Paper Toys: Tougui

French illustrator and paper toy designer Tougui, aka Guillaume Pain, is one of several proponents of a growing paper toy scene whose work is featured in the December issue of CR, out this week.

For the last few years, an underground paper toy scene has been developing across the world largely thanks to the internet and social media. Character designers have been devising templates of their toy creations which can be downloaded, by and large, for free by whoever is interested.

Compared to the costs of making a vinyl toy, realising character designs in paper is a much more affordable option for designers and illustrators to bring their designs to life. And with the vinyl toy market showing signs of tailing off, there’s a big opportunity for paper toys to come to the fore and enter the mainstream.

Especially for our December issue, and to sit alongside our feature on paper toys, Tougui very kindly created a custom toy for us to print a blank template so readers can cut, fold, glue and make their own paper toy. Here are some of Tougui’s most recent paper toy creations, plus a short Q&A with the artist. We’ll share some more paper toy creations by different artists with you throughout this week.

Creative Review: How long have you been creating paper toys?

Tougui: It has been 5 years now.

 

 

CR: What do you like about working with paper?

T: What I like about paper is the freedom that it offers in terms of creation and use, I can create whatever shape I want. The only limit is the format my printer can handle and my imagination. It really is very inexpensive medium, so it’s very accessible, and you don’t need any special tools to work with it. All you need is a good pair of scissors and a stick of glue!

CR: Is this something that you will always do – or do you think it’s a fad or a phase you’re going through that will lead to another way of working?

T: I don’t think it’s a fad or a phase. I’ve always been attracted to three-dimensional objects, and geometry in space. When I was a child, I was fascinated by all the construction games, building shacks, and all that kind of thing. When I got a little bit older, I liked modelmaking – I just love building things with my hands. At first, when I discovered the papertoy, I didn’t really ask myself any questions, it was just a game. But since then things have changed! Today, I try and evolve the medium, and I see how I can mix materials, and by experimenting in this way I try and transpose the papertoy for it to be something more than just a toy made out of paper and exposed on a shelf.

 

CR: Do you think that, in some ways, the economic climate is helping the popularity of paper toys?

T: From an ecological perspective, it is on trend right now I suppose. Economically, I didn’t really ask myself the question before… It’s true that sharing and exchanging papertoys is (in most cases) free of charge, and this plays a critical part in its popularity. What we can be sure of is that the papertoy is a trend, and people in our society like what’s new and fashionable.
But there is a community growing more and more each day around the papertoy, and I think it is really starting to play a serious part in our visual environment. But for now, I can’t say if it will last or not…

The great thing is that the atmosphere among the community is good, and people are receptive to this medium, let’s hope it will keep going this way.

To see more of Tougui’s work, visit his website at tougui.fr

Stay tuned for more paper toy art on the blog this week – and look out for the new December issue of CR in the shops which will feature a bound-in 170gsm blank custom Tougui toy template (in association with Arojowiggins Creative Papers) so you can make your own (blank version shown above). The best customised toy will win prizes! Full details to follow later in the week.

The Death of Print

Illustrazione di David Schwen per Wired Magazine.
{Via}

The Death of Print

Life Satisfaction

Life Satisfaction

Gravis Filter Wingtip

Viste sabato pomeriggio, indossate sabato sera. Queste sono le Gravis Filter Wingtip.

Gravis Filter Wingtip

Grafik Mag 193

E’ uscito il nuovo numero di Grafik Magazine. Tema centrale: Design Criticism. Qui vi potete gustare una preview.

Grafik Mag 193

KitchenTV #1 Low Frequency Club

Un live in uno studio di registrazione. Un’intervista. Una cucina. Nasce KitchenTV: il primo live music show made in Italy, per Emergency. In questa puntata si parla con i Low Frequency Club.

BN0035 by Braun now available at Dezeen Watch Store

BN0035 by Braun at Dezeen Watch Store

Dezeen Watch Store: the BN0035, another classic timepiece made under the name of iconic German product design brand Braun, is now available at Dezeen Watch Store and will also be on sale at our Christmas pop-up The Temporium from 1 December. 

BN0035 by Braun at Dezeen Watch Store

The BN0035 has a three-hand quartz chronograph movement, one of the more sophisticated of the range.  It comes with a black leather strap with a white or a black face. The watch also displays the date and features a mustard-yellow second hand.

BN0035 by Braun at Dezeen Watch Store

The collection is made under licence by British watch brand Zeon and references the work of industrial designers Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs, who were both part of the original Braun design team.  We also added the simpler BN0021 to Dezeen Watch Store recently, and both models will be at our Christmas shop The Temporium, which opens in London next week.

See the BN0021 on Dezeen Watch Store »
See the BN0035 on Dezeen Watch Store »

Dezeen Watch Store is a carefully curated online store specialising in watches by named designers and boutique brands.

www.dezeenwatchstore.com

National Geographic 2011

Retour sur cette impressionnante sélection de la part de The Atlantic pour le célèbre magazine National Geographic à l’occasion de l’édition 2011 de son contest photo. Un concours divisé dans différentes catégories comme la nature, les lieux ou les peuples. A découvrir dans la suite.



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Previously on Fubiz

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Code Cards

Letterpress cards sure to steal the ♥ of any computer nerd

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While class=”none” might be the favorite snippet of HTML at the Cool Hunting office, user experience designer Matt Raw takes the humor behind web development languages to new heights with his cheeky set of letterpress Code Cards. Raw created three different cards—Egg Nog Arrays, CSS Happy New Year and ♥—that recall the beauty of Linotype matrices with today’s digital process.

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Egg Nog Arrays—a recipe Raw says is necessary for any web developer—comes in Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript. For CSS Happy New Year, Raw aptly chose Futura as the typeface, which he humorously claims will “default to a basic sans-serif font if your recipient doesn’t have Futura installed.” Hearts keeps it simple, with the HTML code on the front and a blank space inside.

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Each set is printed in Brooklyn on acid-free cotton stock, and includes four cards and envelopes. Pick them up online for $14.


Redesigning International Disaster Response, Part 3: Looking to the US Military

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In Part 2, we discussed the challenges the international disaster response community faces. In this post, we’ll look at how the US Military creates collaborative information systems between millions of soldiers.

Building the Hive Mind: The United States Military

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The Military in the Information Age

Coordinating nearly 1.5 million troops in five military branches across every continent is an extremely complex undertaking. From flying unmanned aerial vehicles to directing clandestine operations, not to mention processing enormous amounts of situational data, information technology allows the United States Armed Forces to have complete command and control from half a world away. Although extremely bureaucratic in nature, the military is at the forefront of technology for elaborate logistical functionality.

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Network-Centric Warfare

Developed in the late 1990’s by the Department of Defense, the theory of network-centric warfare seeks to increase “combat power by networking sensors, decision makers, and shooters to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command… and a degree of self-synchronization.” The theory grew out of the need for advanced systems of military coordination in a world increasingly commanded by information technology, especially that of large business operations.

The battlefield is viewed as a rapidly evolving ecosystem where information is the key to dominance. Information awareness between the various units involved in an operation is achieved through a “collaborative network of networks, populated and refreshed with quality intelligence.” The self-synchronization aspect of network-centric warfare seeks to allow “low-level forces to operate nearly autonomously” through this information awareness.

(more…)