Hasta La Ideas

Graphic designer Neville Brody has reworked the Royal College of Art’s house font by Margaret Calvert as part of the London institution’s rebrand.

The RCA asked Neville Brody, who made his name as art director of fashion magazines The Face and Arena and is now dean of communication at the college, to come up with a new identity for its buildings and press material.

Brody and his design office Research Studios worked with Henrik Kubel, a graphic designer who graduated from the RCA in 2000, to produce the Calvert Brody typeface as a “remixed” version of the college’s house font Calvert.

The Calvert font is by Margaret Calvert, the graphic designer best known for creating the UK’s road signage system in the 1960s and a former graphic design course director at the college.

“The idea is like bringing in a producer and doing a remix of music, so I remixed Margaret’s font,” Brody told Dezeen. “I’ve tried to make it both more classical by making it more exaggerated and thick and thin, and at the same time make it more industrial and contemporary, by bringing in the – hopefully interestingly – redrawn pieces plus the stencil.”

Calvert Brody will be used throughout the college’s buildings, either sprayed directly onto walls or laser-cut into metal, and will also appear in print and on screen.

“Hopefully we’ve come up with an interesting typeface that encapsulates a lot of different ideas about the Royal College, which is sort of robust but innovative; it’s slightly non-traditional but at the same time giving a nod to a very traditional source,” Brody added.

The designers were asked to reflect the college’s history as well its current reputation for innovative design and fine art practice, said Octavia Reeve, the RCA’s senior publishing manager, who led the rebrand with the designers.

“The typography is key to this,” she told Dezeen. ”It’s a great message that three generations of RCA graphic designers have collaborated on this essential new element of the RCA’s identity,” she added.

The rest of the RCA’s rebrand, also designed by Research Studios, launches on 1st January 2013 to coincide with the 175th anniversary of the founding of the college.

Dezeen previously published a movie with Neville Brody for the Design Museum’s Super Contemporary exhibition, in which he talks about the people, places and cultures that have defined his life in London.

Writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr recently warned that the Royal College of Art will end up as a “Chinese finishing school” unless the UK government does more to encourage young people to study art and design.

See all our stories about typography »
See all our stories about Neville Brody »
See all our stories about the Royal College of Art »

The post Calvert Brody typeface by Margaret Calvert,
Neville Brody and Henrik Kubel appeared first on Dezeen.

Competition: Dezeen are giving readers the opportunity to win one of ten Pin World or Pin City wall maps by designers Emanuele Pizzolorusso and Alessandro Maffioletti for Palomar.

The felt maps come with a set of 15 pins so you can mark notable places and attach photographs and memorabilia.

Pin World features locations of major cities on a figure-ground map of the world without political borders.

Pin City maps of Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York and Paris include street layouts in a lighter colour, with places of interest marked and labelled.

The Pin World and New York maps are 130 centimetres by 70 centimetres and the other Pin City maps are 100 centimetres by 80 centimetres.

All maps are available in blue and black. Photography is by Andrea Poggesi.

We’ve also featured maps by Emanuele Pizzolorusso that you can screw up and put in your pocket – see them here. See all our stories about maps »

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Pin Map” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Please state which map you would like, and in what colour, when entering the competition. Read our privacy policy here.

Competition closes 22 November 2012. 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 top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

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to give away appeared first on Dezeen.

Design students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld took an old inkjet printer apart and replaced its ink cartridge with felt pens to create an experimental printer, which they presented at Vienna Design Week.

The project began when the designers, who all study at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, took part in a creative printing workshop.

“We were experimenting with usual inkjet printers and we modified them so that they printed with normal felt pens instead of an ink cartridge,” Hagen told Dezeen at Vienna Design Week. They used wood and glue to attach the felt pens where the cartridge would normally be.

Above image is by Nick Albert/kollektiv fischka

“The tricky part of this project was to kind of pretend to the printer that it had a full cartridge, and also that it didn’t try to completely destroy the paper with too much pressure of the felt pen, or with the way the paper is sucked in,” explained Hagen.

Above image is by Nick Albert/kollektiv fischka

“The fascinating thing was the mixture between the perfection of a machine and the reference to handwriting,” he said. “It was a really uncommon, new aesthetic that we were generating with this technique.”

Each printer ended up with an individual rhythm and style, but the pictures were printed in several layers to gain control over the process. ”[There was] always this kind of theme between failure and controlling, and not being able to control the technique,” Hagen added.

We’ve previously featured a tiny printer that prints to-do lists and messages on a till roll and a fabric printer that uses bleach instead of ink.

We’re publishing a selection of projects from Vienna Design Week, including a movie of designer Martí Guixé decorating a rug with drips of paint – see all our stories from Vienna.

See all our stories about design »
See all our stories about graphics »
See all our stories from Vienna Design Week »

Images are by PenJet except where stated.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

The PenJet project is a collaboration of Rietveld Academie students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld. The project originated from the workshop “Uncommon Usage” given by Jürg and Urs Lehni. During this workshop they experimented with the movement of printer heads. This resulted in a printer which could play a mini harp and another printer which showed the movement of the print head using an attached pen.

