 | Another reason to love warmer weather just came popping up on my laptop screen. We’ve never been crazy, crazy for florals…but OMG these printed CFH cut-off’s had us at hello!Click below to see them in all their glory! |
Coverage sponsored by the IHA
DomePress, a vacuum-sealed solution for leftovers
After enjoying a delicious home-cooked meal, there’s always the question of what to do with leftovers. If you’re like me, usually this means wrestling with a roll of saran wrap and a Jenga-level stacking job inside my fridge. At this year’s International Home + Housewares Show, we saw a new category of food-saving solutions coming from two small entrepreneurs in the marketplace. Using a silicone sealing ring and a BPA-free plastic lid, these stacking food-savers both create a vacuum seal to help keep food safer, for longer.
Michael Tseng recently completed his studies to be a medical doctor after earning a degree in electrical engineering at Princeton, but even these impressive academic accolades didn’t stop him from pursuing his entrepreneurial passions. It seems like the real problem he’s been trying to solve in the world is what to do with leftovers. Launching his PlateTopper just two weeks ago, we were intoduced to his product in the Home + Housewares Going Green display. Microwave and dishwasher-safe, Plate Topper is a simple solution using an air-tight vacuum seal to get leftovers from table to fridge, fridge to the microwave without hassle or messy cleanup. Check out Michael’s quick demo for us below.
Coverage sponsored by the IHA
DomePress, a vacuum-sealed solution for leftovers
After enjoying a delicious home-cooked meal, there’s always the question of what to do with leftovers. If you’re like me, usually this means wrestling with a roll of saran wrap and a Jenga-level stacking job inside my fridge. At this year’s International Home + Housewares Show, we saw a new category of food-saving solutions coming from two small entrepreneurs in the marketplace. Using a silicon sealing ring and a BPA-free plastic lid, these stacking food-savers both create a vacuum seal to help keep food safer, for longer.
Michael Tseng recently completed his studies to be a medical doctor after earning a degree in electrical engineering at Princeton, but even these impressive academic accolades didn’t stop him from pursuing his entrepreneurial passions. It seems like the real problem he’s been trying to solve in the world is what to do with leftovers. Launching his PlateTopper just two weeks ago, we were intoduced to his product in the Home + Housewares Going Green display. Microwave and dishwasher-safe, Plate Topper is a simple solution using an air-tight vacuum seal to get leftovers from table to fridge, fridge to the microwave without hassle or messy cleanup. Check out Michael’s quick demo for us below.
Delegates enjoy a talk in the main auditorium at OFFSET 2012. Image: Ollie Smith
Summarising a design conference as rich as last weekend’s OFFSET in Dublin in a single blog post is something of a tall order. Speakers included Stefan Sagmeister, Seymour Chwast, Von, and Friends With You – and that was just day one…
Photographer Myles Shelley’s shot of delegates queing up outside the Bord Gais Energy Theatre to register on day one of OFFSET 2012
I’ve got no idea whether this, the third OFFSET event was a financial success for its organisers, three young Dubliners Bren Byrne, Peter O’Dwyer and Richard Seabrooke, who impressively manage to pull together what is fast proving to be a world-class design conference whilst still working full time in their respective day jobs.
However, the knowledge that their combined enthusiasm for communication design has essentially transformed them into conference hobbyists capable of drawing the most talented and erudite image makers and designers from around the world to speak at their event somehow makes OFFSET even more special than the list of internationally renowned speakers on the schedule suggests alone.
As is to be expected at such events, some speakers are more comfortable on stage than others, with some more naturally inclined to candidly reveal their journey from humble beginnings to star creative than perhaps others. I suppose it stands to reason that the speakers who work in a team or in a busy studio are probably naturally more adept at articulating their thought processes than those that work alone. That said, some of the most revealing talks were delivered by lone practitioners.
Illustrator Von on the main stage, shot by Gary Boylan
In each of their respective talks illustrators Von (above, showing some recent work), Steve Simpson, painter Conor Harrington, and poster specialist Olly Moss each revealed to the audience their earliest influences and shared their creative journey – showing that their styles and approach to their work has developed over time to become more accomplished and confident.
Whilst Harrington (above, shot by Gary Boylan) and Moss both charmingly admitted their early work was pretty crap, they both demonstrated that early failure, compounded by a desire to succeed, provided the stimulus to work harder and to get better.
