Hasta La Ideas

In an increasingly interactive world, graphic designer and visiting college lecturer Craig Oldham has looked to shake up the concept of the lecture. Rather than turning up to a college and delivering a given talk, he’s created an initiative which allows students to vote for the topics they’d most like to hear him discuss…

Entitled The Democratic Lecture, Oldham’s initiative is based around a website through which students he is soon going to lecture can vote for their favourite five topics out of a list of a possible 40 – ranging from the benefits of taking a gap year, to the joys of collaboration, the importance of tea, and even one possible topic choice called Blood on the Macs: Design Through the Lyrics of Bob Dylan.

The idea is very simple: the top five voted-for topics get covered in Oldham’s lecture, meaning that the audience get a bespoke lecture based on their needs, worries, concerns and interests.

“In lecturing at Universities around the country, I’ve always held a bit of a principle that I didn’t really think students would get all that much from a lecturer just talking through slide-after-slide of a portfolio of work,” says Oldham of the project. “Surely there was a bit more insight I could offer into the industry that they’re all busting their chops to get into,” he continues. And, a few lectures later, I came up with The Democratic Lecture.”

Oldham’s well-catered for students can also purchase a book (£12.99) that collates info pertaining to all 40 Democratic Lecture topics – just in case their most-wanted topic isn’t covered in the lecture they attend. Here’s a look:

Remember, you can’t look at the different topics and vote unless you enter a code based on Oldham’s next planned lecture. However, you can still explore some of the site, book Oldham in to give a letcture, and buy the book at thedemocraticlecture.com.

CR In print

In our December issue we look at why carpets are the latest medium of choice for designers and illustrators. Plus, Does it matter if design projects are presented using fake images created using LiveSurface and the like? Mark Sinclair looks in to the issue of mocking-up. We have an extract from Craig Ward’s upcoming book Popular Lies About Graphic Design and ask why advertising has been so poor at preserving its past. Illustrators’ agents share their tips for getting seen and we interview maverick director Tony Kaye by means of his unique way with email. In Crit, Guardian economics leader writer Aditya Chakrabortty review’s Kalle Lasn’s Meme Wars and Gordon Comstock pities brands’ long-suffering social media managers. In a new column on art direction, Paul Belford deconstructs a Levi’s ad that was so wrong it was very right, plus, in his brand identity column, Michael Evamy looks at the work of Barcelona-based Mario Eskenazi. And Daniel Benneworth-Gray tackles every freelancer’s dilemma – getting work.

Our Monograph this month, for subscribers only, features the EnsaïmadART project in which Astrid Stavro and Pablo Martin invited designers from around the world to create stickers to go on the packaging of special edition packaging for Majorca’s distinctive pastry, the ensaïmada, with all profits going to a charity on the island (full story here)

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

Zak Group has designed and art directed the visual identity and exhibition for the Taipei Biennial 2012, ‘Modern Monsters/Death and Life of Fiction’, creating new typeface Taowu Sans to tie together the imagery as well as the Chinese and English languages.

The overall visual identity is conceived as a constantly shape-shifting expression of the exhibition and interweaves Chinese and Latin characters to suggest multiple readings, according to context and constellation. The typeface is named after the ancient Chinese monster Taowu, a shape-shifting creature that sees both future and the past, which the Biennial refers to in its exploration of modern Chinese history.

According to Zak Group, the visual identity is “ripe with metaphors and powers of evocation, functioning as thought-pictures or ideograms. It is a game of symmetrically mirroring opposites: dark anad light, past and present, fiction and reality”.

This ‘making of’ video explains a bit more:

Rather than taking the form of a static symbol or logo the identity appears as an ever-changing constallation of Chinese and Latin characters. Zak Group designed the typeface in three different iterations. With each version the typography undergoes increasing doubling, mirroring and multiplication of the letterforms. “The objectivity of language becomes doubled and ultimately unstable, which directly relates to the strategies used by artists within the exhibition,” say Zak Group’s Zak Kyes and Grégory Ambos.

The exhibition design was conceived in collaboration with architects Co DKT and Zak Group also applied the identity to dual-language guidebooks, an online and printed journal with related essays, the website and the Biennial promotional outdoors campaign.

