Interview: Henrik Vibskov: The Danish designer/artist/musician on blurring the creative lines and making coffee

Interview: Henrik Vibskov


A look at Henrik Vibskov’s Central Saint Martins student ID reveals a great deal about the formidable Danish designer: he’s curiously shirtless and sporting a pretty progressive haircut (particularly for 1998), but most telling are the…

Continue Reading…

Design Indaba 2014: The Expo: Africa’s emerging and established design talent join together in Cape Town for the yearly exhibition and marketplace

Design Indaba 2014: The Expo


Each year that we attend Cape Town’s brilliant Design Indaba conference, the subsequent Expo seems to infinitely grow and improve—a testament to the design world’s increasing fascination with the opportunities abounding in the vibrant continent. Now a massive marketplace consuming the entirety…

Continue Reading…

Design Indaba 2014: The Conference: South Africa’s annual discourse on how creativity and innovation can affect real change throughout the world at large

Design Indaba 2014: The Conference


Many wondrously pioneering things happen daily in South Africa, yet surprisingly much of the world still seems slightly unaware of the nation’s enduring commitment to progressive reform. The country is often still regarded by much of the modern world as underdeveloped—and even worse, unconcerned or unable. But each year founder…

Continue Reading…

ListenUp: This week focuses on artists we discovered while in South Africa during Design Indaba 2014

ListenUp


Bongeziwe Mabandla: Bendisiti Seamlessly blending lyrics in Xhosa and English, Bongeziwe Mabandla’s heartfelt folk music explores his journey from a rural town in the Eastern Cape province to a prestigious film school in Johannesburg—all in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. “Continue Reading…

Link About It: This Week’s Picks: Matt Groening’s early work for Apple, bands to watch at SXSW, chasing the Higgs Boson and more in our look at the web this week

Link About It: This Week's Picks

1. 30 Under 30 at SXSW Buzzfeed counts down 30 of the hottest young bands to check out at SXSW 2013, starting with breakout band Wildcat! Wildcat! and ending with returning headliner Passion Pit. The focused list serves as a great guide for anyone setting out to navigate the…

Continue Reading…

Design Indaba: Paula Scher: The similarities between artists and scientists, how tech is like the music business and more from the multi-faceted designer

Design Indaba: Paula Scher

Influential American artist and designer Paula Scher kicked off this year’s Design Indaba with a talk she titled “Small Breakthroughs, and How They Came to Be.” During her presentation, she detailed both the struggles and solutions involved in several of her most famous projects, from the graphic identity of…

Continue Reading…

Stratflex by Wintec: A flexible and beautiful twist on flatpack furniture

Stratflex by Wintec

Winner of this year’s 2013 Innovation Award at the Design Indaba Expo, the Stratflex line of seating introduces a novel concept into the world of flatpack furniture: curves. By embedding a grid of flexible polymer into its Finnish plywood surface, the Stratflex line is able to form more complex…

Continue Reading…

Design Indaba 2013: The Conference: Standout themes from an inspirational week at Cape Town’s exceptional conference on the power of creativity

Design Indaba 2013: The Conference

“Design is an act of misbehaving.” With those words, legendary artist and designer Paula Scher kicked off Design Indaba 2013. Now in its 18th year, Design Indaba always succeeds in bringing some of the most innovative and provocative creative minds on the face of the earth together in Cape…

Continue Reading…

Design Indaba: John Maeda: Our interview with the RISD president on the changing nature of design and the long process of becoming a successful leader

Design Indaba: John Maeda

John Maeda, pioneer of programmatic design, delivered the closing address at South Africa’s premier conference on creativity, Design Indaba. He spoke to the crowd about the nature of code in art (“Programming is not very complicated, it’s just very boring—It’s what you can do with coding that matters more…

Continue Reading…

African Lookbook

An enterprising young duo exports Africa’s finest talent

African Lookbook

Just two summers ago, Aaron Kohn was a Cool Hunting intern eager to make videos about Africa. His passion for the continent was impressive, to say the least, so we couldn’t be happier to see that he’s now channeled his fervor into an online marketplace that is home to…

Continue Reading…