Hasta La Ideas

As we reported on CR this week, the coronavirus crisis has inspired a wave of creative uses of social media – from live workouts and virtual club nights to viral art challenges.

In a live conversation with CR’s associate editor Rachael Steven, Mobbie Nazir from global creative agency We Are Social, which works with brands including Guinness, Adidas and Domino’s, will discuss how brands can provide support and entertainment to audiences in isolation. They will also discuss the best way for brands to use social to talk to audiences at the moment, and how lockdowns could affect brands’ and consumers’ relationship with social in the future.

The conversation will take place on Tuesday April 28 at 11am. To join, please sign up here.

This conversation is part of Lowdown, a series of regular broadcasts from Xeim on how marketers, agencies and brands can help address the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. See more content from The Lowdown here.

The post Brands and social media: a live broadcast with We Are Social’s Mobbie Nazir appeared first on Creative Review.

During quarantine, I try to remind myself of the things I now have the time to enjoy. It is an important technique to train your mind to stay positive and appreciate the slowdown even if it is the little things. I used to rush out every morning and just grab a coffee to go. Being a coffee aficionado, this lockdown gave me the time to enjoy my coffee right from the brewing method to the last sip minus the worry of spilling it as I power-walked to my office. I am finally paying attention to the details of the coffee apparatus – usually, they are all either glass with cork accent or steel (no plastic, sustainable living all the way!) until I found Kork Kafeware which is a whole range that combines cork and stainless steel!

Kork Kafeware was designed to encourage people to take a break from the daily struggles and enjoy me-time. Functionally, it gives you the best of both worlds, stainless steel is durable and cork is heat-resistant. The eco-conscious range includes french press, espresso maker, goose-neck kettle, and coffee grinder which is all you need to enjoy a perfect cup at home. Kork uses the inherent qualities of cork and polished stainless steel to create a natural, functional product designed to last a lifetime. Cork is a sustainable alternative to plastic and offers unique insulative, elastic and lightweight properties to the design.

Inspired by Scandinavian design, the Kork Kafeware collection encourages you to appreciate the craftsmanship of the daily objects in our lives. Making coffee is an art and Chung wanted to inspire more people to appreciate that experience through his collection. You can customize the taste of your coffee to you liking – improvise and get creative as you go, you have all the right tools!

Designer: Samson Chung

This article was sent to us using the ‘Submit A Design’ feature.

We encourage designers/students/studios to send in their projects to be featured on Yanko Design!

While the lockdown is undoubtedly difficult, the wave of creativity and learning on offer to those in quarantine may have positive results in the long run, says Emma Chiu, worldwide director at Wunderman Thompson Intelligence

The post Will the end of the pandemic bring about a new surge of entrepreneurs? appeared first on Creative Review.

Chilean architect Mále Uribe Forés has turned salt into reactive wall tiles that will crystallise and grow over the course of her Salt Imaginaries installation.

Forés constructed an architectural surface from rows of geometric tiles, made from a mixture of plaster and salt taken from the Atacama desert in Chile.

The three-metre wall comprises 1,300 tiles made in two different finishes. An accompanying kinetic light system brings the wall to life by casting shifting shadows.

Over a longer period of time the salt will react to the humidity and temperature of the room, causing it to gradually crystallise and grow as a “living system”.

As Forés explained, in addition to its anti-bactericide and preservation properties, salt can also be naturally hydrophilic – meaning it can reduce moisture in interior environments to help regulate humidity.

“There are more than 14,000 known uses for salt and yet we often overlook its materiality,” said the designer.

“In the context of the boom of bio-materials and the environmental crisis, making visible the transformative power of materials is key for me as a designer,” she continued.

“The tiled wall is questioning how can we see our interiors as stable yet mutating environments, and ultimately questioning salt, and all materials, as cultural constructs.”

Forés wanted to highlight the historical and local narratives of salt, as well as showcasing how it can be used as a precious and versatile resource.

After visiting the Atacama desert, the designer was fascinated by the unusual salt formations that she found in the crust.

“They seemed like digitally rendered sculptures,” she told Dezeen. “I became obsessed about finding out how they took shape, what different salt compositions are there, etc, and started learning everything I could about salt.”

“Standing in the middle of the open landscape I was surprised to hear the loud cracking orchestra of these dry salt rocks naturally cracking everywhere reacting to temperature and light as if they had a world of its own,” she added.