The Taipei Biennial 2012 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum runs until January 13, 2013. Most photos courtesy of Zak Group; installation photograph courtesy Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

CR In print

In our December issue we look at why carpets are the latest medium of choice for designers and illustrators. Plus, Does it matter if design projects are presented using fake images created using LiveSurface and the like? Mark Sinclair looks in to the issue of mocking-up. We have an extract from Craig Ward’s upcoming book Popular Lies About Graphic Design and ask why advertising has been so poor at preserving its past. Illustrators’ agents share their tips for getting seen and we interview maverick director Tony Kaye by means of his unique way with email. In Crit, Guardian economics leader writer Aditya Chakrabortty review’s Kalle Lasn’s Meme Wars and Gordon Comstock pities brands’ long-suffering social media managers. In a new column on art direction, Paul Belford deconstructs a Levi’s ad that was so wrong it was very right, plus, in his brand identity column, Michael Evamy looks at the work of Barcelona-based Mario Eskenazi. And Daniel Benneworth-Gray tackles every freelancer’s dilemma – getting work.

Our Monograph this month, for subscribers only, features the EnsaïmadART project in which Astrid Stavro and Pablo Martin invited designers from around the world to create stickers to go on the packaging of special edition packaging for Majorca’s distinctive pastry, the ensaïmada, with all profits going to a charity on the island (full story here)

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

News: social responsibility has fallen down the agenda of today’s designers and design schools, according to the author of a new history of Ulm School of Design, the German institution that reshaped design education in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Social responsibility is more important than ever. In recent years this has been forgotten,” Dr René Spitz told Dezeen. “Since the 1990s, design [has] largely concentrated on the formal aesthetic finish: elegant, eccentric, unusual, luxurious. We have failed to formulate new answers to the question of what societal responsibility is today – specifically, beyond phrases and slogans.”

In his new book, HfG IUP IFG Ulm 1968-2008, the Cologne-based writer, academic and design consultant considers the impact the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (HfG) has had since its closure in 1968 after just 15 years in operation.

“Ulm was unique”, says Spitz. “There was no other school of design which was fed from a similar socio-political impulse.”

Following in the footsteps of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus before it, Ulm taught students to question the designer’s place in society.

“The special quality of Ulm was to focus on this question and to combine it with a humane, holistic approach and scientific methods,” he explains. “Nowhere else was the theoretical deliberation and practical experiment so concentrated on the question of the designer’s social responsibility.”

Above: Otl Aicher, one of the founders of Ulm School of Design, pictured in 1954

The school’s answer was to encourage an approach to design that would help build an open-minded and democratic society – an especially pertinent ambition in post-war Germany.

“That’s why they didn’t care about the design of luxury products, like an exclusive coffee set. They developed durable goods,” such as stackable tableware for youth hostels and concepts for practical family cars, explains Spitz.

HfG was also known for its collaboration with Braun in the 1950s, which saw the newly-hired designer Dieter Rams working with teachers and students to develop the functional and economical style that became the German consumer products company’s trademark.

Despite its brief lifespan, the school’s influence continued through its subsequent iterations as the Institut für Umweltplanung (IUP), which existed until 1972 to serve existing students, and, since 1988, the Internationales Forum für Gestaltung (IFG), the platform from which the HfG Foundation now operates.

Spitz became interested in the history of the school in the 1990s when he worked alongside Otl Aicher, one of Ulm’s founders along with Inge Scholl and Max Bill, and between 2004 and 2007 he was chairman of the advisory board of the IFG.

Today’s designers still have much to learn from the legacy of Ulm, concludes Spitz, explaining that researching a design problem thoroughly and placing it in context is vital.

“This sounds simple, but it’s hard because you need a lot of time if you really want to understand a complex situation,” he says. “We must get deep below the surface. Otherwise we keep on producing problems.”

Dezeen has been reporting on the changing face of design education in recent weeks, following a warning that the Royal College of Art will become a “Chinese finishing school” if the UK government doesn’t do more to encourage young people towards art and design, while graphic designer Neville Brody, who’s dean of communication at the RCA, has slammed politicians for removing creative subjects from the curriculum.

Photographs are courtesy of Dr René Spitz.

The post “Social responsibility has been forgotten”
– author of book on Ulm School of Design appeared first on Dezeen.

Les équipes hollandaises d’Atelier010 ont réalisé ce bel objet appelé sobrement « Bookworm Chair ». Cette chaise a une forme unique, qui permet à la fois de s’asseoir confortablement, mais aussi de stocker un grand nombre de livres. Plus d’images de ce concept dans la suite de l’article.

Twenty-twelve has been a rambunctious year in the world of product design, and we’ve been right here watching, salivating and collecting the best of the best for our annual Gift Guide. With hundreds of items already in the archive and more being added every day, plus our newly launched iOS…

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