects to emerge from his super-soup were on view at Design Miami as part of a special exhibition that included the first stateside retrospective of Baas’s career (charred chairs, clay fans, Flinstone-y office furniture). Among the most crowd-pleasing was “Real Time,” a series of work that injects an eye-catching human element into the documentation of time passing. His “Grandfather Clock” (pictured above) replaces the conventional clock face with a 12-hour looped film of a man drawing the clock hands (or is he trapped inside?), while the “Sweeper Clock” keeps time with carefully tended piles of garbage. Baas has even found a way to humanize the blazing red digits of a digital clock, to mesmerizing effect. Make time to see Baas’s works in action—videos are posted below.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
It’s a bit early for a reminder, but we wanted to make sure you had plenty of time to prepare your entries for the Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition 2010: One Design Fix for the Future.
The competition challenges designers to think small and big by proposing ONE design fix that can be made in our current designed environment but that has potential to greatly impact our future sustainability when applied at a larger scale.
As Metropolis says, “your fix needn’t have anything to do with ‘environmentalist engineering’ to make a difference.” Do what you do best, whether you work with buildings, interiors, products, graphics or landscapes, and submit it here.
We look forward to seeing your winning entries early next year!
Deadline: January 29, 2010
After the special bonus to Unclutterer readers ended and we stopped giving away the free copies of the worksheets from Unclutter Your Life in One Week, I started receiving e-mails from people who didn’t participate in the offer asking if they could buy the PDFs. Up until today, we haven’t had any way to sell these materials. We’ve never had Unclutterer products, so we never had an internal Unclutterer store.
I turned to our tech team at Dancing Mammoth and asked if they could setup an online store for us to sell the PDFs. They were up for the task and went to work on the programming. (This was also the point when I asked Simon and Schuster if it was okay to sell them, and they said it was.)
Once the tech team was doing all the heavy lifting, my mind kept returning to a conversation I had last summer with artist Chris Bishop at a party at my friend Kara’s house (Chris did the yellow robot painting in the second picture). Chris and I talked about his insanely popular Barack O’Unicorn t-shirt that he released during the 2008 election. We discussed the body as a canvas and how it constantly transmits messages — I support X candidate, I buy my clothes from X retailer, I listen to X band, I am the type of person who irons my clothes, I have a baby who spits up squash, I don’t follow fashion trends. For good or bad, our clothing says a great deal about us.
With our store on the horizon, I began looking into what it would take to produce Unclutterer t-shirts that convey the positive ideas we promote on the site. If the t-shirt I casually throw on to wear to the neighborhood farmers’ market is going to speak on my behalf, I at least want it to promote something I believe in. Our local silk screen company Reston Shirt came in with a good price for us using quality materials. We ordered the shirts, they produced them, and now we have two t-shirt designs — one with the phrase “Simplicity is revolutionary” and the other “Less is more” — to offer alongside the PDFs in our new store.
I haven’t stopped thinking about items we can offer in the new store. I can see us producing short e-books, calendars, planners, and other useful organizing goods. At this time, however, we’re just offering the PDFs and t-shirts. We’re starting small and seeing how things go.
I want to thank our team at Dancing Mammoth, the fine folks at Reston Shirt, and my friends Kara and David, who were good sports and agreed to be our models (since the t-shirt idea sprung from a conversation at their home, I thought it only appropriate to ask them to join in on the fun). Check out the new internal Unclutterer store and order t-shirts and/or the seven PDF worksheets that accompany Unclutter Your Life in One Week if you need them.
(Note: If you received the PDFs as part of the special bonus, you have the exact product that we’re selling in the store. You don’t need to repurchase the documents. These are available for people who did not participate in the previous offer.)
New York-based imaginative consultancy Hugo & Marie recently launched an online boutique offering apparel accessories, jewelry and artwork from its stable of visual artists and designers. The firm, founded almost two years ago, provides services to a broad client list that includes Nike, W Magazine, Warp Records and Microsoft.
