Hasta La Ideas

The rebrand comes as Skillshare is poised to enter its second decade of operation, having grown a community of over eight million users.

The platform runs online courses across all areas of the creative industries, from advertising to fashion, photography to writing. It boasts some formidable contributors from the industry, including Jessica Walsh, Paula Scher, Seth Fried, and Seb Lester.

The new visual sees Skillshare ditch its previous joined-hands symbol for a new wordmark and tagline – Explore your creativity – as well as the distinctive use of squiggly lines (intended to express the winding creative journey) in its new brand colour, Wander Green.

“After a decade spent building a learning community for creative enthusiasts, we felt like our brand needed to evolve along with that growing Skillshare creative community,” says the brand’s creative director Jeremy Perez-Cru of the new design. “Skillshare needed a better way to serve these creatives, communicate with them, and help power their creative potential.”

While the Perez-Cru hopes the new identity will help Skillshare “grow beyond being just a platform and to better embody the spirit of our community”, it is also rooted in practicality, in particular a need for the mark to be legible in all digital spaces, and allow the company to be more consistent.

It was devised through a process of design sprints with both external and internal teams. “With the help of [brand strategist’s] Concept Bureau, Skillshare had already completed the research and insights needed to signal the desire for a brand evolution,” explains Perez-Cru.

“I’ve personally been specialising in various types of design and innovation sprints for the past few years and find the process incredibly effective. By including all decision makers, we’re able to shortcut the debate cycle and get to solutions more quickly. Clearing calendars and having a focused, heads-down approach frees us from the day-to-day distraction of a traditional workday. With those two barriers removed, all of our energy and time can be devoted towards solving a focused set of problems while simultaneously gathering user feedback.

“We sprinted the second week of September and by the second week of December we had a new visual and verbal identity (logo, colour, type, motion graphics, photography, video suite, voice and tone), integrated marketing campaign (television spot, out-of-home, dozens of performance/social marketing assets, partnership kits), and refreshed products (Desktop, iOS and Android apps). It was a highly collaborative relationship between brand, marketing, tech, executive, content and external design teams.”

At a time when digital rebrands are often accused of being bland, the team were conscious of the need to create an identity that would stand out. “It’s increasingly difficult to create solutions for the many needs of corporate identity – scalability, legibility, flexibility – while maintaining originality,” says Perez-Cru. “There is a reason that geometric sans serif logos are so widely adopted.

“We went through a lot of identity system iterations during our sprint and kept coming back to the need to make it unique and to reflect the spirit of strange, beautiful, and surprising creative acts. We took it really far in some of those and in the end found a happy medium that best reflected our needs. Specific to the logo, we’ve played with upper and lowercase letterforms and believe the resulting, odd family of character pairings helps us be more of who we are.”

skillshare.com

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During the 20^th century, the concept of play blossomed as its creative and educational benefits were revealed. We talk to Shamita Sharmacharja, co-curator of Play Well, an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, about its evolution

The post The changing state of play appeared first on Creative Review.

The Danish capital, Copenhagen, pledges to become the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025, and with the much anticipated CopenHill having opened up, we can see the city hurtling towards its goal. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), CopenHill is an intriguing mesh of a waste-to-energy power plant, a ski slope, hiking and running trail, and a section of lush greenery right in the middle of bustling Copenhagen.

Designer: Bjarke Ingels Group, SLA, AKT, Lüchinger+Meyer, MOE, and Rambøll

Created using glass and stacked aluminum bricks, the structure has a futuristic and sleek appeal to it. However, the steam-ring generator that was a part of the initial plans, had to be skipped, but could be a future addition!

A 1480-foot artificial slope, which is quite interestingly green in color, is a major attraction. Ski lifts and a glass elevator provide access to it. The slope has different levels of difficulty, for the diverse leagues of skiers. So you can have your pick, with the bottom green level for beginners, blue for intermediates, and red for the experienced and the seasoned! A freestyle park and slalom course are included!

Measuring at 278 feet, CopenHill also showcases the world’s tallest climbing wall, plus a cross-fit area and trail for hiking and running. There’s a rooftop bar you can hit for some drinks and food!

Home to 7000 bushes, 300 pine and willows trees, plus other varieties of nature, CopenHill bears a beautiful connection to nature.

“Beneath the slopes, whirring furnaces, steam, and turbines convert 440,000 tons of waste annually into enough clean energy to deliver electricity and district heating for 150,000 homes,” explains BIG. “The necessities of the power plant to complete this task, from ventilation shafts to air-intakes, help create the varied topography of a mountain; a man-made landscape created in the encounter between the needs from below and the desires from above.”

CopenHill is the perfect example of merging architecture and sustainability to create a vibrant urban structure that meets several needs. CopenHill is expected to be a major tourist attraction, with people from all over the world hitting a waste incinerator that also happens to be a fun ski park!

