Advice please!

Bannerbkids

I could really use some advice…the BKids Banner Design contest has brought me so many beautiful entries that I have a very hard time deciding… in the picture are just 3 of the 27 banners to choose from … please let me know which number you like best! Winner will be announced tomorrow on B:Kids.

Real Estate Bust: How Creatives Are Carving Up L.A.’s Empty Space

pimg alt=”mp-forest.jpg” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/mp-forest.jpg” class=”mt-image-none” height=”311″ width=”468″ /br /
img alt=”westofrome.jpg” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/westofrome.jpg” class=”mt-image-none” style=”” height=”312″ width=”468″ //p

piAn indoor forest at Machine Project created by Sara Newey and Christy McCaffrey; Not For You, 2006, galvanized steel, dimmer, bulbs, West of Rome, 2006./i/p

pIf there’s one thing wide, sprawly Los Angeles can pride itself on having, it’s an abundance of space. But now, as I walk though neighborhoods filled with empty box stores and strip malls, I realize we may have far too much of it./ppLuckily, we’re also blessed with an abundance of creatives who have the desire to occupy it. a href=”http://www.westofromeinc.com/”Emi Fontana/a has filled vacant retail stores with art installations, and even used an empty modern house high in the hills above Pasadena to install a site-specific installation by Olafur Eliasson. In L.A.’s Chinatown, a href=”http://www.oogaboogastore.com/”Wendy Yao/a sells a collection of zines, handmade jewelry and records out of a miniscule strip mall, which has led to a variety of unusual temporary venues. Nearby, a href=”http://www.machineproject.com/”Mark Allen/a uses his small storefront as a place for a href=”http://machineproject.com/events/2010/03/12/bug-eat-bug/”identifying (and eating) edible insects/a, holding welding classes and orchestrating temporary takeovers of a href=”http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alissa-walker/designerati/murder-under-alexander-calder-sculpture-and-60-more-clever-ways-get-p” target=”_blank”entire museums./a/p

div class=”article_quote”There’s a reason this is the age of the pop-up shop: space is available, and it’s yours for the taking./div

pLast month I saw these three visionaries speak as part of a L.A.-focused program at ARCOmadrid, Spain’s contemporary art fair. The panel featuring Fontana, Yao and Allen, and moderated by UCLA’s Russell Ferguson, was entitled “Alternative Spaces for Art,” but for me, it had a far more entrepreneurial tone than that. Each of them have filled a very real need in the community and turned wasted, overlooked spaces into destinations in themselves. The fact that these three creatives have founded true cultural centers emand/em succeeded in doing it in a place as notoriously scattered as Los Angeles makes me believe their concepts are true models for success./p

pI bring this up now because probably every designer, architect or artist I’ve ever spoken with has expressed the desire to open and operate a space: a gallery, a store, a classroom. And I would say this is the time. There’s a reason this is the age of the pop-up shop: space is available, and it’s yours for the taking. Use this moment when you’ve got a little extra downtime to inhabit the empty space next door, or some available space in your office that’s looking a bit lonely. Creating a space is the perfect opportunity to collaborate on a concept with other designers that helps all of you stay visible, busy, and creatively-fulfilled./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/real_estate_bust_how_creatives_are_carving_up_las_empty_space_16288.asp”(more…)/a
pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iT1flpue9scF-tpAs5rCNJloRHs/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iT1flpue9scF-tpAs5rCNJloRHs/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iT1flpue9scF-tpAs5rCNJloRHs/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/iT1flpue9scF-tpAs5rCNJloRHs/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/p

In Brief: Redesigns and Revolutions

poster-1-620.jpg

  • Britain’s Conservative party is causing double takes with its new pre-election posters (like the one above). “It’s a strange campaign that seems to distill the current state of British politics,” notes Sam Jacob in a piece on Icon magazine’s website. “Politics has become an aesthetic project rather than a verbal one. Positions are not set out in words, but expressed through hyper-sophisticated images.”

  • In other redesign news, our sister blog FishbowlNY reports on the fresh look of Natural Home. The magazine still can’t get over its love of small caps, but we endorse any publication that will put a couple of old doorknobs on the cover.

  • Revolution! Evolution! Stop, you’re both right. Stefano Tonchi doesn’t officially take the editorial helm of W until April 12, but times, they’re already a-changin’. Longtime creative director Dennis Freedman is leaving the magazine, according to WWD. “I have had the most extraordinary experience working with some of the most talented and brilliant photographers, artists, and editors in the world, and these collaborations have brought me unbelievable joy and satisfaction,” said Freedman. “For me, this has been one of the greatest opportunities I could ever hope for.”

  • A team led by Pentagram’s Paula Scher has transformed a Brooklyn charter school with bold environmental graphics. The project, a collaboration with Rogers Marvel Architects, celebrates language with motivational supergraphics that define the school’s interior spaces. Taste the rainbow.

    continued…

    New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

  • Light beam coffee table

    The shapes of the worn down railway sleepers, packed in resin back to there original shape, combined with all these led lights are really something d..

