Amongst the expanses of desperate homes and floundering businesses the media has repeatedly brought to light, a lone two towers and low lying complex of townhouses stands in downtown Detroit. Lafayette Park, as it’s called, comprises the largest collection of buildings designed by legendary minimalist Ludwig Mies van der…
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A new diary offers up a fresh start, the promise of a whole year conveyed through clean, blank pages. But what if it told of the cold hard truths that lay ahead? The Disappointments Diary 2013 does just that…
Published by Asbury & Asbury, designed by Jim Sutherland at Hat-trick Design and written by Nick Asbury, this is a week-to-view diary with a decidedly downbeat take on the regular pocket planner.
The diary itself is bookended by pages detailing Notable Deaths and ‘Onset of Night (sunset times)’ at the front, and empty space for lists of Imaginary Friends and – always useful for those introspective moments on public transport – Notes Toward An Unnecessary Verse Drama, at the back.
As diaries go, this thing practically shrugs “meh” at your elastic-banded Moleskine.
Each week has an accompanying proverb to fill you with inspiration, too. These range from the pithy “What doesn’t kill you makes you wish it had” and “No news is increasingly worrying” to the more philosophical, “Every cloud has a silver lining around its heavy grey mass of imminent rain”.
Keen-eyed CR blog readers will also have noticed a slight differentiation in the shading of the pages in the diary. As Asbury confirmed by email, this is indeed the case, reflective of course of a sense of encroaching doom (and not that he photographed them in a darkened room, on his own, at 2am).
“There are many diaries out there designed to motivate and inspire, but there’s a certain value in a diary that grounds you and even brings you down,” says Asbury. “That in itself can be a kind of inspiration.”
The Disappointments Diary 2013 is available in a limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies from disappointmentsdiary.com; £10 (plus £1 postage in the UK). Orders will ship November 14.
For the 18th installment of The Thing Quarterly, the object-based periodical relied on Mike Mills to create a 2013 pocket calendar. Mills, a filmmaker and visual artist, has presented work at Sundance Film Festival and as part of MoMA’s New Directors New Films series, and is perhaps best known…
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Competition: we’re offering readers the chance to win one of five copies of this year’s Dutch Design Yearbook, featuring exemplary designs produced in the Netherlands over the past year.
The fourth edition of the book features over 60 urban, product, graphic and fashion design projects including the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, masks by Bertjan Pot and the Stills Flagship Store in Amsterdam.
Each project is presented with a selection of images and text in Dutch and English.
The designs in the yearbook were all nominated for the Dutch Design Awards – take a look at this year’s winners here.
The awards took place as part of Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, which continues until 28 October. Follow our coverage of the event here.
To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Dutch Design Yearbook 2012” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Read our privacy policy here.
Competition closes 20 November 2012. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
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Design Yearbook 2012 to be won appeared first on Dezeen.
London studio, Design by St, was commissioned by The Times to showcase the newspaper’s recent Olympics coverage in a new book. The Games documents Team GB’s finest moments of London 2012…
Working with The Times‘ design editor, Jon Hill, and a combined editorial team from Harper Collins, Design by St repurposed existing newspaper content into a book layout, including some of the best Times photography from medal-winning events over a series of dynamic spreads.
Each day of the Games is introduced by full page image and a large numeral on the right-hand page, complete with a medal tally for Team GB (opening ceremony shown, above; Rebecca Adlington and a Bradley Wiggins supporter shown, below).
Design by St is a London based graphic design studio founded by Steve Fenn and Tom Pollard formerly of Studio8 Design. The studio’s brand new website has also just launched at designbyst.com.
The Games is out now in bookshops and available from Amazon, here. Copies featuring the limited edition gold/black duotone wrap cover (shown above) are available to Times+ members and can be ordered from The Times directly.
Like many husbands, Fred enjoys taking pictures of his wife Valerie. As long as she’s fully clothed and wet. Erik Kessels’ latest In Almost Every Picture photography book tells the story of a bizarre yet touching obsession
Fred and Valerie is number 11 in Kessels’ long-running series of books of found photography. Originally, Kessels (co-founder of the KesselsKramer ad agency in Amsterdam) would discover the material for his books by hunting through piles of annuals at flea markets but, as he revealed at the Typo London conference on Friday, he found his latest subject online.
Fred Clark began taking pictures of his wife in various aquatic locations in 1984. The book features Valerie in all manner of watery places, from lakes to fountains, although most of the shots were taken in the couple’s pool at their Florida home. In almost every shot, Valerie is fully and impeccably dressed.
Sometimes she is almost completely submerged, or floating on her back (as in the shot above which recals MIllais’s painting Ophelia). In others, she stands just calf or waist-deep.
Fred explains the rules: “A good part of the wet clothes adventure concept for us is the mental turn-on of taking a nice outfit into the water. Often, the more classy the outfit, the better! We love the watch, earrings, pendants, and jewelry in general, going in. Sensuous, erotic stuff. Nice hair-do, make-up, shoes, nylons, and sometimes a purse. We have both dressed to the max to do this. Then there is the simple point of view that if you feel like going into the water, or getting wet somehow, why stop and change into an official bathing suit? That is an extra step, and may break the mood, spontaneous or not. And wearing a bathing suit under your clothes is cheating.”
