Hasta La Ideas

poster design by Andreas Brændhaugen

click on the poster to view a larger size

I’m really excited to present the lineup for this Spring’s David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design.

All talks will begin at 8pm in building 320, room 105. Every lecture is free and open to the public!

Andy Spade will be speaking on Wednesday, April 15th. Spade had over a decade of experience with top advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, and TBWA/Chiat/Day managing accounts with companies such as Coca Cola, Evian, Reebok, Lexus, and Coach. He’s the branding and marketing man behind Kate Spade and Jack Spade (the companies that he and his wife created.) He has also been tapped to design the experiences of a number of companies including Delta’s Song Airlines and J. Crew retail experiment The Liquor Store. Spade’s latest project is Partners & Spade. It includes a highly conceptual retail experience in downtown Manhattan. Beyond all these business ventures, Spade is heavily involved in the art world. He is a patron to emerging artists, co-owner of a gallery, and curator of several exhibitions. Spade’s projects merge emotional branding, experience design, brilliant collaboration, and always a touch of surrealism.

Dr. Jonathan Cagan will be speaking on Monday, May 4th. Dr. Cagan is a co-director of the Masters in Product Development program at Carnegie Mellon and also the co-director for the school’s Center for Product Strategy and Innovation. He has the title of Barrett Ladd Professor in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds appointments in the School of Design and Computer Science. He has expertise in product development and innovation methods for early stage product development. Both his design methods and computer-based design research have been applied in a variety of industries. Dr. Cagan is the author of two books: Creating Breakthrough Products (co-authored with Craig Vogel), and The Design of Things to Come (co-authored with Peter Boatwright and Craig Vogel). He has consulted with a variety of small and large companies in diverse areas on product development, brand strategy, and strategic planning. He is co-founder and chief technologist of DesignAdvance Systems, Inc., a company focused on developing CAD software for the early synthesis processes. Cagan teaches New Product Development at Carnegie Mellon and runs executive training sessions in small and large companies.

Alex Wipperfürth will be speaking on Thursday, May 21st. Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and the upcoming The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in “consumer cults” (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.

The atmosphere at the Home and Housewares Show included numerous live demonstrations like this one for Chamease.

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We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the “Shoot Your Inspiration” photo contest, held in conjunction with the 2099 Braun Prize. We had a tremendous turn out, with more than 2,400 photos submitted from around the world. So without further adue:

Grand Prize:
Kids at Play, by Jayashankar – India

Runners up:
The Survivor, by Szabo Balazs – Hungary
Family Love, by Hadi Sattari – United States
Boston, by Felipe Caralho – Brazil

People’s Choice Award:
Condor de los Andes, by Cesar David Martinez Rodriguez, Colombia

We had a great time in running this competition and judging it too. In times like these, with all the bad news bombarding you on a daily basis, it is refreshing to see a collection of 2,400+ truly inspiring images. It is well worth an hour of your time to browse through the gallery. We’ve published all the submissions, along with the a list of the finalists that represent some of our favorites.

Congratulations to all the winners, and to everyone who participated as well!

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Gretsch by Marc Thorpe and Chrissy Angliker of 3E Studios NYC for Quinze & Milan will be on view at the fair grounds:

Gretsch, designed as a landscape of seating and named after the famous Gretsch Guitar building in Brooklyn NY. The seating unit merges 5 types of sitting, lounging and laying positions into a single graceful form. The various seating elements can be separated and used individually and then reassembled as a whole. Available through Qunize & Milan Belgium.

Area by Marc Thorpe of 3E Studios NYC for Bernhardt Design will debut at the Zona Tortona.

Area, a collection of tables from New Yorker Marc Thorpe, morphed from the concepts of spatial definition and positive/negative space in architecture. The invisible joinery gives Area a simple, yet elegant appearance, a chameleon for many different environments. Area is available in occasional and coffee table sizes in solid walnut in hand-oiled or paint finishes.

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The Suitcase Series Volume 1:
Camilla Engman

Artist Camilla Engman may live in Gothenburg, Sweden, but her appeal is international. A professional illustrator and exhibiting artist, her images are whimsical, poignant, humourous and insightful. With her keen eye for finding the extraordinary in the everyday, Camilla documents her inspirations and artwork on her popular blog. Nearly 2000 fans visit her site on a daily basis (with three quarters being from North America) to get a glimpse into Camilla’s creative life.

UPPERCASE is proud to have been the first gallery outside of Sweden to feature her work, in our 2005 exhibition “Best in Show”. We are excited to be collaborating on a book of Camilla’s art and life, the first volume in our “Suitcase Series”, to be released in the fall of 2009. I am looking forward to travelling to Sweden next month and meeting Camilla (and her cute dog, Morran) at long last.

The Suitcase Series presents in glorious detail the lives of select artists and designers. The books are image-based, full of artwork, sketchbook pages, beautiful photographs and artifacts from where the artists live and work. Interviews with the artist are included in both their native language and English. The books’ size will be small and intimate, like a diary/sketchbook and each book in the series would have a special treasure added: perhaps a small limited-edition art print, a vellum envelope filled with foreign paper scraps for collage, fabric swatches, etc. The book becomes a precious souvenir of a creative journey shared between the reader and the artist.

For our book and magazine subscribers, you will be receiving the Jen11 and Camilla books as part of your subscription. If you’d like to preorder Camilla’s book by itself, click here. All pre-orders will include a unique keepsake of the project.

{ PHOTO: Elisabeth Dunker }