Above: one of Conor Harrington’s paintings from his sold out Dead Meat show currently running at the Lazarides gallery in London
A few chips on shoulders were also tellingly revealed: in 2006 Von “got sacked by a rubbish graphic design studio”, Harrington had a college tutor who told him point blank that she would never go to one of his shows, and Simpson’s well-known cartoonist uncle, the late John Keith Geering, once said of him that he had no talent and would never amount to much. Were these put downs vital to their eventual success? Did these incidents install a steadfast determination to succeed?
“If you’re going to create a character that’s going to get shot at all day by Nazis, why give him a great big target to hold?” Olly Moss, questioning the character design of Captain America at OFFSET 2012. Above is a poster he created to promote the recent Captain America film.
More main room highlights came in the form of engaging and erudite talks from Pentagram‘s Michael Bierut and also Stefan Sagmeister. Both speakers chose to share knowledge and learnings with the assembled crowd, suggesting ways of thinking about the world, design briefs and also approaches to happiness that couldn’t be demonstrated simply by showing completed design projects alone.
The Happy Film Titles from {group theory} on Vimeo.
Sagmeister showed a trailer from his forthcoming film The Happy Film (directed by Hillman Curtis, opening titles shown above) which included footage of the designer struggling to successfully ask girls for their numbers on the streets of New York. Really looking forward to the film’s release later this year – more info about the project can be found at thehappyfilm.org
Some speakers demonstrated a raw and inspirational need to be creative – a hunger that has led them to be productive beyond their day jobs. Letterer, illustrator, type nerd, “crazy cat lady” and typographer Jessica Hische described her just-for-the-fun-of-it work as “procrastiworking” showing a slew of websites she’d built, each the result of a particular creative whim. Check out those projects at jessicahische.is/aprocrastiworker
Pentagram partner Paula Scher also spoke of her desire to create beyond client briefs, telling the audience she wanted “to create things that are luscious and complicated,” before showcasing her self-initiated, large scale colourful and intensely rich map paintings. “I do a lot of design work for free too,” she added, “just to do something new.” Above is her politically charged map of Florida, the key state in the elections that saw George W Bush beat Al Gore to become US president in the year 2000.
As well as the main auditorium action which comprised eight hour-long talks each day, a second room in the venue (Dublin’s Grand Canal Theatre – now renamed due to sponsorship to the Bord Gais Energy Theatre) offered more intimate discussions, panels and interviews. There were sessions that looked at routes into design and also into advertising; a panel discussion about children’s book illustration, another on the future of advertising, and yet another on the subject of staying creative.
There were also interviews with Seymour Chwast, Stefan Sagmeister and Shepard Fairey to check out – if you could bear to miss any of the main room lectures. Above image (by Myles Shelley) is of Pentagram’s Paula Scher and Michael Bierut during their Room 2 interview session.
Yet more highlights were delivered via theatrics. Artist duo Sam and Tury from Friends With You kicked off their talk with a special performance by their character Malfi who danced around to a delighted crowd. Apparently Malfi was in fact a volunteer chosen via Twitter from the OFFSET crowd to don the inflatable outfit. Later in their presentation, to demonstrate their desire to make people happy, Sam and Tury got the entire auditorium on its feet to shake hands and hug people around them they didn’t know. Then they got everyone dancing, which was (to use FWY’s favourite expression) awesome.
The very final lecture of the conference wasn’t so much a talk as a carefully choreographed series of readings and performances, orchestrated by London-based creatives Niall Sweeney and Nigel Truswell from Pony (above), plus a host of friends that performed with them. Who could have guessed that OFFSET ticket holders would see a drag queen perform with a ping pong ball, or that the conference would close to a man singing acapella wearing an albatross costume?
Shepard Fairey on the main stage, shot by Peter O’Dwyer
OFFSET maybe a relatively young contender in the world of international design conferences, but it exudes a hugely positive energy. If three young men in Dublin can create and run an event on this scale and with this ambition in their spare time – well the rest of us have no excuses at all for not being inspired to go forth and create something amazing ourselves.
I realise that I haven’t mentioned a slew of other brilliant creatives that spoke at this year’s event such as Shepard Fairey (above), Johnny Kelly or Erik Kessels, Eike König of HORT, United Visual Artists, Kyle Cooper or Rinzen – but hopefully you get the picture: if you miss OFFSET next year, well, you’ll be missing out.
Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our March issue is an illustration special with features on Clifford Richards, Pick Me Up, the relationship between illustrators and writers, the making of the cover of the New York Times Magazine and a powerful essay by Lawrence Zeegen calling on illustrators to become more engaged with the wider world and accusing the profession of withdrawing “from the big debates of our society to focus on the chit-chat and tittle-tattle of inner-sanctum nothingness”.
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.