Forés experimented with different salt residues, from discarded salts from lithium refining processes to salts left as residue on the roads that go from mines to the port.

Once she came to a stable composition, with the help of chemists from Chile and the UK, she then used this to make matrix moulds of the final desired shape and used these to cast the tiles in silicone moulds.

It took just over a month to make all the tiles, which were sanded and sealed to ensure a firm base before being assembled on-site to create the final structure.

The geometric pattern of the wall, which Forés describes as a stacking system, takes cues from the different architectural remains of old mining settlements that she found on her research trip to the Atacama Desert.

Here, in the region of Tarapacá, she came across a particular site made with saline mineral rocks that used a zig-zag pilling technique to make self-supporting walls that were incredibly well preserved.

“I have always been fascinated by geometry and repetitive patterns that can somehow play with our perception and therefore make us question what we are looking at,” the designer explained.

“For this project I wanted to keep playing with that and create an immersive effect, dragging the attention to the surface.”

Mále Uribe Forés was chosen as one of the Design Museum‘s 2020 “designers in residence”, where her Salt Imaginaries installation was on display until the museum had to close its doors due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The installation was accompanied by a soundscape of crackling salt and scenographic elements, such as a glowing sun, to create a “meditative” atmosphere that emulates the warm landscape of the desert.

London-based architect Stiliyana Minkovska was also selected as a designer in residence, which saw her present a birthing suite, called Ultima Thule, that offers women a “sanctuary-like” environment during childbirth.

Minkovska’s alternative to “hostile” hospital maternity wards comprises a trio of undulating birthing chairs designed to give the mother more control over her delivery and reproductive health.

Project credits:

Design: Mále Uribe Forés
Fabrication: Peter Bennett
Tile casting assistant: Joseph Wood
Sound design: Tom Burke
Lighting: Beam Lighting Design
3D animation: George Stamenov
Video editing: Dimitris Armenakis
Curators: Sumitra Upham, Maria McLintock

The post Mále Uribe Forés makes wall tiles from Chilean desert salt appeared first on Dezeen.

Founded 50 years ago by economist Fritz Schumaher, Practical Action is focused on promoting a way of life that puts people and the planet before profits and exponential growth. The charity has a presence across four regions – East Africa, Southern Africa, Latin America and South Asia – and focuses on using technology to improve livelihoods for communities in developing nations.

In order to help Practical Action “reclaim its role as a unique voice in the development sector”, NB Studio was brought in to deliver a fresh visual identity – one that complements the organisation’s new positioning as “the ingenuity people”.

The new branding makes use of clean lines, vibrant pops of colour and a blend of serif and sans-serif typography that sits front and centre across the revamped identity. Simple, clear and weighty, the wordmark feels like an apt representation of the organisation’s name, and the use of different type sizes plays on the idea at the heart of its work – that “small actions can change the big picture”.

“Practical Action’s mission in a nutshell is Small Change, Big Difference,” explains NB Studio creative director Nick Finney. “We used two fonts, Druk and Geller, as visual counterparts to create a succinct and sustainable messaging platform based on this idea of small to big. We gave them the tools to write in a more structured yet natural way, then we worked hard to ensure the messages they write will translate across the globe in many different languages. If the identity looks typographic that’s because it’s all about helping to communicate and amplify their important messages.”

Part of the project involved distilling Practical Action’s wide-ranging work around the world into a clear and confident identity. “They have a lot of important things to say, stories to tell and causes to campaign for so we wanted to encourage clarity and brevity which is sometimes tricky to realise in the charity sector,” Finney says.

It marks a refreshing change of tack from the sometimes convoluted designs seen in the not-for-profit sector – however that wasn’t necessarily NB Studio’s ambition. “We spent a long time looking at and carefully tracing the positioning of peers and competitors in the charity development sector,” Finney explains.

“While this exercise revealed a great deal, from a visual perspective we didn’t necessarily set out to challenge any sector norms. Rather, we knew we wanted to avoid cliché, and that can push you into uncharted territory. When I look back through the work we produced, lots of ideas were left behind because they fell into the former (cliché) or the latter (uncharted territory).

“What we did know was that we didn’t want to impose a visual identity, rather that it should form itself around the things we needed it to do,” he adds. “Our thinking and our designs evolved as we delved further into the project and got to know our client more intimately. The result, we believe, is confidence.”

nbstudio.co.uk

The post Practical Action’s new identity has a loud voice appeared first on Creative Review.