Hasta La Ideas

All photos by Catalina Kulczar-Marin

Like with any other conference aimed at sparking innovation and creativity, you’re going to leave the event with too much information to process. (Moan and groan about buzzwords all you want, but at the end of the day “inspired” is the only way to describe it.) Which, of course, were my feelings concerning PSFK 2014, a one-day conference titled “Connecting the Unexpected.” On April 11, the staff of PSFK hosted an auditorium full of marketers, designers, entrepreneurs and other creative types at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. For the sake of Internet brevity and my own sanity, I’ll break up a few of my favorite take-aways in accordance with the three speaker categories: Keynote, Spotlight and Refresh. I hope that you might find some of it—yup—inspiring.

Keynote

Marc Kushner of Architizer

The day got off to a great start. The first presenter—and possibly the most interesting to me—was Marc Kushner, CEO and co-founder of Architizer. While his message was strong on its own, it might have been the easy delivery and candid approach he took to presenting it. Nothing seemed over-rehearsed and instead of cramming a career’s worth of work into 20 minutes (speakers were allotted 10- and 20-minute presentation times), he walked us all through one design his firm HWKN took on: “Wendy,” the 2012 winner of the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. He addressed the topic of creating things with personality and pushed his message even further through presenting the thought process behind one of his own successful designs. (His words: “They tweeted at her. They added her on Facebook.”)

By taking us through the design process by means of various sketches and photographs of the finished product, Kushner successfully (at least in my instance) reminded us all that architecture is an interactive part of society. My favorite words from the entire event came from Kushner: “Math is intimidating. Architecture shouldn’t be intimidating.”

Left to right: Keith Yamashita, founder of SYPartners; Kevin Alloca, trend tracker at YouTube; and Björn Jeffrey, founder of Toca Boca

Keith Yamashita also served up a noteworthy performance and controlled his presentation (which you can view here) from his phone, which was pretty nifty. His focus was the importance of teamwork in discovering with a successful solution—design-specific or not—and took us through a few steps, or lessons: “Start from a pure place—with equal parts empathy and aspiration,” “never delegate understanding,” “virtually all acts of greatness are the work of an ensemble” and “greatness is a choice,” to name a few.

Brooklyn Boulders‘s “Cultural Chameleon” Jesse Levin shared his stories of volunteering in disaster areas and drew similarities with the atmosphere and team he has built in Brooklyn. Hiring music acts and housing graffiti artists in exchange for wall decorations are only a few things he has utilized to create a collaborative space—not to mention he’s created a co-working space inside of the Brooklyn Boulders gym, complete with standing desks and pull-up bars (no joke). While he wasn’t speaking about design per se, the notion that taking creative leaps keeps ideas fresh applies to any domain.

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Le photographe Romain Laurent nous offre un spot pour Hermès et sa collection Homme printemps-été 2014. Jouant avec talent sur la place du corps dans la ville, le danseur Jérémie Bélingard dévoile de nouveaux vêtements à chaque interaction avec les éléments du décor. Une production SoLab à découvrir dans la suite.

Adobe’s Typekit has just launched a new site dedicated to honing typographic skills, via a series of lessons and resources, under the name Typekit Practice…

“Typekit Practice is a collection of resources and a place to try things, hone your skills, and stay sharp,” runs the site’s introduction. “Everyone can practice typography.”

On offer are featured lessons, including one on using shades for “eye-catching emphasis”, a list of useful online references (blogs, articles, talks etc), and a reading list of books on typography. Of course, there are also links to Typekit’s own fonts and its accompanying blog.

The Practice site is designed and maintainted by Elliot Jay Stocks, Tim Brown, Bram Stein and the Typekit team.

Aimed at both the type novice and expert, Typekit Practice is certainly informative – the lesson on shades offers some good pointers as to the various shading techniques available – from ‘drop’ and ‘close’ shades to ‘offset’ and ‘printer’s’ iterations – while the site itself is clearly laid out and nicely written.

As Brown writes on the TK blog, ” Lessons stand on a foundation of references to articles, blog posts, books, websites, talks, and other solid resources.”

“For example, John Downer explains why sign painters shade letters to the lower left, Nick Cox reviews Typofonderie’s Ambroise, and Typekit’s own David Demaree ruminates on Hi-DPI typography. We’re working hard to accurately cite the sources of references, so that readers have a starting point for further research.”

It looks like Typekit Practice could evolve into a useful collection of hints and tips for those starting to play with typographic technique, and for others looking for some well-researched information on the discipline.