Serving as another platform for the agency’s artists, co-founder Jennifer Sims explains, “since we mostly work in print or web, it seemed natural to have flowing printed scarves, large-scale typographic embroideries, art products, and jewelry, which we began developing in the spring.” The luxurious scarves, designed by Anna Giertz (top right), Deanne Cheuk, Micah Lidberg (top left) and Benbo George (above), are custom printed on 100% silk twill or silk habotai using eco-friendly dyes, with prices ranging from $135 to $170.
The jewelry collection, of Jennifer’s own designs, exudes a dark luxuriousness yet comes with recession-friendly pricing thanks to the scrupulous selection of materials. Pieces in onyx, quartz, beads and baubles, vintage glass, velvet, felted wool, silk, grosgrain ribbon and more range from $155 to $280.
They also sell a selection of publications, including back issues of Newwork Magazine, which we featured here earlier this year. A few editioned artworks round out the collection, most notably Mario Hugo’s typographic panels, which are hand-embroidered with silk and cotton threads on ivory hemp-silk fabric. With such a strong roster of visual artists, we can assume that this last category will expand and improve with time.
Now through 21 December 2009, the Hugo & Marie boutique is offering Cool Hunting readers a promotional discount off all store items (except publications). To receive 20% off your order, enter the promo code “coolhunting” at check out.
Dezeen have teamed up with JDS Architects to offer readers the chance to win one of five copies of their new book Agenda, published by Actar. (more…)
We’ve got a post-script from last month’s Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting at Design Concepts in Madison. Thanks to Elysa Soffer for her thoughts and photographs.
Casual, collegial, and you might even say noisy (in a good way), Design Concepts hosted Madison, Wisconsin’s first Town Hall on November 12. Held in our “Open Space,” there was non-stop yakking from 6 ’til well past 9, and we enjoyed some great local wines (yes, Wisco wines) beers, wraps, and cheese.
We had a great turn out, including our friendly competitors in product design Brooks Stevens, Bit7, Intense Engineering, Inspire, and BestAbode; graphic design firms Gage Mitchell and Swink; marketing firm Heibing; local behemoths GE Medical and FISKARS; and a smattering of MIAD and MATC students. Presenters were Jim Armstrong of Good for Business, Dan Lipscomb of FISKARS, and Design Concepts’ own Mark Cors.
The majority of our guests were still in the “pre-Accord” state (presenting an opportunity for proselytizing), so Design Concept’s Rachel DeSmidt kicked things off with a thorough introduction to the Designers Accord.
Mark Cors described Design Concepts’ sustainability efforts so far. Design Concepts has established an ever-expanding Ethernet “green library” of relevant articles and information for use by its project teams. More recently, Mark and Rachel have focused on spearheading the institutionalization of Design for Disassembly as a consistent component of our design methodology. The take-away: disassembly is a necessary precursor to recycling, and designing to facilitate disassembly is both relatively easy to implement and sell to a client. The Design Concepts DFD Guidelines were given to the attendees, and are available for download.
Jim Armstrong of the Madison-based marketing and communications design firm Good for Business, spoke passionately and persuasively about alternative business paradigms. Long-time members of Business for Social Responsibility, Jim’s firm engages in non-traditional marketing, representing clients who want to work with a conscience.
 | Listen up, Asian decor hounds: Kiku Japanese Imports has a selection of Japanese furniture and antiques — known as “tansu” — that will surpass your wildest dreams. Think folk crafts, lacquerware, textiles, dolls, ceramics, screens, scrolls and basketry representing designs from 1870 through 1930. Praised as one of America’s largest direct importers of antiques from Japan, Kiku carefully restores each piece before making it available for purchase. So forget silly souvenirs and knockoffs. Doesn’t your home warrant the real deal? Click “See Video” for a tour, then visit San Francisco’s Modern Luxury page to see more luxe amenities the city has to offer! |
Voici le nouveau clip du groupe Metal on Metal sur le titre Bastard, autour d’une partie de ping-pong sanglante. Dirigé par le collectif d’artistes The Glue Society, il met en scène 2 joueuses et une grenade en pleine action. A découvrir en vidéo dans la suite.
Lots of great work up on her site, Aleks is a freelance illustrator located in Brooklyn.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
