Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: futurist and writer Bruce Sterling was among this week’s visitors to the FOMObile in Milan – the first mobile press room for an algorithmic publishing experiment led by Joseph Grima (+ download).

Sterling’s comment on events being “the new magazines” became one of the guiding principles for the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) project, which centres around a piece of software that combines voice recognition and data from social media to produce an instant newspaper.

“The project was born from the idea of publishing not being compatible with such a timeframe [as Milan design week]; asking how it can embrace this notion of the event, as Bruce Sterling stated,” said Grima, whose design research collaborative Space Caviar developed FOMO.

“If events are the thing that now drives contemporary production, we need to find a way for publishing to adapt to that condition, to explore a way to create an instant record,” he said.

FOMO had its debut in Milan this with a series of evening talks from leading designers called On The Fly. Taking place underneath Nike’s Aero-static dome at Palazzo Clerici, the presentations tackled themes including weightlessness and sustainability in design. Speakers included Atelier Bow Wow, Clemens Weisshaar, Martino Gamper and Formafantasma.

Their words were combined with social activity trawled from the #ontheflymilan hashtag, including Instagram pictures and Tweets, which were put together by the algorithmic publishing machine into a PDF, printed and bound, and handed out for free to visitors at Palazzo Clerici.

You can now download issues four to eight of FOMO from day two of the experiment, with contributions from Italo Rota, Ianthe Roach and Pier Nucelo on the theme seamlessness.

» Olympia Zagnoli – download here
» Italo Rota – download here
» Pier Nucleo – download here
» Marco Raino – download here
» Ianthe Roach – download here

Download the previous issues of FOMO featuring Atelier Bow Wow, Clemens Wiesshaar, Studio Folder, Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual here.

The final issues of FOMO from Milan will be available on Dezeen next week.

The post Download issues four to eight of experimental
Milan newspaper FOMO appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Finnish design brand Iittala is showing a collection of boxy shelves, plywood furniture and glass lamps in Milan this week (+ slideshow).

The homeware collection includes a series of metal storage units by Danish designer Cecilie Manz. Called Aitio – meaning theatre box in Finnish – these can be wall-mounted to hold small objects.

These shelves are made from powder-coated steel and come in a variety of whites and greys, as well as yellow. There are also plastic hooks that clip over the edges. “My focus with Aitio was functionality, simplicity and aesthetics,” said Cecilie Manz.

The Kerros shelf by Swedish designer Matti Klenell is a side table made of plywood, which can also be used as a tray. Klenell described the shelf as “a new kind of object that sits somewhere between furniture and a household product”.

Additions to Iittala’s lighting collection include a new grey version of the Leimu lamp by Norwegian designer Magnus Pettersen, the Kuukuna lamp by Oiva Toikka and the Nappula Candelabra by Matti Klenell.

The Kuukuna, a mouth-blown glass light, was originally designed in 1986 by Toikka and has been resurrected in a slightly larger version.

Klenell’s six-candled candelabra comes in white and has evolved from the single candleholders designed by Klenell in 2012. These are now available in red and yellow. All are made from powder-coated steel.

The designs are on show at in hall 16, place D30, at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile from 8 to 13 April.

The post Theatre box-shaped shelves by Cecilie Manz
feature in Iittala’s latest collection appeared first on Dezeen.

This system of illustrated characters and animations was developed to help people learn to read Chinese, and is one of the 76 projects nominated for Designs of the Year 2014 (+ slideshow).

Taiwan-born entrepreneur ShaoLan first began developing the Chineasy characters as a way to teach her own English-speaking children to read traditional Mandarin Chinese, by creating a visual connection to the words.

Having struggled to find a straightforward way to negotiate the huge number and complexity of Chinese characters, she teamed up with graphic artist Noma Bar to develop a system of shapes representing some of the most commonly occurring symbols, which can be combined to create more complex phrases.

“I created a methodology that breaks down thousands of Chinese characters into a few hundred base building blocks,” explained ShaoLan. “When these building blocks are combined, they form compounds that can in turn be combined to create phrases. Through this method learners can quickly build a large vocabulary of characters with very little effort.”

As well as providing users with a memorable way to understand the characters, Chineasy aims to offer those living in the West an insight into Chinese culture in a visual format.

“It is educational, social, cultural, and I hope, inspirational,” said ShaoLan. “I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and ancient culture with a modern interpretation through sleek modern design.”

The entrepreneur spent her evenings selecting and sketching suitable characters to form the building blocks of the Chineasy system, which she then modelled on her computer and refined to create contemporary graphic representations that could easily be understood by Westerners.

Having presented the initial idea at a conference organised by innovation forum TED that was published online in May 2013, the interest she received encouraged ShaoLan to begin working on a book and launch a Chineasy website and Facebook page.

A campaign launched on crowdfunding site Kickstarter exceeded its goal of £75000, eventually achieving £197626 of backing that was used to publish the first Chineasy books.

The books are now being published by Thames & Hudson and an ebook and app have also been developed to illustrate how to write and correct stroke order through simple animations and give tips on pronunciation.

Chineasy was nominated in the Graphics category of the Design Museum’s shortlist for Designs of the Year and features in an exhibition at the museum until 25 August.

Here’s a project description from ShaoLan:

Chineasy

Chineasy’s aim is to bridge the gap between the East and the West. I want to give the west a real understanding of China and an appreciation of Chinese culture through their own eyes rather than layers of packaging and manipulation.

It is evident that people are hungry to learn about China. People are keen to be able to communicate with the 1.3 billion people. Tet there is not much out there to enable them to do so. Whilst the entire Chinese population is learning English, the west is struggling to comprehend this complex economy and society with their own eyes and judgment. Knowing their language is the key towards true understanding.

Chineasy will become the first step for anyone in the world who wants to understand China, Chinese culture and its language. It is educational, social, cultural and inspirational. I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and broad culture through a modern interpretation using sleek and simple design.

Chineasy’s goal is to allow people to learn to read Chinese easily by recognising characters through simple illustrations. The magical power of the Chineasy method is that by learning one small set of building blocks, students can build many new words, characters, and phrases.

The post Chineasy illustrated characters designed
to make learning Chinese easy appeared first on Dezeen.

Les architectes danois Wienberg Architects ont créé la Villa Wienberg à Aarhus au Danemark. Grâce au bois, l’atmosphère cosy et chaleureuse rencontre la nature par les baies vitrées. Les autres pièces blanches et bétonnées aux formes rectangulaires rajoutent une dimension minimaliste.

Friis Moltke’s site.

Le studio de design Four O Nine a eu l’excellente idée d’imaginer plusieurs tapis s’inspirant de la géographie des villes, mais aussi d’autres éléments de cartographie telles que les différents fuseaux horaires. Avec par exemple le TimeZone, la marque nous propose ainsi de marcher littéralement sur la planète.