“We have lots of ideas for Typekit Practice,” writes Brown, “plus an extraordinary group of authors and teachers helping us think up valuable lessons and make good references. Come practice with us.”

See practice.typekit.com.

Milan 2014: fluid compositions of coloured glaze cover the ceramic tops of these metal-framed tables by German designer Elisa Strozyk (+ slideshow).

Strozyk created the table tops by covering them with different liquid glazes, which were then mixed together by rotating each piece and blowing air across the surface.

This technique makes the glazes “pool and mix together”, creating “traces of fluid movement and smoke-like patterns, which are solidified in the heat of the kiln,” said Strozyk.

Shades of grey, blue, brown and white swirl and blend together on the table tops, which have a reflective glass-like finish to them created by the glaze.

“Glazing clay is one of the oldest techniques to decorate products of everyday life,” said the designer. “The process of firing transforms the liquid suspension of metal oxides and powdered minerals into various glass-like surface-finishes.”

Strozyk also carved criss-crossing lines into the glaze on the surface of one table, allowing the ceramic base to show through the rust-coloured shades decorating the top.

The round ceramic tops sit on simple metal frames, which come in copper and steel and are available in three different sizes.

The tables were shown as part of the Berlin Design Selection in the Ventura Lambrate district of Milan last week.

Photographs are by Studio Been.

The post Swirling patterns top tables
by Elisa Strozyk appeared first on Dezeen.

Harvey Nichols has launched a new magazine-style website optimised for use on smartphones and tablets. It’s an interesting approach to content marketing, but the site’s design seems to have divided opinion…

The new website was designed in-house and built by agency Ampersand Commerce. It aims to offer a better and simpler user experience and new features include a ‘MyHN’ section where users can create a profile and shopping shortlists; a ‘fashion emergency’ button which takes them to a live chat with a stylist and a ‘click and try’ service, which orders products to store for a one-on-one appointment with an adviser.

The most noticeable change, however, is the emphasis placed on content. Users can still use drop down menus to browse products by department and category but the homepage is now a mix of editorial features and social content. Articles are grouped into six categories, including trends, editor’s picks, inspiration and brand focus.

Features are identified by icons and hashtags and include a mix of full-screen photoshoots, scrapbook-style grids and more traditional product lists and written content. Colour coding and symbols are also used to group products, sections and services.

The site took around a year to build and five months was spent planning design and user experience. Harvey Nichols’ multichannel director Sandrine Deveaux says designers were given a fairly open brief, but asked to “make products look stunning, ensure people find what they are looking for as quickly as possible and fuse content with product as seamlessly as possible.”

The new site is the brand’s first designed with smartphone and tablet users in mind, and Deveaux says the re-design was driven by a change in consumer behaviour. “We have heavy usage on tablet and mobile, and the move away from desktop looks inexorable,” she says.

“[This] creates its own unique challenges, especially given that the vast majority of our customers are iPhone users, where the screen size is significantly smaller than most android devices,” she says. “One of the most striking changes is the shift from traditional left hand category navigation to persistent top level. We’ve been heavily influenced by tablet usage where long scrolls are the norm, and felt that left hand navigation isn’t fit for purpose anymore,” she adds.

Harvey Nichols isn’t the first brand to adopt this kind of content marketing approach – Net-a-Porter, ASOS, Topshop and Urban Outfitters’ websites all feature style guides and editorial features – but these are usually confined to a particular section of the site. Harvey Nichols’ takes the idea a step further, putting equal emphasis on content and product.

This does encourage longer browsing and may lead to customers stumbling on new collections, but it won’t be to everyone’s tastes. While the magazine format has proved successful for high street brands, there’s a careful balance to be struck by upmarket shops who want to offer more content and interaction while retaining a sense of luxury.

The response to Harvey Nichols’ new site was largely positive on Twitter but on retail and marketing blogs, it has divided opinion. Some likened the layout to low-cost templates, while others felt the focus on content was distracting.

But perhaps some of this criticism is a little unfair. There is still a widespread expectation that luxury brand sites should focus on white space and full-screen photos, but Harvey Nichols aim is to do more than showcase products. As Deveaux points out, Harvey Nichols is a brand that’s known for its cheeky sense of humour, and the new website clearly reflects this.

“Harvey Nichols positions itself as…being exclusive but accessible. One of the joys of the brand is that it differentiates itself with humour and wit. Our challenge is to ensure that the core values are communicated to the existing customer base at the same time as offering an online customer experience that appeals to the next generation of customers,” she explains.