Hasta La Ideas

BBH in London has released its latest spot for Audi. The ad celebrates the brand’s heritage of aerodynamic technology and engineering, which has been evident in its cars since its concept vehicles of the 1920s…

The spot takes the classic children’s story The Ugly Duckling as its theme, and opens in black-in-white with footage of one of pioneering Audi engineer Paul Jaray’s prototype car’s from the 1920s shown out on the roads. The ‘ugly duckling’ car featured in the ad was in fact created by modelmakers in just six weeks, using one of Jaray’s original 1920s drawings as a reference. As the ad progresses, we see the car metamorphose into a modern-day Audi A5.

The ad breaks on UK TV this weekend.

Credits:
Agency: BBH London
Creative directors: Nick Kidney, Kevin Stark
Creatives: Matt Doman, Ian Heartfield
Production company: Park Pictures
Director: Joachim Back

CR in Print

Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our April issue has a cover by Neville Brody and a fantastic ten-page feature on Fuse, Brody’s publication that did so much to foster typographic experimentation in the 90s and beyond. We also have features on charity advertising and new Pentagram partner Marina Willer. Rick Poynor reviews the Electric Information Age and Adrian Shaughnessy meets the CEO of controversial crowdsourcing site 99designs. All this plus the most beautiful train tickets you ever saw and a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at Thunderbirds in our Monograph supplement

The best way to make sure you receive CR in print every month is to subscribe – you will also save money and receive our award-winning Monograph booklet every month. You can do so here.

This is the fourth post in a series of short interviews with renowned writers about the field of Writing & Commentary, a new category in the Core77 Design Awards.

We spoke to Mark Lamster who writes about architecture, design, and the arts, acts as associate American editor for the Architectural Review, is a contributing editor to Design Observer and Fellow of the Forum for Urban Design, and has written for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

Core77: How important or valuable is it to honor design writing and criticism with an awards program?

Mark Lamster: Awards are important. They raise awareness of the discipline, build a sense of community, encourage and reward new talent, and establish models of what writing can and should do. Also, it’s nice to win.

Which qualities do you most appreciate in writing about design and architecture and what kinds of writing do you hope will surface from this call for entries?

I appreciate writing that has a strong point of view that is expressed clearly. More of that please.

Name two writers, perhaps one historical and one contemporary, that you are influenced or challenged by.

Just two? That’s not quite fair. I’m writing about Philip Johnson, at his best he’s a very challenging critic indeed. Geoff Manaugh has a way of framing things that is alien to me, but which I enjoy.

Tell us about a publication that features writing about visual culture, design, or architecture, that you’re enjoying reading right now.

Both Metropolis (in the USA) and Icon (UK) do an excellent job of telling stories about design.

Visit the Writing & Commentary on the C77DA site to learn more about the category and jury. Entries for the Core77 Design Awards close April 10. Core77 recognizes that many design writers work freelance and if you feel you qualify for special consideration pricing for your entry, contact us at awards@core77.com and let us know.

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We’re in the middle of cutting together a showreel for Dezeen Studio powered by Jambox at MOST, and we think this big party track by BEAKR would make a great soundtrack.

Not a bad track to get your Friday night started either.

About Dezeen Music Project | More tracks | Submit your track

We applaud the spread of design awareness into small towns, as it oughtn’t be just city slickers soaking up the gifts our professions have bestowed. Checking in with the relatively new Madsonian Museum of Industrial Design in tiny Waitsfield, Vermont, we’re pleased to learn they’re mounting a Walter Dorwin Teague exhibition going live this summer.

Curated by Teague’s granddaughter Allison, Walter Dorwin Teague: His Life, Work and Influence will showcase designs from the man design historian Russell Flinchum has called “the most important figure in the professionalization of industrial design in the United States.” Writes Flinchum,

What Teague accomplished between 1927 and 1941 was unprecedented in scope. He assembled a consultant design firm that offered a full range of services from architecture to graphic design—with the demonstrated practice to back that claim up. Often the vehicle for persuading Americans to embrace modernism was Teague’s own profound understanding of America’s design heritage itself. While he greatly admired Le Corbusier’s writings and architecture, it was his own tempered approach–always with the general public in mind—that made him perhaps the critical figure in modernism’s success in the United States.

Teague not only helped solidify the profession of ID and generated a vast portfolio, but left behind an ID consultancy and served as the first president of the organization that would evolve into the IDSA. His contributions to our field are immeasurable, and creative advice he gave nearly nine decades ago is still relevant in the design-drives-business world of today. “The designer who gets results for the manufacturer,” he told Forbes in 1928, “plans with all departments of a business before he ever lays pencil to drawing board.”

The exhibit will run from June 1st through August 31st.

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Dezeen Wire: here’s a round up of design critics’ reactions to the retrospective of British design that opens at the Victoria & Albert museum in London tomorrow.

The exhibition is the first major presentation of post-war British design and includes over 300 significant objects representing the evolution of design in the country from the 1948 Olympics up to the present day.

Writing in The Guardian, Fiona MacCarthy, who was the newspaper’s design writer during the 1960s, describes the curators’ choice of start date for the review of British design as “an embarrassingly opportunistic link back to the 1948 London Olympics,” claiming that it should have begun two years earlier with the Britain Can Make It exhibition, which was also held at the V&A.

Also in The Guardian, current design critic Justin McGuirk suggests that interesting parallels can be drawn between the products on show and the evolution of UK politics over the same period but feels that the curation doesn’t represent recent British design favourably, “partly because it is drawn mainly from the V&A’s own collection, and museum collections are weakest when it comes to contemporary artefacts.”

Jay Merrick, design writer for The Independent, describes the exhibition as “timely and ambitious,” but says the choice of familiar buildings such as Norman Foster’s Gherkin and the Falkirk Wheel is “disappointing” and “rather safe,” when more ambitious architecture projects have been left out.

Design Week‘s Emily Gosling also finds the architecture section disappointing, claiming: “even the Gherkin model in all its ridiculous phallic splendour doesn’t make for a particularly engaging finale.”

Meanwhile, The Observer has invited six British designers – James Dyson, David Bailey, Zandra Rhodes, Richard Rogers, Barbara Hulanicki and Ron Arad – to talk about their favourite designs, the most unusual of which is Bailey’s choice of gaffer tape.

See all of our stories about the V&A here.