    SFMOMA Asks Is Photography Over?

    underwaterphoto.jpgSure, freelancers are in trouble, but is it curtains for the entire field of photography? In a world of Photoshop, cell phone cameras, and Polaroid-branded iPod docking stations, what is at stake today in seeing something as a photograph? What is the value of continuing to speak of photography as a specific practice or discipline? These are the provocative questions posed by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As part of its 75th anniversary festivities, the museum has invited thinkers and practitioners including Vince Aletti, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Peter Galassi, and Jennifer Blessing to consider the current state of photography before convening for a two-day summit on the state of the medium: “Is Photography Over?” The 13 invited participants have posted their initial responses to this question here, and those ideas will jumpstart the opening panel discussion on the evening of Thursday, April 22. Can’t be there in person? Keep an eye on SFMOMA’s blog, where a “lively public discussion” will develop.

    New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

    links for 2010-03-31

    Ship Cemetery

    Ship-1.jpg

    Mauritania’s Nouadhibou Bay, the largest ship graveyard in the world, is where fishermen and captains go to abandon their dying vessels. Photographer Jan Smith spent considerable time and effort attempting to gain access, although the Mauritanian Army barred his way before he was able to convince them of his purely artistic pursuits.

    Ship-2.jpg

    The resulting sad, quietly violent gallery documents sunken hulls and rusting boats. Mostly comprised of cast-offs for insurance fraud, Nouadhibou Bay still remains a maritime mystery.

    Ship-3.jpg

    To view the complete gallery, visit Good Magazine.


    Primary school by Carlos Pereda Iglesias and Óscar Pérez Silanes

    Spanish architects Carlos Pereda Iglesias and Óscar Pérez Silanes have competed a glass and red brick primary school in Pamplona, Spain. (more…)

    The Selby is in Your Place

    by Laura Neilson

    SelbyCover.jpg SelbyBathroom.jpg

    If a picture tells a thousand words, then consider Todd Selby a visual raconteur. Since the summer of 2008, the Orange County, CA-born, NYC-based photographer has shown an expanding and eclectic cast of creative characters—artists, musicians, writers, designers and the like—in their private homes on his website The Selby, an online Architectural Digest for the hipster set.

    With a penchant for exploring real-life spaces and the personalities behind them, Selby chooses subjects whose domestic habitats are no less colorful than those of fantastic fiction. From funky, cluttered studios in New York’s Lower East Side to elegant and polished Parisian apartments and rustic hideaways near the beach, Selby’s project has made him a houseguest in residences around the world.

    selby-inhouse1.jpg

    His new book, “The Selby Is in Your Place,” is a lush, 250-plus page collection featuring 33 of these enviable abodes—most of which have never been shown on the site before. Through Selby’s vivid lens, subjects like Karl Lagerfeld, Purple Magazine’s Olivier Zahm, model Erin Wasson, and Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler offer voyeurs spectacular peeks into their fashionable homes, where the relationship between personal style and interior space is most strikingly reflected.

    Here, Selby talks to us about putting the book together, his own aesthetic preferences, and his dream shoot.

    How did you choose what to include in the book?

    It was hard to choose what shoots to put in and it took a lot of planning with my editor. I knew that I wanted most of the shoots in the book to be never before seen, so that meant that I needed to do a lot of shoots exclusively for the book. I did a lot of traveling and a lot of shooting, and kept my favorite shoots just for the book. And then after, we looked over those shoots and tried to include some of my favorites that had already run on TheSelby.com.

    selby-inhouse9.jpg

    Is there a particular aesthetic that you tend to gravitate towards?

    I tend to not like minimalists. I like maximalists and you can definitely see that preference in the people I chose to be in the book.

    In Lesley Arfin’s intro, she describes a kind of envy we all tend to feel towards other people’s lives. Did envy come into play when choosing your subject’s homes?

    No, not really. I tend to pick my subjects based on inspiration rather than a sense of personal envy.

    selby-inhouse4.jpg selby-inhouse3.jpg selby-inhouse2.jpg
    When you go into a subject’s home, do you do it solo?

    Almost all of the shoots were done by me solo style. The only time I bring someone is if is the space is very challenging in terms of lighting, or if it is part of an editorial assignment, like Helena [Christensen] for Vogue Paris.

    For a while it felt like “nesting” had negative connotations—becoming boring, a homebody, domesticated, etc.—but now that association seems to have shifted.

    Staying in is the new going out.

    selby-inhouse6.jpg

    What’s your favorite room in a house?

    The living room. It has no real purpose and it’s just there for show, usually. Therefore its purpose is often more artistic, than purely functional.

    Since Karl Lagerfeld’s a photographer also, did he dictate much of the shoot?

    Karl is the man. He was 100% supportive of me and my project. Being a photographer himself was part of the reason perhaps that he was willing to take the time and open his home to my project.

    Whose home do you wish you could shoot, but can’t?

    Good question, I like this. I would shoot Napoleon in his island prison of Elba the night before he escaped.

    selby-inhouse5.jpg

    If you could swipe any piece of artwork or furniture from one of your subject’s homes for yourself, what would it be?

    The Neistat Brothers‘ “Juicy” couch of course.

    To get the book, visit Powell’s or Amazon.


    Light & Building 2010

    The world’s leading trade fair for Architecture and Technology
    It is used by manufacturers from over 50 countries, including all
    market leade..