Hasta La Ideas

Rick Poynor looks back over two decades of the Designers Republic plus, Spanish type case art, Alison Carmichael and our very own Mumbai taxi – all in the April issue of CR

April is our special issue on type and typography and all things letter-related. As detailed here, our cover features a Mumbai taxi covered in typography specially designed for the issue (watch an interview with the artists here)

We also have a profile of hand-lettering artist Alison Carmichael, whose work has a ribald charm that is proving very popular with ad agencies (hence the punning headline)

And a feature on the recent Art of Lost Words show in which selected designers and illustrators each based a piece on a word that is fast disappearing from the English language

Plus, from Barcelona, Jordi Duró and Meri Cuesta reveal how the remarkable ingenuity of Spanish printers gave rise to a unique form of modernist design

And Rick Poynor’s aforementioned tDR piece (which, in part, draws on his intro for the ill-fated, never-published-despite-what-they-said tDR book), which stretches over six pages and follows up our exclusive revelation that the studio had closed its doors earlier this year

Our subscriber-only Monograph this month features Synthesis, a series of organic forms created by Jeff Knowles

The April issue is on sale from 25 March. Next month: The Annual

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that we’ve got a fresh new look for the blog. After a lot of coding, tweaking and generally making a mess of CSS, I’ve managed to get it to look half-decent (let me know what you think of it!) It still remains a work-in-progress. The goal of this redesign was to make it easier to get around and add some more color. After all, you know we’re suckers for color!

Last but not least, our large header incorporates the work of a featured artist. We’ll be featuring different artists in that space and rotating them over time to keep things interesting. This isn’t a sponsored spot, but rather a testament to our support of great artists. Our first feature is of the brilliant and witty Simon Oxley, one of our all-time favorites.

Enjoy!

Dezeen have teamed up with publishers Actar to give away five copies of MAD Dinner, the first book by Beijing architects MAD. (more…)

Detail from Si Scott’s poster, included with the Designers Against Tibetan Abuse book

The first project to come out of the non-profit organisation, Designers Against Human Rights Abuse – founded last year by Rishi Sodha – is a collection of art and design work that focuses on the Tibetan struggle…

The DAHRA organisation exists to raise awareness among those in the creative industries of their social, political and ethical responsibilities, as well as bring attention to different instances of human rights abuse around the world.

As such, Designers Against Tibetan Abuse, focuses specifically on the struggle for Tibetan rights and is a combination of a book, a limited edition Si Scott silkscreen poster and an exhibition at London’s Cork Street Gallery that is set to take place this summer.

52 creatives from around the world have all contributed pieces that take issue with the Tibetan human rights question. We spoke to Sodha about the reasoning behind the book.

CR: What you think a book like this can achieve simply by collecting and showing these art projects?

Rishi Sodha: In order to answer this question one has to understand the fundamental aims of DAHRA, which not only exists to promote awareness of human rights abuse, but to also raise awareness of ethical practice amongst creative professionals.

As such the Designers Against Tibetan Abuse is a project that combines a book featuring many of the most talented creatives in the industry today, a limited edition Si Scott poster and an exhibition in London, with all proceeds going to Tibet Relief Fund.

However, unlike many other organisations, we realise that a combination of these three mediums isn’t anywhere near enough in terms of raising awareness of such an important issue and so merely is a starting point. Therefore we are currently working on a film and second publication on the Tibetan issue to be launched alongside the exhibition this summer.

This is principally how DAHRA works, whereby we have two or three issues we wish to focus on and run projects on these topics for up to two years in order to ensure we make a real difference. These projects are a combination of closed (invitation only) projects such as the DATA book and projects open to all our members (anyone can join).

The most unique thing about DAHRA is that it is run by creatives for creatives and therefore we try to keep the briefs as open as possible, thus giving our members a break from the restrictions of client driven work. In fact we encourage our members to explore mediums and styles that they’ve never had a chance to work with before in order to express their voices.

It is this approach we feel that will hopefully ensure that we can meet our goals of raising awareness of human rights and promoting ethical practice amongst creatives.

CR: Are all the pieces in some way related to the Tibetan struggle? Can you highlight a few of the ways that the designers have dealt with the issue through their work?

