Hasta La Ideas

Croatian designers Bruketa&Žinić have created a book that can only be identified in the dark. Watch the movie on Dezeen Screen »

When the lights are turned off, words glow on the cover and spine of the annual report for investment company Adris.

Copies of the book were displayed at a media festival room, designed by shop-concept studio Brigada, where lights were turned on and off at intervals.

Bruketa&Žinić previously designed a book that had to be baked before it could be read – see our earlier story.

Photography is by Domagoj Blažević.

Here are some more details from the design team:

Good ideas glow in the dark Inspired by the Adris annual report that glows in the dark, and that won many awards, we planned and set up the pavilion of Adris at the Weekend Media Festival, the largest regional festival of media industry.

We created a room in which, upon entering, the lights fade out and the only things that glow are the annual reports of Adris on shelves and tables.

Credits: Brigada / Damjan Geber (Architect) Bruketa&Žinić OM / Davor Bruketa, Nikola Žinić (Creative Directors), Vesna Đurašin (Production Manager), Ivana Drvar (Account Executive Senior), Radovan Radičević (DTP)

See also:

.

Well Done by Bruketa & Zinić	Homemade is Best for IKEA	OMA Book Machine at the Architectural Association

Greg Heinimann at Bloomsbury has designed a series of new covers for author Will Self’s backlist, to coincide with the release of the paperback edition of his latest book, Walking to Hollywood…

To create the ‘Will Self’ device that appears on each cover in a different colour, Heinimann worked with vintage wood type and hand drew the ‘pool’ shape surrounding Self’s name. The finishing on the covers will apparently make the words appear recessed into the liquid. “The idea of this organic pool was to try and get across the fluidity of Will’s writing, almost like a petri dish,” says Heinimann.

“The titling is in Pitu Pro, making the most of its unusual glyphs,” he adds. “I wanted to use something that would convey the punkiness of his writing, and the descenders and points seem to have that edginess.”

The covers are printed on uncoated stock and will be available from next month, published by Bloomsbury.

More of Heinimann’s work is at gregheinimann.com.

Competition: we’ve teamed up with British illustrators People Will Always Need Plates for a product giveaway in anticipation of their upcoming first book, London Buildings: An Architectural Tour.

Four winners will each receive a copy of the book plus three bone-china platters that feature imagery drawn from the English industrial landscape.

The book comprises a selection of the authors’ favorite London buildings depicted in their signature line-drawn style. Submit suggestions for buildings to feature in their next book via the People Will Always Need Plates Facebook page.

The platters, from their British Industry is Dead, Long Live British Industry collection, bear golden images of a coal mine, gasometer and shipyard.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “People Will Always Need Plates” 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 August 2011. Four 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 bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.

More information is provided by People Will Always Need Plates:

People Will Always Need Plates are delighted to offer four Dezeen readers the chance to win a set of platters to celebrate the launch of their first book, London Buildings: An Architectural Tour.

Created by founder members Robin Farquhar and Hannah Dipper, their illustrations have been used by the company on a successful range of plates, mugs and other objects but appear for the first time in a book.

Covering a range of architectural styles, well-known buildings such as the Barbican, Battersea Power Station, Sir Christopher Wren’s 1675 Greenwich Royal Observatory are included as well as the 20s modernist masterpiece – the Isokon Building – and Brutalist icons, the controversial Trellick Tower and the Royal National Theatre. Each image is accompanied by text summing up why the authors love the buildings they depict.

The duo behind the drawings initially began their business People Will Always Need Plates in 2004 with a focus on the buildings that they love, namely Modernist examples from the 1930s as well as concrete structures of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Their colourful illustrative design is unique and they are just as eager to celebrate the unsung architectural heroes as well as the well-loved, famous ones.

About the Platters:

British Industry Is Dead, Long Live British Industry

This new edition is a response to the perceived wisdom that Britain no longer makes anything.Though coal mining, ship building, and much of our motor industry has been lost, the UK is not simply a nation of shopkeepers – or more latterly, IT consultants and telecoms engineers. Happily, elements of traditional industries, such as Stoke-on-Trent’s potteries are beginning to see new growth as they recognise the need to protect the wealth of experience inherent in over two hundred years of ceramics manufacturing.

Each platter is worth £100 and the line drawings are printed in burnished gold.

Next book:

For the Month of August we’ll also be asking fans to submit buildings they love for the next book which will be the same theme but for the whole of Britain (not just London). We’ll pick a few winners to send Glicee prints of their favourite building to. Enter via our Facebook page.

More competitions »
Back to Dezeen »

Competition: we’ve teamed up with Page One Publishing to give away five copies of Jyanzi Kong’s new architecture book, Geometry of the Unconscious.

Geometry of the Unconscious: an Uncertain Truth in Architecture examines our perceptions of architecture within varying contexts.

The 172-page paperback compiles theoretical texts accompanied by over 150 illustrations and photos of projects.

Jyanzi Kong has held teaching positions at universities across the US, Singapore and China.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Geometry of the Unconscious” 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 23 August 2011. 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 bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.

Here’s some more information from the publisher:

About Geometry of the Unconscious

The experience of seeing space in its relationship with matter is inherent in the gap between the visible and invisible in architecture. This book examines architecture where the complexities of chance, atmosphere, situation and circumstance are amalgamated into geometry of the unconscious. From this, new architecture can be realised not only based upon accepted norms of modernity but also upon cultural context and origin. Such geometry is an endpoint that involves a continuity of perception, conception and action.

About Jyanzi Kong

Jyanzi Kong began teaching at the Department of Architecture, Cornell University. Subsequently, he taught at the College of Architecture, University of Houston and Montana State University.

Since 1985, he taught at the School of Architecture, National University of Singapore and the Raffles Institute of Design, DongHua University in Shanghai. He has served as Guest Critic at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and several American schools of architecture, including SCI-ARC. He has presented papers in various international conferences including the Union of International Architects in Barcelona, 1996.

His professional practice covered both sides of the Atlantic. He was Architect-in-Design with the office of O M Angers in Cologne, Germany, while on the American Coast he worked with several architectural firms. Jyanzi conducts architectural explorations in design studios and lectures on contemporary topics related to architecture and its urban determinants.

More competitions »
Back to Dezeen »

A classic anthology from the masterful mind of John Cage

Best known as an avant-garde composer, John Cage spent his entire life writing, a fact often overshadowed by his achievements in music. “A Year from Monday,” an anthology of lectures and poems originally published in ’67, proves that genius is never bound to medium; his written work gives a glimpse into his creative mind.

Much of “A Year” is in the form of a ‘literary mosaic,’ Cage’s method of essentially compiling diary entries into a somewhat cohesive, visually-striking composition. Every fragment serves as a single thought or anecdote, sometimes referring to others but more often not. What results is a clear train of thought, laid out on a beautifully constructed page, allowing the reader to follow his ideas not as something he is telling you, but as an ideology that he is guiding you to find for yourself.

Perhaps most valuable to fans of Cage’s music, his lecture to the Julliard class of ’52 serves as a manifesto of his understanding of sound. The piece, metrically arranged in columns to time to David Tudor’s piano playing, uses Buddhist anecdotes to attempt to explain his profound understanding of everything musical.

Pick it up on Amazon to curl up with some brain food.