Hasta La Ideas

Students on the Design Products course at RCA, London have collaborated with Yamaha on a range of concepts for musical performances. Yamaha challenged the students to break the boundaries between performer and audience, encouraging participation and collaboration. The student group have put their work on display in the Yamaha flagship store in Soho as part of London Design Festival.

Inspired by the impromptu nature of busking, “Public Resonance” by Sam Weller is a selection of G-clamp pick-ups that allow street-performers to turn any object into a percussion instrument. Check out the video below to see Sam testing out his concept on curious passers-by on the Southbank.

“Music Within” is a fascinating concept by Peter Thorne and Youness Benali. The pair have attached micro-cameras inside guitars and drums—and on the end of a flute—to provide, through a live projection, an extra visual element to music performances.

(more…)

Showing some serious dedication to promoting her country’s ever-growing design industry, the Swedish Ambassador to London has given up her stunning central city residence for the whole of design week to display some of the latest work by Swedish designers. A lot of the work we recognised from our visit to Stockholm Design Week last February but Kyuhyung Cho’s experimental typography really captured our imagination.

Producing fonts out of his delicate surreal sketches and geometric forms, Konstfach student Kyuhyung Cho produces patterns and illustrations through typing out complete texts. Pictured above, Kyuhyung stands with a screen print of the Book of Genesis, the pixel-like letters overlapping to create new shapes and effects. Apparently the illustration below reads “Core77” in his font called “Creatures”—this actually being the italic version, which Kyuhyung informs us he created by imagining wind blowing his creatures from left to right.

(more…)

To mark the tenth anniversary of graphic design legend Alan Fletcher’s groundbreaking The Art of Looking Sideways, a small exhibit of the preparatory notes for the book have gone on display at the Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch.

Illustrating beautifully the fine line between genius and insanity, the poly-pocket lined walls are perhaps the most fitting tribute to a man infatuated with creativity. Well worth a look if you’re doing the rounds at LDF’11.

(more…)

We had to stop by Covent Garden to check out Sebastian Bergne’s installation commissioned by Lego for the festival. Although perhaps a little smaller than we had let ourselves imagine, the spectacle was still certainly grabbing the attention of the hords of tourist ambling through the piazza—undeniably appealing to the child in all of us. The greenhouse seemed to be working surprisingly well—the sunflowers looking healthy despite having, apparently, brown lego bricks for soil. We’ll be sure to stop by at the end of the week to see how they’re getting on.

(more…)

Also on display at the V&A in London this week, is a selection of design proposals for electricity pylons. Not the most glamourous of subjects, perhaps, but serious food for thought for industrial designers.

The design of the humble British pylon has barely changed from Sir Reginald Bloom’s 1927 design. An icon of technological progress to some; an ugly scar on the countryside to others; the British National Grid predict—what with the development of technology, and perhaps even an eventual switch to electric cars—that we will need more pylons rather than less in the coming years.

(more…)