A kitchen wrapped in yuzu-coloured glass sits at the centre of HAF Studio‘s interior for Japanese burger restaurant Yuzu, in Reykjavík.

Situated on the city’s recently rejuvenated Hverfisgata street, the 220-square-metere restaurant incorporates Japanese yuzu fruit into all of its dishes, from burgers to cocktails and sauces.

With this hybrid menu in mind, local designers HAF Studio set out to create an interior that blends Nordic and Japanese aesthetics.

The studio is the latest in a string of practices that have attempted to blend design from these two parts of the world in a restaurant interior. At recently-opened Copenhagen restaurant Izumi, Pan-Projects and Mok Architects incorporated oak surfaces, translucent screens and paper lanterns to reflect the Nordic-Japanese menu.

At Yuzu, HAF Studio has teamed raw industrial materials such as concrete bricks, chromed steel and yellow glass with warmer natural materials associated with Nordic design, such as Douglas fir flooring and brown leather benches.

“We studied Japanese aesthetics in the attention to detail and use of minimal shapes,” HAF studio design director Hafsteinn Júlíusson told Dezeen. “The solid wood furniture is uncoloured and concrete walls are left untreated in its original state. This enhances the Japanese feel in our opinion where everything in the space is there for a reason.”

The 80-seat restaurant revolves around a central open kitchen wrapped in yellow glass that references the colour of the yuzu fruit.

From here, guests can watch the chefs, led by renowned Icelandic chef Haukur Mar Hauksson, create dishes such as the Yuzu burger that comes with steam baked bun.

The restaurant’s seating is varied with areas of bench seating, clusters of separate tables and chairs, bar stools and more intimate booths. There is also a lounge area with sofas by Swedish brand HEM and chairs by French brand Moustache.

The metal chair used throughout the interior is designed by HAF Studio specifically for the restaurant. Called New School, the locally-produced chair references a specific primary school chair that was used by a generation of Icelandic school children.

A series of curtains made from blue wool by Danish brand Kvadrat enable the space to be divided into smaller separated units.

In keeping with the industrial materials used, the designers installed neon lighting alongside industrial tube lights made by French company Sammode lighting across the restaurant’s ceiling and walls.

“The overall goal for HAF Studio was to create a relaxed and effortless place that mixes nordic and Japanese aesthetics,” explained the designers. “Though the structure of the space is rough and industrial the overall feel is warm and inviting.”

HAF Studio is a Reykjavík-based interiors and architecture practice led by Hafsteinn Juliusson and Karitas Sveinsdóttir. The studio previously designed a 1960s-styled restaurant in the city.

Photography is by Gunnar Sverrisson.

The post Nordic and Japanese aesthetics combine in Reykjavík burger joint appeared first on Dezeen.

To kick off the new year, we’ve selected the top architecture and design positions on Dezeen Jobs, including opportunities at architecture firm Takero Shimazaki Architects and set designer Es Devlin’s eponymous studio.

Part 2 architectural assistant/Part 3 architect at Takero Shimazaki Architects

Takero Shimazaki Architects has an opening for an experienced Part 2 architectural assistant/Part 3 architect to join its team in London. The practice overhauled the interiors of a Barbican apartment in London, taking visual cues from the client’s connection to Japan.

Browse more Part 3 roles ›

Assistant designer at Es Devlin

Set designer Es Devlin has created a three-dimensional topographical model that depicts crucial moments in history, for Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery in London’s Ealing. Es Devlin Studio is hiring an assistant designer/archivist to assist the associate designers on research, presentations, visualisations, and drawing in London.

View all design jobs ›

Deputy editor at Dezeen

Dezeen is seeking an experienced deputy editor to join its award-winning editorial team in London. The Dezeen office was designed by architect Pernilla Ohrstedt, intended to create a light-filled collaborative working environment in east London’s Hoxton.

See more positions in London ›

Part 2 architectural assistant at Studio RHE

Studio RHE has renovated a London office building, creating a 10-storey engineered timber atrium at its centre. The studio is looking for a Part 2 architectural assistant with technical experience to join its practice in Old Street, London.

Browse all Part 2 architectural assistant jobs ›

Senior architect at UNStudio

UNStudio has an opportunity for a senior architect with a minimum of ten years’ experience to join its team in Shanghai, China. The firm has created a flagship store for a fashion brand on Amsterdam’s PC Hooftstraat, which features a facade designed to mimic fabric with glass.

View all architect opportunities ›

See all the latest architecture and design roles on Dezeen Jobs ›

The post The most promising roles on Dezeen Jobs this week includes vacancies at Takero Shimazaki Architects and Es Devlin Studio appeared first on Dezeen.