Armen Petrossian and chef Giselle Wellman give a culinary lesson in California sturgeon
Often regarded as the ultimate indulgence, caviar consists of non-fertilized, salted sturgeon roe. The prehistoric sturgeon has become a significant symbol in Russian culture, but the depletion of the once-prevalent population in the Caspian Sea compelled the government to issue a ban on fishing in 1998, which was extended another four years in January 2012. As a result, farmed caviar has become the most viable option for meeting demand for the tiny, bead-like delicacy.
Three Transmotanus varieties farmed in Northern California have become best sellers for industry-leader Petrossian in their Beverly Hills store—Classic, Royal and Averta President. Armen Petrossian calls the Transmotanus—which means “crossing the mountains”—an “excellent large fish with good flesh and bountiful eggs.” We recently had the opportunity to take a caviar master class at the store to learn more about caviar’s ocean-to-table journey and sample a rich array of freshly farmed sturgeon roe.
Petrossian gets their supply from Sterling Caviar‘s Northern California farms, one of the first complete sturgeon aquaculture operations in the world. Sterling raises the fish in above-ground freshwater tanks that are monitored for water flow, oxygen levels and temperature and, during the caviar harvest—which this year began in early March—females deemed ready have their ovaries removed and eggs extracted. The eggs are carefully cleaned in cold water, weighed and then lightly salted and mixed by hand. The period from which the female is first identified on the farm to when she has her eggs removed lasts about eight years (during which time eggs are checked for color), but the actual process of removing the roe takes less than 30 minutes.
“Transmotanus is raised mainly in California, I prefer to call it California sturgeon caviar,” said Petrossian, describing the process of sorting and grading the fish to sell at its optimal state. “We also made a name for it—we call it Alverta. This is a very interesting caviar because it is a large fish, with good meat and eggs that is close in taste to the ones from the Caspian Sea. You get more flavor with age. The complicated thing with caviar is that no one fish is comparable to another. That means that even in the same family and the same place, you will have huge differences between one fish and another. The difficulty is to forecast each fish in order for you to have it at the best condition.”
For the master class, chef Giselle Wellman created a five-course menu to celebrate the flavors of the sea and highlight some of Petrossian’s newest and most popular caviars. Chefs in the Petrossian kitchens have found inspiration in the nuanced flavors of the tiny eggs, and a standout dish was a house-made caviar-flavored fettuccini topped with light cream sauce and caviar.
The class included a tasting, which started with what Petrossian calls a “not caviar” paddlefish roe, followed by the American Hackleback, Royal Transmotanus, Alverta President, Tsar Imperial Siberian, Shassetra and Tsar Imperial Ossetra. The flight finished with a rich Kaluga ($481 for 50 grams), the progression offering a clearer understanding of the subtle differences in flavors and textures.
“What we are bringing is like when they are making a bag at Hermes,” says Petrossian on the quality of their product. “It is not only a nice piece of leather, or a good grape to make wine. It’s not just because you have the raw material called sturgeon roe caviar. You need to have specific knowledge and experience in order to know how to separate and grade the caviar. That’s our job, to create levels, to create the quality of the caviar and to create the grades.”
New in the Petrossian boutiques and online shop is Caviar Powder that offers the flavor of caviar with a longer shelf life. The powder can be eaten by sprinkling full beads or grinding the dried pearls into a powder that taste can be served with eggs, potatoes, pasta, smoked salmon or anything that would be more delicious with the addition of caviar flavor. Petrossian also makes Papierusse, which comprises thin sous vide sheets of caviar. Paired with a bubbly glass of champagne these creations are sure to induce decadent caviar filled dreams.
Designed in Hackney: Friday’s instalment in our showcase of the best design in the London borough of Hackney is Sugru, an ingenious silicone rubber that can be used to fix, strengthen or customise almost any object.
Having the consistency of modelling clay when first taken out of the pack, Sugru can be easily moulded and fixed in place by hand, but will cure at room temperature over 24 hours to form a tough, flexible, heat resistant and waterproof rubber.
Sugru will stick to almost any surface, including metal, wood, plastic and fabric, which means it can be used to hack an array of different objects, from basic tools to laptops.
Examples of some of the most original uses of the product are featured on the company’s blog.
Originally conceived of as part of a student project, the product was fine-tuned during years of lab testing and was included in TIME Magazine’s 50 best inventions of the year when it launched in 2010.
Sugru are based on Tudor Road, just off Mare Street in the south of the borough.
Key:
Blue = designers
Red = architects
Yellow = brands
See a larger version of this map here.
Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to showcase world-class architecture and design created in the borough, which is one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices. We’ll publish buildings, interiors and objects that have been designed in Hackney each day until the games this summer.
