Hasta La Ideas

The cover of our August issue features Fizzog, designed by Ken Garland + Associates, 1970, produced by Galt, photographed by Systems for the exhibition Play: Toys, Sets, Rules

Our August issue takes Education as its theme with features on tech in the classroom, the design of schools, New York designer-cum-educator James Victore and what life is really like on the frontline of creative education today

First, we have an important announcement to make: we have teamed up with JCDecaux to put the work of 20 graduates on over 1,000 JCDecaux digital screens all over the UK in our Talent Spotting project, in association with Creative Translation. The project launches on 3 August. More details to be released soon

Our regular columnist Michael Evamy looks at at a new identity for a school for those with Downs Syndrome that involves staff, pupils and parents in its design while jigsaw fan Daniel Benneworth-Gray is still puzzling it out how to create time to stop and think in his hectic day

In our special report on education and creativity, we look at how new initiative The GirlHood intends to introduce girls from underprivileged backgrounds to the creative world

What’s it really like to work in university arts education today? Writing anonymously, a tutor at a leading UK university gives us the low down on life in academia

Earler this year, a group of St Martins students hit the headlines with a sit-in protest. We talk to one of the organisers of the OccupyUAL movement about its aims and future plans

Mark Sinclair hears about Minute of Listening, a new initiative using sound to stimulate the imaginations of primary schoolchildren

Why New York designer James Victore is dedicating himself to helping his fellow professionals to find their way

With projects such as Hackaball and Skype in the Classroom, Made by Many has worked extensively in education. Tim Malbon and Veronika Janeckova share some of what they have learned along the way

How some of our leading designers responded to new thinking about the importance of play in education by creating beautiful toys

The UK has seen a huge amount of new school building. A new book examines the contribution of design and architecture to making better places to learn. We speak to the authors

And in our Crit section this month, In two exclusive extracts from their new book, Spin’s Tony Brook and Patricia Finegan lift the lid on the workings of one of our leading studios

If you had to grab three things from your shop to use for survival in the wilderness, what would you bring? Let’s look at some quick options:

Bad Picks

– Tracksaw
– HVLP spray gun
– 1/2″-shank Roman ogee bit

Good Picks

– Hacksaw
– Twine
– Flashlight

As it turns out, you don’t even need the good picks to build a habitable shelter. At least not if you’re the Australian bloke behind the Primitive Technology blog. Said bloke (sorry, no name available) treks out into the wilderness to experience, firsthand, how our Stone Age forebears built houses several millenia before the Industrial Revolution. Luckily for you and I, he records his experiences in both video and text.

One of his earliest recorded projects was to build a wattle-and-daub hut using whatever was locally available. And by “locally,” we mean meters, not miles; the man didn’t run down to the hardware store to get an axe, but built his own stone adze instead and built the structure with on-site materials. He built his own primitive step-ladder to get the height needed to reach the roof. He even made—and fired—the freaking mud-clay pot one would use to cook inside such a structure. And all of this stuff was built completely from scratch. Check this out:

Something I dig is that the guy writes follow-up information, revealing how the structure stood up over time. (Though this video was released this week, the actual taping took place two years ago.) As an example:

The roof lasted for a few months before becoming rotten and bug eaten. As an important note the species of palm used in thatching makes all the difference. Had this hut been built in the mountain with wait-a-while palm fronds it would have lasted 2 years at least. Instead it was thatched with alexander palm fronds that deteriorated quickly.

I wasn’t to know this and was trying to adapt hut building practice I learned in the mountain to low land conditions (I’ve built similar huts up the mountain with the same roof shape that have lasted a long time). I hope in future videos to explore better roofing options to use in areas like this.

Perhaps the most amazing part of this man’s overall mission is what inspired it: World of Warcraft. As he explains,

I got interested building huts in the bush as a kid playing Warcraft (first game) at a friend’s place. I liked how you had to harvest resources, build certain structures before you could unlock different technologies and climb up the tech-tree. I couldn’t play it cause my parents wouldn’t buy it and I was too cheap to get it myself so I played at “warcraft” in the bush.

I’m actually in favor of these sorts of games (though I haven’t played Minecraft yet) cause they teach kids to think and plan through playing a game – sort of teaches them problem solving skills.

This kind of attitude has resonated with viewers; his YouTube channel has garnered over 100,000 subscribers. It’s not unusual to find comments like the following after one of his videos: 

“I’d pay just to spend a weekend with you and just learn how to build tools,” one viewer writes, “to just experience something authentic and not virtual and build something with my hands.”

Auto Fabrica‘s latest motorcycle, the Auto Fabrica Type 6 Motorcycle.  The custom build is based on a Yamaha XS650. The design company created a single carb conversion engine that was completely rebuilt with 0.5-oversize pistons that somehow make the incredibly well-designed XS650 engine look even better. The exhaust pipes also received a notable upgrade, as Auto Fabrica created handmade stainless steel pipes that were bent into perfect curves, each containing custom baffles hidden within.(Read…)

“We brought in people ages 0-100 to answer some of life’s big questions”(Read…)

Basé à Alberta au Canada, Glen Ronald s’amuse, à partir de nombreuses tâches d’encre, de différentes traces et de ce qu’il appelle lui-même le chaos, à composer des illustrations diverses, toutes plus belles les unes que les autres. A noter que des tirages d’une partie de ses créations est disponible sur sa boutique Etsy. Et que vous pouvez le suivre au quotidien sur son compte Instagram.