Hasta La Ideas

French design duo Cauboyz built a wall of illuminated words to make this typography-inspired music video (+ movies).

Cauboyz created the Dream music video for French electro pop band Husbands by filming a wall of words that light up in time with the song’s lyrics, as the additional “making of” movie reveals (bottom).

The lights were controlled by a large panel of switches. “The idea was to make something that we could play. We like doing it with our hands,” the designers told Dezeen.

The lettering was designed to recall commercial neon signs and the typography found in old advertisements.

“We wanted to do something simple with a little bit of poetry,” they added. “We like to see the lyrics like logos, as if the author wanted us to offer maxims.”

Graphic designer Philippe Tytgat and photographer Bertrand Jamot met while at art school in Nancy and later founded Cauboyz as a vehicle for producing music videos.

We featured another music video earlier this year, which saw a wall of bookshelves transformed into a futuristic backdrop – see all design for music on Dezeen.

Check out Dezeen Music Project for our pick of original tracks from upcoming musicians.

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by Cauboyz appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: these matchboxes from Danish design brand Hay are decorated only with the red phosphorus ink that’s used for striking matches.

Designed by American product designer Shane Schneck and Swedish graphic designer Clara von Zweigbergk, the Strike Matchbox gives prime position to the striking surface, which is normally squeezed onto one side. “We simply flipped the space devoted to the activity of creating a flame,” says Schneck. “99% of matchboxes are used only for advertising.”

There are seven different sizes in a variety of bright colours, with patterns in varying scales. Hay presented the product in Paris and Stockholm.

Husband and wife Schneck and von Zweigbergk also worked together on the art direction for Hay’s catalogue featuring blocks of bold, bright colour, and Schneck was the designer behind the wooden chair with a cantilevered seat that Hay presented in 2010.

See more products by Hay here, including glassware by Scholten & Baijings that was also shown in Paris and Stockholm.

See more packaging design »
See more Hay products »

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and Clara von Zweigbergk for Hay appeared first on Dezeen.

Danish ceramic artist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen has photographed dozens of glazed ceramic worms to create a wallpaper for the home of 19th century Arts & Crafts designer William Morris.

Called Vermis, the wallpaper was made for an exhibition last autumn with art and design collective Studio Manifold at William Morris’s Red House in Bexleyheath, England.

Hartmann Rasmussen hand-modelled the ceramic worms and glazed and fired them before taking photographs to be worked into a repeated digital pattern.

“At first glance the wallpaper seem harmless and decorative, but after staring at it too long, uncanny malicious faces appear,” explained the designer.

“The motifs have the ambiguity of a Rorschach test,” she added, “mimicking different things such as the floral patterns of the Arts & Crafts wallpapers Morris designed, depictions of fantastical creatures such as the Green Man, and visual interpretations of the human reproductive anatomy.”

The wallpaper will be on display again at the Crafts and Design Biennale in Denmark between 29 June and 18 August.

Hartmann Rasmussen studied for her BA at the School of Design in Bornholm, Denmark, before completing an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in London. For her RCA graduation show, she created a ceramic installation evoking a surreal forest hut from a Brothers Grimm fairytale.

To mark the launch of Fornasetti’s whimsical wallpaper collection for Cole & Son, we recently spoke to Barnaba Fornasetti, son of the eccentric Italian designer Piero Fornasetti, who told us the story behind the design house he now heads.

Other wallpaper we’ve featured previously includes a stripy patterned wallpaper that invites passers-by to add their own scribbles and a colourful design that changes under different lighting conditions – see all wallpaper.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

Vermis is a site-responsive piece made for a show together with Studio Manifold called This Is How To Live at the founder of The Arts & Crafts Movement William Morris’ Red House in Bexleyheath. The house is national heritage and run by The National Trust.

The origin of the digital printed wallpaper is hand modelled ceramic worms, photographed and reworked in Photoshop as a repeat pattern. At first glance the wallpaper seem harmless and decorative, but staring at it too long uncanny malicious faces appear. The pattern tells the story of a nature that perhaps does not mean to harm, but have the intention of manifesting itself, to take over and take control.

It is a tale of life and death. The motifs have the ambiguity of a Rorschach test, mimicking different things such as flora and the floral patterns of The Arts & Crafts wallpapers Morris designed, depictions of fantastical creatures such as the Green Man but also visual interpretations of the human reproductive anatomy.

Materials: digital printed wallpaper, ceramics
Size: height, varies; width, 74 cm

The post Vermis by Malene Hartmann
Rasmussen appeared first on Dezeen.

Graphic designer David Pearson has censored the cover of George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 as part of his series of redesigned books for publisher Penguin.

Referencing the novel’s themes of totalitarianism and censorship, David Pearson debossed the title and author and covered them with black foiling.

Penguin’s Great Orwell series also includes Down and Out in Paris and London, whose cover by Pearson frames a Vorticist-style screenprint of the two cities by Paul Catherall.

Homage to Catalonia, an account of Orwell’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, features a repeated cubist line drawing of a soldier.

Animal Farm’s cover is dominated by bold, cartoonish lettering in the style of an old movie poster, while Politics and the English Language uses a new font, Caslon Great Primer Rounded, which is inspired by a typeface created by Caslon & Catherwood in 1821.

We recently featured a font based on an impossible triangle and an alphabet of sculptural letters that can be read from four sides  – see all fonts on Dezeen.

Other graphic design we’ve published lately includes stripy album artwork by British designer Peter Saville and a collection of recognisable products with their brand names removed – see all graphics on Dezeen.

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by David Pearson appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch graphic designer Jacques Le Bailly has designed a typeface of impossible shapes inspired by the optical trickery of artist M.C. Escher (+ slideshow).

Jacques Le Bailly’s Macula font is based on the Penrose triangle, a shape that appears to have depth but would be impossible to reproduce in three dimensions.

Like the Penrose triangle and the mathematically inspired paintings of M.C. Escher, the typeface’s three-dimensional appearance could only exist as a flat image.

“To keep the typeface lively every single character, down to the punctuation and floating accents, needed to have two versions, as if looked at from two different viewpoints,” says Le Bailly.

“Often the simple letters were the most difficult, because they offered very few possibilities or starting points,” he added.

Some of the letters are less complex in order to create a more cohesive and attractive typeface, while the ampersand and the @ symbol have been given extra detailing to make them stand out.

The name macula refers to the part of the the eye that’s responsible for central vision, and was chosen by the designer because he suffers from a related defect in his right eye.

We’ve previously featured a font designed for the Royal College of Art by Neville Brody and Margaret Calvert and a font developed by Nokia to work in any language – see all font designs on Dezeen.

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Jacques Le Bailly appeared first on Dezeen.