More information and details of how to get involved can be found at www.designedinhackney.com.
Scaffolding: Construction work at the Lehrter Hauptbahnhof, Berlin. By Tup Wanders, via Wikimedia
So. You have an idea. You’re sold on crowdfunding. Now you’re ready to jump in head first. Where do you start?
In this part of the crowdfunding series, I will cover how to get ready to launch your project. There are two aspects to launching: The Structural work (boring) and the Storytelling work (exciting).
Structural work refers to setting up the way your project will work. Figuring out how much money you should raise, how long your project should run, how to set up your Pledge Tiers, etc. It’s boring stuff, but extremely necessary to making things run smoothly.
Storytelling work refers to how you will describe your project to the world. This involves shooting a video, getting needed imagery, writing copy, etc.
Turns out there is a lot of ground to cover for both of these aspects, so we’re going to split this post into two parts. This part will focus on building your structure and on Monday, the post about Storytelling will be published.
Note: From here on out, this series will focus mainly on Kickstarter. They are the go-to site for product design projects, and it only makes sense to talk about how to work within Kickstarter’s parameters.
Before you launch.
I won’t go into how the product development process works. Presumably, you have some experience in design and I wouldn’t be telling you anything new. But it’s important to talk about how you may need to modify the process to work for crowdfunding.
Every product design project creator should first decide what phase they will launch their project from. Lets go back to that development timeline I talked about last time.
Click for larger image.
Do you launch from the Manufacturing phase? Refinement? Proof of Concept? Obviously, the further along in development you are, the less chance for delays and surprises you will have. My recommendation for anyone starting a crowdfunding project? Do as much as you can on your own dime, before you try to crowdfund your product. The earlier you launch the more unpredictable the timing of delivering your project will be.
I launched my project somewhere between the Proof of Concept and Refinement phases. I had a working proof of concept, quotes from vendors, and a pretty good sense of how my Stylus Caps were going to be made. More importantly, I went as far as I could go on my own money. I had several surprises still ahead of me, but looking into crowdfunding was the only way the project was going to continue.
So how about you? At minimum, I wouldn’t even consider launching until you have a working proof-of-concept prototype and production quotes from multiple vendors. Launching with anything less is crazy. You owe it to yourself, your potential manufacturing partners, and your future Backers, to have done your homework on these two things. You can’t responsibly run a crowdfunding project without knowing if your concept will work and how much it will cost to produce.
In case you were wondering, a proof of concept is a prototype that mostly looks and works as the final product is intended. It exists to tell you that your idea works, that it’s manufacturable, and to communicate to others what your intentions are. It doesn’t HAVE to be completely final, but it should answer most, if not all, of your questions of how you will proceed with your development. You will also need it to help you demonstrate your idea in the video that will be on your main project page.
Production quotes are cost estimates that you receive from vendors that tell you how much it will cost to produce your idea and how long it will take to make it. Its good practice to get multiple quotes and make sure you have trust in the people you will eventually work with. Make sure you put all of those quotes plus any other anticipated costs into a Bill of Materials or BOM, that will give you a detailed look at how much money it will take to make your idea.
Once you have a proof of concept and production quotes you feel comfortable with, you can think about how to set up your crowdfunding structure.
Let’s talk about money.
Let’s be brutally honest with ourselves; designers have a very complicated relationship with money. We mostly suck at getting the money we deserve. We design because we feel compelled to design, not because we are looking to get rich. A living would be nice. When money starts to come into play we get an icky feeling. Money seems like it would pollute our “noble” reasons for being designers.
This is the wrong way to look at money. All money is, is fuel to accomplish things. Nothing more. Louis CK put it best when he said: “I never viewed money as being “my money.” I always saw it as “The money.” It’s a resource. If it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.”
L’agence allemande Jung von Matt a eu l’excellente idée de faire jouer notre imaginaire pour montrer la puissance de la marque Lego. En composant de façon minimaliste des personnages de fiction connus de tous, les visuels sont à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
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To mark the release of a new “mini-edition” of publisher Laurence King‘s 2008 sneaker-focused title Art & Sole: Contemporary Sneaker Design, and also the launch of the classic Nike Cortez silhouette on nikeid.com, the book’s author has teamed up with Nike and four visual artists to create The Art & Sole Cortez iD project…
The book’s author, design studio Intercity, commissioned four artists, Jiro Bevis, Shantell Martin, Matthew Nicholson and Rose Stallard to create an artwork for one of four limited Art & Sole book covers. Working with different media – print, moving image, sculpture and sneaker-art respectively, each artist’s cover artwork has been packaged alongside a pair of colour-coordinated Art & Sole Cortez sneakers, in a specially designed box.
