Hasta La Ideas

Graphic designer and illustrator Geoff McFetridge has turned his hand to crockery, creating beautiful hand-painted plates and tableware in a new show for the Californian homeware brand Heath Ceramics

My Head Disappears When My Hands Are Thinking is at Heath’s LA showroom and features a complete custom-painted dinnerware set with service accessories for six people; hand-carved teapot and cup sets; and custom hand-carved vases in both one-of-a-kind and limited edition multiples. McFetridge was invited to create the work by Heath‘s LA Studio director Adam Silverman.

The title, McFetridge says, referes to his mental state while drawing. Most of the pieces were created ‘live’ without using prior sketches. “There was no way to cover up my mistakes,” he says. “Very few of the pieces were based on a sketch, or penciled in before I started working on them. Most were conceived as they were drawn.

The work I do, that I value most, has these same qualities. Yet, I feel that very little of my work is perceived like this. Maybe it is because the things that I make are rarely things that people can hold in their hands, but rather they are images that people hold in their heads.”

My Head Disappears When My Hands Are Thinking is at Heath Los Angeles until December 31

CR in Print

Not getting Creative Review in print too? You’re missing out.

In print, Creative Review carries far richer, more in-depth articles than we run here on the blog. This month, for example, we have nine pages on Saul Bass, plus pieces on advertising art buyers, Haddon Sundblom, the illustrator who ensured that Coke will forever be linked with Santa Claus, Postmodernism, Brighton’s new football ground and much more. Plus, it’s our Photography Annual, which means an additional 85 pages of great images, making our November issue almost 200-pages long, the biggest issue of CR for 5 years.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

This week, the site New Police: The Changes That Have Been Expected launched, describing a massive overhaul in how Russia’s entire police force will look after a major rebranding effort. Utilizing the three colors of the Russian flag and set to an appealing barber pole/candy cane-esque shape that can also be converted into a sort of military chevron (and looks just as nice), a number of people and sites picked up on the page and reported it as something the government definitely had planned. The only issue is that “definite” part (and also that they’d “planned” any of this). Granted, one need only click on the “Information” link at the bottom of the site to read that the whole thing was simply a proposed concept by the Moscow-based design firm, Smart Heart (also linked at the bottom). However, we prefer the extra step Design Week took, getting in touch with the firm to find out how it all came to be. Turns out it began as both an exercise to design a large-scale re-branding effort (everything from crime scene tape to motorcycle wraps), as well as a political effort to try and change the perception of the Russian police force. However, despite having started out as something of a test, DW reports that Smart Heart is actually now in real talks with the police, “to see if the work could be taken forward.” So who knows, maybe Russia soon will have the nicest law enforcement branding around.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

British photographers Hufton + Crow have sent us new images of the Dresden Museum of Military History, which reopened last month following an extension by New York architect Daniel Libeskind.

Libeskind drove a pointed steel and glass shard through the skin of the historic museum to create new galleries on five floors and a 30 metre-high rooftop viewing platform.

When we originally published the story, many readers were outraged with the design, with one commentor suggesting it to be like a giant axe cutting through the building.

Critics also had a lot to say. Architecture journalist Rowan Moore described the building as both “breathtaking” and “breathtakingly dumb”, while critic Mary Lane compared it to “a piece of shrapnel freshly fallen from the sky” – read more about the critics opinions here.

Daniel Libeskind also recently completed a media centre for the University of Hong Kong – see our earlier story here and see all our stories about Libeskind here.

Another controversial museum we’ve published recently is the heavily criticised Museum of Liverpool – read more about that project here.

See also: more stories about museums.

Photographers Hufton + Crow have shot a number of high-profile projects this year – see their photographs of the Serpentine Pavilion by Peter Zumthor and the Olympic Aquatics Centre by Zaha Hadid.