Hasta La Ideas

Win original artwork in an exclusive giveaway for CH twitter followers!

The notebook most likely to be found in artists’ back pockets, Moleskine recently tightened its relationship with the creative community through its Artist Marketplace, an exciting digital venture that lets art fans purchase one-off blank notebooks directly from artists who painted, drew or otherwise created imagery on the covers. Whether budding or established, anyone can sell their customized notebook online by simply covering it in art, uploading an image of it and setting a price.

The growing shop includes a huge roster of talented artists, but Bob London, Miss Lotion and Brad Fisher are each donating a notebook to three lucky CH readers. U.K.-based illustrator Bob London (top left) has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and worked extensively as a commercial artist for clients such as The New York Times and Carhartt. Miss Lotion, a Danish artist, opts for gouache paint for her customizations. Having previously studied both graphic design and illustration, her hand-painted notebooks (above right) showcase lessons learned from both disciplines.

American artist Brad Fisher is “stoked” to be working with Moleskine on this project. His series “The French Books” (above) is inspired by the romantic idea of sitting at a cafe with nothing but a pen and paper.

To win one of the three notebooks shown here, follow us on Twitter and tweet at us what you use your Moleskine for by 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, 6 April 2010. Be sure to include @coolhunting and #moleskine in your tweet. To become part of the project, visit Moleskine’s Artist Marketplace for more information.

Hot off the heals of being at the forefront in the museum industry last year in launching mobile apps, last last week the Museum of Modern Art kicked off another, this time creating an online marketplace for their books. The MoMA Books App is available for thev iPad and includes a wide assortment of the books released through the museum’s publishing arm, including a number of out-of-print selections. While you’ll not find everything they’ve published, as there likely have to be new contracts drawn up and a series of legal matters to wade through, the museum has promised that the total number of titles will continue to grow. The app itself is free, but of course, the books aren’t. If you aren’t the type who wants to own physical copies of fancy art books to leave out on your shelves and coffee table to show off how smart and cultured you are, and instead want to show off how smart, cultured and technologically savvy you are, here’s your favorite new app to spend money inside of. Here are some details from the press release:

MoMA e-books preserve the original design and layout of the print book while enabling users to zoom in on superb, high-resolution reproductions of artwork for close study of details. The App also allows users to bookmark their favorite pages for future reference. As more MoMA e-books become available, the App will automatically prompt users to update their browsing shelf to show new titles.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’re offering readers the chance to win one of five copies of the new paperback edition of Twenty-First Century Design by Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.

The 463-page book includes a foreword by Dutch designer Marcel Wanders and features over 230 designs across the fields of architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, homeware, products, clothing and accessories, visual communication and urban landscape.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Twenty-First Century Design paperback” 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 10 May 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.

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.

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

Here’s some more information from publishers Carlton:

21st Century Design
New Design Icons from Mass Market to Avant-Garde

By Marcus Fairs
Foreword by Marcel Wanders

An up-to-date, striking survey of the cutting edge design landscape

21st Century Design is a fascinating survey of the contemporary design landscape, guiding the reader through the intoxicating array of contemporary movements, styles and trends, and identifying today’s leading designers, as well as future design classics. This pioneering publication places the contemporary scene in a historic framework and explores cultural and economic forces shaping design now and in the years to come. Accessible and engaging, it charts the incredible explosion of design worldwide and discusses cross-fertilization between design movements in what is rapidly emerging as one of the most exciting industries in the world. The book contains stunning full-colour photographs, featuring over 230 of the most popular and groundbreaking ‘future classics’ of design.

Marcus Fairs

Journalist, lecturer and entrepreneur Marcus Fairs, formerly founding editor of the architecture and design magazine, Icon, is editor of online design magazine, Dezeen (www.dezeen.com). Winner of several journalism awards, Marcus wrote and presented a documentary about Philippe Starck (BBC, 2003), has appeared in the TV series Home (BBC, 2006) and in September 2007 devised and curated the Trash Luxe exhibition of recycled design at Liberty’s (September 2007). He is also the author of Green Design (Carlton, March 2009). Marcus lives in London, England.

Marcel Wanders

Winner of numerous awards, such as Elle Decoration’s Designer of the Year in 2006, Marcel Wanders was selected as among the world’s 50 design icons in November 2007. Art director and co-owner of Moooi, he also works on architectural and interior design projects. His designs are exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the V&A in London.

Published by Carlton in paperback, April 2011, £20.00

Buy this book and others at the Dezeenbooks store
(in association with amazon.co.uk)

More competitions »
Back to Dezeen »

A study of everyday objects

Simple but telling, a visual taxonomy of price tags on the cover of “Usefulness in Small Things” cleverly sets the tone for the book, pointing out the subtle differences in a well-designed, but widely overlooked bit of industrial design. This meditation on little objects is the work of Sam Hecht and Kim Colin, co-founders of London design studio Industrial Facility, whose interest in the relationship between industrial design and the surrounding world is a cornerstone of their design practice.

The book showcases Hecht’s personal collection of mass-produced items of various sizes, shapes and purposes, all of which he picked up for under five pounds from mom-and-pop shops all over the world.

Objects we routinely pass by without a thought find themselves on center stage thanks to Hecht’s keen eye. With careful focus and brilliant diction, Hecht and Colin outline each object’s intended purpose, origin, design and the relationship between it and the user. Some of the objects have been designed to make life easier, some have been designed to innovate and some seem to exist without reason. Regardless of their original purpose, the collection now gives new perspective to these neglected objects for the perusal of fans of design for time to come.

To see for yourself, pre-order online at Amazon.

A massive new book on the world’s most notoriously underground artform

Not all graffiti books are created equally, but a behemoth like the forthcoming “History of American Graffiti” shows how meaningful collections of photos and information on the subject can be when edited with a careful eye. Co-authors Roger Gastman (co-curator of the eMoCA “Art in the Streets” show and co-publisher of the late Swindle Magazine) and Book of Awesome author Caleb Neelon had not just the eye but the expertise to pull off the 400-page tome too.

Inherently ephemeral—whether buffed out, painted over or otherwise disappearing over time before its full impact can be understood—documenting significant works is a challenge that makes a book of this scale so rare.

An obvious amount of effort went into researching and writing the book. When asked where they found all of the photos, Neelon described the process as “searching through the shoe boxes and albums of more than 200 contributors from around the country.”

The ambitious book starts with the statement that, “Humans write graffiti,” and follows with what amounts to a vast archive of the visual expressions that have surfaced around the world, how each country has contributed to the overall aesthetic and similarities or differences among regional styles. One example, the popular U.S. WWII slogan “Kilroy Was Here,” is seen around the globe, but in Britain it’s called Mr. Chad, and in Australia the same cartoon of a bald man peeping over a fence accompanies the phrase “Foo was here.”

Profiles on key writers like San Francisco’s Twist (aka Barry McGee) and others like Washington D.C.’s Cool “Disco” Dan—who wrote in the ’80s and ’90s—offer further insight on graffiti as a universal culture. Gastman and Neelon remark, “what we’re really pleased about with the book is its breadth of coverage. Not just the obvious media centers of NYC/LA/SF but lots of amazing and untold local stories from the origins of scenes in all the other big cities around the United States. Miami, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque and on.” Hawaii and Pittsburgh are even represented as hotbeds of creative activity.

The “History of American Graffiti” is available for pre-order from Amazon.