Hasta La Ideas

In a sea of ever more opulent emporiums designed by the usual luxemaster suspects (think Peter Marino, Bill Sofield, Michael Gabellini), Alexander McQueen stores swim against the high-gloss current. Bold, vaguely apocalyptic, and often shot through with a distinctively ghostly take on baroque exuberance, the shops are the work of Pentagram’s William Russell. In the below video, the London-based architect reflects on a decade of work with McQueen–both the PPR-owned house and the man himself, known as Lee to friends. “He wanted a collaborative relationship, rather than someone imposing a look or a feel onto him,” says Russell of developing the initial store concept with the designer. “He was a true genius–you don’t meet many in your life, and he was an extraordinary man.”

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“Lost Time” by Glithero for Perrier-Jouet at Design Miami 2012. (Photo: Petr Krejci)

Chairs, glorious chairs, are everywhere at Design Miami, but no one sits for long. Collectors, dealers, journalists, and the odd celebrity (who knew Will Ferrell was a design buff?) stream through the fair at different speeds and with varying agendas: see Maarten de Ceulaer’s latest “mutations,” close the sale on the Nakashima bench, locate a friend and a chocolate dulce de leche pie ($7 at the catering stand), nab a seat for Stefano Tonchi’s on-stage chat with Diane von Furstenberg, load up on free magazines. A welcome pause from this year’s frenzy was offered by Glithero, the design duo of Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren.

The London-based studio was commissioned by Perrier-Jouët to create an installation that honored the champagne house’s Art Nouveau heritage (that famous flowered bottle was the result of a 1902 collaboration with artist Emile Gallé). “We sought to work with a designer that has the Art Nouveau dimension in his or her DNA,” Axelle de Buffevent, brand style director for Martell Mumm-Perrier-Jouët, told us in Miami. “With Glithero, you immediately see that their work is very inspired by nature, by the processes of nature.”

Long fascinated by processes ranging from artisanal craftsmanship to industrial production methods, Simpson and van Gameren responded to Perrier-Jouët’s commission by creating “Lost Time” (pictured), a darkened chamber strung with skeins of shot beads that dripped from the ceiling like glamorous ghosts of stalactites—or champagne flutes. The swooping volumes, inspired in part by Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, were reflected in a shallow pool of water, an infusion of moisture that heightened the cave-like atmosphere (and winked at the humidity that awaited on the other side of the air-conditioned tent).
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(Courtesy Reed Seifer)

We’ve been fans of graphic designer and artist Reed Seifer since 2010, when he pulled off a multi-sensory triumph at the Armory Show, simultaneously giving some much-needed visual punch to the art fair’s staid branding and infusing cavernous Pier 94 with an aromatherapeutical concotion designed to make fairgoers forget their recessionary woes. Since then, Brooklyn-based Seifer has brought his razor-sharp and wonderfully understated visual sense to other art fairs, book projects (this one is sure to take your breath away), and identities for galleries such as Zach Feuer, CRG, and James Graham & Sons. Read on to learn about Seifer’s favorite font, his recent project for the freshly expanded Sean Kelly Gallery, and his formative meeting with–gasp!–Paul Rand.

1. You work with a lot of clients in the art world, including The Armory Show, Creative Time, and top galleries. How did you come to specialize in working with these very aesthetically minded–some might say hypervisual–clients?
As a designer, artist, and minimalist, I feel I have a rare sensibility and understanding of how design and art may compliment one another. In the art world, where many businesses have similar visual identities and graphic practices, having a brand which harnesses well-composed, thoughtful typography makes a potent statement to a hypervisual audience. I love working with words and letterforms in that capacity. I am a font fetishist. So the way I came to specialize in working with hypervisual clients is by doing what I love and promoting myself well.

2. Tell us about the new hand-drawn wordmark you’ve created for Sean Kelly Gallery:

What did you seek to capture in this custom logo?
When I first met with Sean Kelly, he mentioned Duchamp as being of his favorite artists, so I wished to express the unconventional but as it spoke in the context of typography.

3. Turning to non-custom type, what’s your favorite typeface and why?
Comic Sans hands down, because as Nina Garcia says, “It is the sweatpants of fonts.”
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“This symbol [perfume] is becoming very important for us. I’m working now on projects that are for 2018. The Eau Légère is coming out now. Then there’s men, there’s the bathroom [products]. It’s never-ending. I only like a scent that remains, something that is around forever. I hate that in the world of perfume there is permanently something new coming out–another new bottle or another bright packaging. And I hate when I go to the airport duty-free–now that I’m in that category, I always go through the duty-free–I hate the walls, when all of the packaging is different. I can’t stand it. There are very few people who have a strong vision and strong lineup. All of that takes a lot of thought and consideration. But it’s fascinating, the collaboration…to meet noses and to work with those people. Every time, I always tell our partner Coty Prestige that I have to meet eight to ten noses. It’s interesting always. That’s a fascinating universe.

You know, lots of men like our scent for them. I’m kind of bummed because now Barneys sells the scent of Serge Lutens, the parfums. Before you could only sell the eau de toilette. I distributed it for years in my store, but the parfum you could only buy at the Palais Royal; I liked the idea that you couldn’t get it. That it was very hard. And it eliminated that everybody smells the same.”

–Tomas Maier, creative director of Bottega Veneta, in an interview with Style.com

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• Yahoo! is making subtle adjustments to its logo. It’s out with the registered trademark symbol, suggests a recent Instagram post by CEO Marissa Meyer. “One of our new Yahoo!s Andrew was really bugged by the registered trademark symbol at the end of our logo; he’s gone on a mission removing all the R’s from our site and our campus,” she wrote alongside this photo of an ousted purple ®. “This is one on the random R’s we pulled off a wall ”

• It’s Green Building Week. Do you know where your compost-fed roof garden is? The World Green Building Council has united 90 nations representing more than 20,000 organizations for all sorts of conferences, tours, educational events, and gatherings around this year’s theme: “Green Buildings for Great Communities.” Learn more and find events near you here.

• Who knew that Louise Gray was a Barbie girl? On Monday, the British fashion designer and textile whiz unveiled a spring 2013 collection that “celebrates the modern woman,” including Barbie. This film by Alexandros Pissourios shows Gray’s fresh take on the 59-year-old doll. Synergy alert: Her punky pieces will hit stores just in time for next year’s “Chaos to Couture” Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.