In time they got more control over the movements so they could experiment with type, and an adapted typeface for the PenJet emerged. Also adapted pictures were “printed” in several layers.

In general it commonly applies that the new (im)possibilities of every new technique influence the design process. This was also true for this new alternative use of a printer. Therefore it was decided to continue the project outside this workshop.

Every brand of printer has its own manner of moving and characteristic rhythm. The PenJet shows the handwriting of the machine, some fine and straight, others messy and fluent. Also, the quality settings of the printer (presentation/normal/concept) influence the way the lines are drawn.

The final result has both the imperfections of handwriting and the preciseness of a machine. Every page is unique. However, no matter much control there is, the printed result remains unpredictable. The PenJet prints random connection lines while there’s nothing to print. The represented texts refer all to transition within production processes.

The post PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen
and Daniël Maarleveld appeared first on Dezeen.

Designer Morag Myerscough used the tweets of a poet to create the bold graphics surrounding this temporary cafe in London.

Located close to the Olympic Park in Greenwich, the cafe was constructed in just 16 days to coincide with the start of the games.

The brightly painted words on the facade spell out phrases such as ‘this is the gate’ and ‘this is eye contact’, which originate from one of many creatively written tweets by poet Lemn Sissay.

“I had worked with Lemn Sissay on a previous project and wanted to collaborate with him on this project,” Myerscough told Dezeen. “So we met up, and he mentioned these tweets he does everyday and I liked the idea of somehow incorporating them into this project.”

The structure of the building is made from plywood, scaffolding and shipping containers. ”I have used containers before for projects,” she said, “but this time it was important to me that the containers were used only as a base and not as the main feature.” She also explained how her studio will re-use most of the materials when the building is deconstructed in a few months time.

Myerscough collaborated with artist Luke Morgan to design the colourfully painted furniture, which includes stools and tables made from reclaimed wood.

Amphitheatre-style wooden steps climb up around the edge of the cafe’s outdoor seating area and are covered with cushions made from kite fabric.

Morag Myerscough previously created another cafe in south-east London, inside a 1960s commuter train carriage in Deptford.

See more stories about cafes on Dezeen »

Here’s a longer description from the organisers:

New Temporary Café in Greenwich is a Triumph of Design and Speed

The Movement Café is a new temporary café and performance space next to the DLR station in Greenwich, South East London, designed by British designer and artist Morag Myerscough. It sits in a corner of the site of the former Greenwich Industrial Estate that is currently being regenerated by developers, Cathedral Group.

Built from scratch in just sixteen days to coincide with the opening of The Olympics (the developers thought it important that the gateway to the Olympic borough was not an unattractive construction site), The Movement Café is an explosion of colour and type and sits at the centre of an amphitheatre-like space created from the natural level of the site, post-demolition, being 2m below street level. It’s the result of a public art collaboration between Myerscough and Olympic Poet and prolific tweeter Lemn Sissay. Sissay has been commissioned by Cathedral to write a poem about Greenwich, which will eventually be set permanently into the road that cuts through the site when it is completed. In the short term, the poem, Shipping Good, is painted on the hoarding that wraps the site.

Myerscough’s design for The Movement Café was inspired by one of Sissay’s tweets:

This is the House.
This is the Path.
This is the Gate.
This is the Opening.
This is the Morning.
This is a Person Passing. This is Eye Contact.
Lemn Sissay, June 27th 2012

The designer has used words and phrases from this tweet and painted them by hand on large wooden panels, positioned over the core structure of the building which is covered in an original hand-painted Myerscough multi-coloured geometric pattern. Sissay’s tweets will be written daily on a blackboard in the cafe.

The outdoor amphitheatre seating area provides a lovely, contemplative, sheltered place of respite for commuters and visitors to Greenwich and several times a week plays host to storytelling, poetry reading and acoustic performances. All furniture is made by Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan from reclaimed laboratory tops. Cushions are hand sewn from kite fabric.

The cafe’s prominent position at the gateway to one of the most important sites during the Olympic games, presented a unique opportunity to showcase the best of British design talent and creative collaboration.

The post MVMNT Cafe by
Morag Myerscough appeared first on Dezeen.

Posters mapping the rivers and hills that form the topography of London by Melissa Price are the final product to be featured as part of London design month at Dezeen Super Store.

The River and tributaries poster (above) shows all of the small rivers, streams and brooks that feed into the Thames as it flows through London, some of which have been built over and trapped underground.

The Hills and valleys poster (above) highlights all the London place names that are derived from the geography of their location.

The posters are screen-printed in metallic silver with blue or green on 160gsm matt white paper and signed by the artist.

Each poster costs £40, and Dezeen readers can get 10% off any Dezeen Super Store purchase (excluding sale stock and Jambox) and enter our competition to win a designer watch worth £150 by downloading this flyer and presenting it at the shop.

We have been showcasing a range of products by some of the best designers and brands London has to offer all this month – more details here.

See more products available at Dezeen Super Store »

Dezeen Super Store
38 Monmouth Street, London WC2
1 July – 30 September 2012

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at Dezeen Super Store appeared first on Dezeen.