RS: Firstly, I think it’s important to point out that DAHRA doesn’t support the discrimination of anyone and as such when we briefed our contributors we stressed the fact that this is not an attack on the Chinese but rather an opportunity to promote awareness of Tibetan Rights.

Having said that, the response was overwhelming and varied with some contributors choosing to focus on more subtle themes of love and spirit, such as Shame Mielke, Si Scott & Alex Trochit, whilst others focused on the more political aspect of the Tibetan issue, such as Jonathan Barnbrook and Nick Hard (Research Studios) and others chose to draw their inspiration from Tibetan Culture itself, such as Tokyo Plastic and Christopher Cox.

The full list of contributors to the book runs as follows:

Nik Ainely (Shinybinary), Anna Badar, Jonathan Barnbrook, Adhemas Batista, Bek 03, Luisa Bernardes, Diana Bodea, Bartek Bojarczuk, Jon Burgerman, Jonathan Calugi, Giovanni Capriotti, Christopher Cox (ChangetheThought), Nicholas Creevy, Sebastien Cuypers, Adam Dedman, Neil Duerden, Andy Ellison, Nima Falatoori (NMO design), Theo Gennitsakis, Alex Haigh (thinkdust), Christine Hale (Love,Christine), Nick Hard (Research Studios), David Harris, Sean Canty, Mike Harrison, Peter Harrison, Nessim Higson (IamAlwaysHungry), Piotr Holub, Eli Horn, Eric Jordan (2advanced.com), Evgeny Kiselev, Niklas Lundberg (diftype), Justin Maller (Depthcore), Chow Martin, Kevin Megens (Karma.tv), Shane Mielke (2advanced), Nathaniel Milburn, Saad Moosajee, Jared Nickerson (J3concepts), Joao Oliveira, Snehal Sanghani, Loic Sattler, Si Scott, Rishi Sodha, This is Pacifica, Bram Timmer, Tokyo Plastic, Alex Trochut, Ana Ventura, Ari Weinkle, Oliver Wiegner (Ice Cream For Free)

Read more more about DAHRA at dahra.org.

All photography: Nicholas Creevy.

You can purchase the book for £20 from enlightenedgifts.org. All proceeds go directly to the Tibet Relief Fund, who are also distributing the book.

Yesterday, I downloaded the new Kindle application ebook reader onto my iPhone. Like an actual Kindle device, the Kindle iPhone application gives you access to digital books sold on Amazon. I’ve been a big fan of Stanza, so I was interested in seeing how the Kindle application compares.

Immediately, I noticed that there were a few advantages to the Kindle app:

1. With a library of more than 240,000 books, all organized in one central location, the shopping experience is vastly superior with the Kindle app.
2. If you have a Kindle, you can access a book you purchased for it on your iPhone, and vice versa. The program will even tell you what page you were on in the other system. This feature is called “Whispersync.
3. One advantage it has over an actual Kindle is that you can see a book’s cover in full color, instead of 13 shades of gray.
4. You don’t have to carry two electronic devices with you when you go somewhere — put your iPhone in your pocket and leave your Kindle device at home.

Noting these benefits, I think I should also note some of its weaknesses.

1. To buy a book, you have to go out of the Kindle app and into Safari. Once your book is purchased, you then log out of Amazon on Safari, and log back into the Kindle app. Most other programs don’t require that you leave the application.
2. The screen is much brighter than other reading applications and may eat away at battery life more quickly (tried to do a timing, but my service kept changing between Edge and 3G, so I’m not certain the power issue was fully the fault of the application). To read many chapters in a book will definitely require turning your iPhone into Airplane Mode to conserve power.
3. The application wipes out the clock at the top of the screen, which some might think is good, but I found to be annoying. You have to tap the screen to see what time it is.
4. There isn’t a landscape mode. You have to read the text vertically.

Almost all of the other features in the Kindle app are identical to features in Stanza (font size adjustment, scroll through pages, the application itself is free, etc.). I will definitely use the Kindle app for reading newly released texts and books not yet in the public domain. For classics, though, I’m sticking with Stanza.

And, don’t forget the benefits of audio books and how you can buy them from Audible or even download them for free from your public library. Have you tried the new Kindle app for the iPhone? What are your thoughts?