The brief to the artists was simple – to interpret the Cortez sneaker using a specifically assigned colour – red, blue, green or magenta – which correlate to the category-signifying coloured dots that run through the Art & Sole book. The Cortez, one of Nike’s first running shoes, also celebrates its 40th anniversary this year so the brief additionally requested a response to “the history of running.”
Here are the book covers designed by each artist along with their explanation of their approach:
Jiro Bevis’ artwork (above) is entitled Beer, Waffles & Nuts. “I was given a brief history of the Nike Cortez, and the element I found most interesting was that, according to Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, eating waffles, nuts and drinking beer were vital ingredients to running.” His limited edition pack is shown at the top of this post.
Illustrator Rose Stallard hand customised a pair of blue nylon Cortez sneakers which were shot for her Art & Sole cover. “I wanted to pick out some key points to do with the Cortez and the last 40 years of running, so that I could create my own sheet of Cortez clip-art that I could pick and choose from,” she explains. “The vibe I was going for was kids customising their school bags, and paying homage too their heroes.” Here’s her pack:
Shantell Martin’s cover (above) is derived from a moving image piece she created in response to the brief (see below). “When creating the piece I was thinking about: running, green and the Cortez shoe,” she says. “I chose to start with a green mobile dot which represents the atom; ‘a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons’. This atom is one very tiny part of the Nike Cortez shoe that is discovered and then in turn taken on a journey to find the origin of its name. Once observed the atom slowly returns to its original singular form.”
Shantell Martin: Run as YOU from Art & Sole on Vimeo.
Matthew Nicholson created a pair of paper Cortez shoes which were shot to create his Art & Sole cover. “The most interesting part of this [project] was spending time exploring the heritage of the Nike Cortez and its surrounding graphic literature,” he says. “My response is a visualisation of this exploration, but, most importantly, it is a celebration of the Nike Cortez’s involvement in the history of running. By building the Cortez from this rich ancestry of literature and graphic material, I aim to suggest that this is a shoe built, informed and improved by its past.”
The trainers in each limited edition pack (there are only 40 of each of the four special edition Art & Sole packs) are tonal grey, referencing the blank canvas shoe colour that is synonymous with NIKEiD, and have a gum sole that pays homage to the first ever Cortez. An embroidered ampersand on the heel and a colour coded accent in the lining of the shoe matches each shoe with one of the four artworks, with red corresponding to Jiro Bevis’ cover art, magenta relating to Matthew Nicholson’s artwork, green ties in with Shantell Martin’s cover artwork and blue is the colour assigned to Rose Stallard for the project. The specially made boxes house the book within so that it appears framed through a clear window in the box lid.
The limited edtion packs (£125 each) will only be available in London’s Nike iD store in Boxpark in Shoreditch. Here’s the release schedule:
Shantell Martin pack: 11am Saturday March 17
Jiro Bevis pack: 11am Sunday March 18
Matthew Nicholson pack: 11am Monday March 19
Rose Stallard pack: 11am Tuesday March 20
Regular Art & Sole mini edition books will also be on sale in the NikeiD store, priced at £9.50
More info about the project and interviews with each artist will soon appear on artandsoleblog.com
Read our original blog post on Art & Sole here
Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our March issue is an illustration special with features on Clifford Richards, Pick Me Up, the relationship between illustrators and writers, the making of the cover of the New York Times Magazine and a powerful essay by Lawrence Zeegen calling on illustrators to become more engaged with the wider world and accusing the profession of withdrawing “from the big debates of our society to focus on the chit-chat and tittle-tattle of inner-sanctum nothingness”.
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.
While it’s the Eastern and Western Conferences I’m preoccupied with right now, the IDSA has three up on the NBA with their upcoming Design Dialogue Conferences. Between March 30th and May 6th, no less than five U.S. cities are hosting two-day events all under the umbrella of this year’s “Evolving Design Practices” theme.
Here’s the short of it:
Mideast Design Conference
Detroit, March 30-31
“Rebuilding our Region with Design”
Midwest Design Conference
Chicago, April 13-14
“Exploring Creative Fusion”
Northeast Design Conference
Philadelphia, April 13-14
“Forward Thinking Through Vintage Perspectives”
Southern Design Conference
Atlanta, April 20-21
“Grow. Expand. Advance.”
Western Design Conference
Seattle, May 4-5
“Breaking Boundaries”
Hit the jump for the full descriptions of each.
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.