Even the colder weather fails to deter the intrepid Valerie
To publicise the book, Kessels produced a special waterproof version printed on plastic which he asked the couple to feature in a photograph.
In Almost Every Picture #11: Fred and Valerie, edited and designed by Erik Kessels, is published by KesselsKramer Publishing. Details here
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
CR in Print
In our October print issue we have a major feature on the rise of Riso printing, celebrate the art of signwriting, examine the credentials of ‘Goodvertising’ and look back at the birth of D&AD. Rebecca Lynch reviews the Book of Books, a survey of 500 years of book design, Jeremy Leslie explains how the daily London 2012 magazine delivered all the news and stories of the Games and Michael Evamy explores website emblemetric.com, offering “data-driven insights into logo design”. In addition to the issue this month, subscribers will receive a special 36-page supplement sponsored by Tag celebrating D&AD’s 50th with details of all those honoured with Lifetime Achievement awards plus pieces on this year’s Black Pencil and President’s Award-winners Derek Birdsall and Dan Wieden. And subscribers also receive Monograph which this month features Rian Hughes’ photographs of the unique lettering and illustration styles of British fairgrounds
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.
Competition: Dezeen Watch Store features in this new book about brand identities that use dynamic graphic design by designer and author Irene Ontwerp, and Dezeen readers can win one of five copies.
Dynamic Identities presents examples of branding, logos and marketing material with design systems that allow them to change and generate new versions depending on various input factors.
The Dezeen Watch Store identity features a timepiece with a constantly changing pattern of colours and segments according to the time of day, the month and the viewer’s geographic location, and was created by designers Zerofee who share a building with Dezeen. See it in action on the Dezeen Watch Store website.
In the book, each project is explained with information about the brand and designers, alongside large images displaying the artwork both on its own and in context.
A lenticular cover features a selection of the logos that morph when the book is tilted to demonstrate the way they change.
To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Dynamic Identities” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Read our privacy policy here.
Competition closes 16 November 2012. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
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Dynamic Identities to be won appeared first on Dezeen.
Competition: Dezeen readers can win one of ten copies of (un)Made in China, a book that features projects by western architects that ran into trouble for various reasons in China, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name.
The book features images, diagrams and details about the failed projects, as well as interviews with their designers.
A feature page for each project embodies the essence of the proposed building, with some pages textured, laser cut or even woven.
The 12 projects in the book include the Dalian football stadium by UNStudio and Ordos Hilton Hotel by VMX, as well as a housing proposal by MVRDV.
Architect and project information is printed in both English and Chinese.
The book accompanies the (un)Made in China exhibition that was installed as part of Beijing Design Week and will be travelling to Europe and North America.
Listen to exhibition curator Mike Tunkey talk about the exhibition here and see all our coverage of Beijing Design Week here.
To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “unMade in China” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Read our privacy policy here.
Competition closes 15 November 2012. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
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to be won appeared first on Dezeen.
Dezeen promotion: Dezeen readers can get a 35% discount on a new book of speculative architectural drawings and designs, curated by artists Matt Bua and Maximilian Goldfarb and published by Laurence King.
The book compiles illustrations by artists, designers and architects depicting fictional buildings and projects.
The drawings are arranged in categories such as micro-community, pavilion and medical, each introduced with a short description.
To receive the 35 percent discount, visit www.laurenceking.com and enter the code DEZEEN at the checkout when purchasing the book.
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Here is some more information from the publishers:
Architectural Inventions by Matt Bua and Maximilian Goldfarb and published by Laurence King in October 2012 presents a stunning visual study of impossible or speculative structures that exist only on paper.
While working on separate projects; Matt Bua on an insallation for Mass MoCa and Maximilian Goldfarb on curating an exhibition for ART Omi in Ghent NY, the pair discussed collaborating and developing an illustrated collection of improvised buildings. Bua and Goldfarb put a call out to a wide spectrum of professionals, including artists, architects and designers, with suggested categories such as ‘micro-community’, ‘pavillion’ and ‘medical’ and pretty soon hundreds of submissions came flooding in.
Goldfarb says “…we found that some additional categories emerged; we organized groups of drawings into these categories, and felt that it should be an archive that could be easily accessed and continue to expand…of course as an online archive we could effectively achieve this. We worked with a local designer (British expat Antony Katz, principal of SORTED Design in Hudson, NY) to develop www.drawingbuilding.org which we continue to add to as additional drawings continue to be sent to us.”
Architectural Inventions takes edited highlights from the online archive and presents them with short texts that introduce each category. Contributors include: Paul Nobel, Neil Spiller, VitoAcconci Studio, Future Farmers, SITE and Karim Rashid.
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Matt Bua is an installation artist who makes small-scale improvised buildings. His recent work tries to redefine and reimagine architecture. He has shown work internationally at various exhibitions and public spaces.
Currently based in Hudson, NY, Maximilian Goldfarb is an interdisciplinary artist, producing site-derived works in various media. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions.
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and Maximilian Goldfarb appeared first on Dezeen.
Continuing to captivate the world with her kawaii cuteness, Hello Kitty is the focus of the new hardcover collectible book Hello Kitty, Hello Art!. The book features more than 200 full color pages of Hello Kitty and her Sanrio friends My Melody, Keroppi, Badtz-Maru, Little Twin Stars, Tuxedosam and…
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