Hasta La Ideas

Photos © Jonathan Mauloubier (left) and Mario Gastinger

In the Details is our weekly look at one especially smart, innovative or unusual detail of a new design.

The German designer Stefan Diez has been working on the same chair, more or less, for seven years. His latest version, called Tune, was released this summer as a part of the exhibition Seven Studies, held at a furniture showroom in Munich. Compared to the first version of the chair, Tune is a little brighter and a little more bespoke. But the skeleton is the same. In fact, it’s those bones that gave the original chair its name.

Chassis was developed for the residential and office furniture company Wilkhahn starting in 2006. (It didn’t reach consumers until 2011.) “They have quite a reputation, and I was quite ambitious about trying something new,” says Diez. He aimed to build the chair from strong sheet-metal parts, and then wondered: Why couldn’t the manufacturing process match the materials? Diez consulted with automobile suppliers based in Germany and the Netherlands about using a modern car-manufacturing method for his chairs. They decided on space-frame technology, where 300 tons of pressure deep-draws a fine steel sheet used for the frame.

Diez (center) with prototypes of his new Tune chair, which is a reworking of his earlier Chassis design

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News: internet giant Google has unveiled a simplified logo that flattens its colours and ditches the drop shadow.

Following days of speculation, Google revealed the news in a blog post yesterday. The new logo will appear within a redesigned version of the search engine’s homepage – the most visited website in the world.

“As part of this design, we’ve also refined the colour palette and letter shapes of the Google logo,” wrote Eddie Kessler.

The new homepage will be rolled out to users in upcoming weeks and will feature a revised menu bar that groups links into an “app launcher” on the right-hand side of the page, rather than within the existing black menu bar.

Rumours first circulated earlier this month that Google was planning to update its logo, after the flatter version showed up in a beta version of Chrome for Android.

The new logo is more in line with the cleaner graphics and uncluttered interfaces of Apple’s iOS 7 operating system, which was launched worldwide this week.

Other brands to relaunch logos in the last year include the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and American Airlines.

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Le studio You Talking To Me, créé par les deux designers français Antoni Bellanger et Bertrand Reguron, lance des éditions limités d’objets typographiques pour les particuliers comme pour les entreprises. Les matériaux varient du bois à l’aluminium , en passant par le pvc et le résultat est superbe.

Sponsored content: San Francisco has maintained its status as the cultural haven of the California coast for decades. Through the counterculture of the hippie ’60s and ’70s and the rise of the Castro…

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East London’s Kemistry Gallery has launched an exhibition of Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser’s work for Push Pin Studios. Here’s a look at the show – and some words of wisdom from an 83-year-old Glaser.

Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser are two of the most influential designers of the twentieth century. In 1954, they co-founded Push Pin Studios and for 20 years, produced record covers, book jackets, posters, prints and magazine illustrations in the iconic ‘Push Pin Style’ – bright and witty, often heavily outlined images packed with historical, cultural and artistic references and innovative uses of type.

Glaser left Push Pin in 1975 and today runs his own studio, while Chwast directs the Push Pin Group. The pair’s work hasn’t been shown in London for more than 40 years but is now on display at London’s Kemistry Gallery until November 2.

The Seymour & Milton Posters Show is a collection of posters, sketches and copies of Push Pin’s bi-monthly magazine, the Push Pin Graphic (above). The publication was a spin-off of an earlier project, the Push Pin Almanack, which Glaser and Chwast produced with fellow Push Pin founder Edward Sorel and illustrator Reynold Ruffins, who joined the studio in 1955.

The exhibition includes some of the studio’s most memorable pieces – including a series of posters related to war and peace, such as this one criticising the US bombing of Hanoi in 1967:

A 1985 poster commemorating the 40th anniversary of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and one created to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution (below):

It also includes some excellent designs created to promote conferences and exhibitions such as this one made for a Chwast retrospective:

And illustrations for the New York magazine, which Glaser co-founded with Clay Felker. (He also created the iconic I Heart New York campaign).

A selection of prints on display at the show are for sale, as is a poster designed for the exhibition and a series of rarely seen sketches, including Chwast’s drawings of sex ads and Mexican masks (below). It’s a great collection and one that showcases the skill, humour and attention to detail in both Glaser and Chwast’s work.

“As a young designer I went to a talk Milton and Seymour gave in London. They epitomised to me what being a designer was all about. They created work that was so fresh, intelligent, witty, thought-provoking and beautifully executed, I was in awe. Forty years later, to be hosting an exhibition of their work is thrilling,” says Kemistry co-founder Graham McCallum.

Now in their early 80s, Chwast and Glaser are still designing – both appeared at this year’s Point conference in London, and you can watch a lovely video interview with Glaser which premiered at the conference below.

The Seymour & Milton show runs until November 2 at Kemistry Gallery, 43 Charlotte Road, EC2A 3PD. For more info see kemistrygallery.co.uk