Design awards season is upon us and with it a flurry of freshly seated juries. Here are three ways ways to get your work appraised (and possibly lauded) by design minds such as Rodrigo Corral, Jan Chipchase, and Alice Twemlow:
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It’s shaping up to be another eventful year for Tom Dixon and his addictive forms. On Friday, the self-taught designer-maker will debut his collection of everyday home accessories and design objects at Maison & Objet in Paris. “Eclectic by Tom Dixon” includes gift-ready goodies made of materials such as copper, marble, cast iron, and wood. But that’s nothing compared to what he’s got in store for Milan Design Week. Come April, Dixon and friends will transform the National Museum of Science and Technology Milan into MOST, a new cultural hub that will showcase the creations and wares of a handpicked group of designers, curators, and companies.
“In a fit of spontaneous madness we decided that the world’s most important meeting place for global design obsessives needed a new epicenter, a space for quiet contemplation or chaotic energy—a platform for the exchange of big ideas,” said Dixon in a statement announcing the project, which kicks off on April 17. “We have created a place where we can demonstrate the new democratization and hyperactive innovation of technology in art, food, fashion, manufacturing, and communication.” His creative partners on the project are Design Miami veteran Ambra Medda and Milan native Martina Mondadori, who is working with TAR Magazine to assemble a slate of lectures and seminars that will take place in the museum’s gorgeous auditorium (pictured). MOST will provide each exhibitor with an individual space within the approximately 400,000-square-foot museum, and there will be an overall exhibition theme. Exhibits of various sizes, positioned inside and outside of the museum, are expected to create a carnival-like environment. Interested in exhibiting? Contact Alice Foster (Alice.Foster@tomdixon.net) for more information and an application.
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One of the main design minds behind the sharp-looking and widely lauded pages of GQ is headed for New York. Thomas Alberty has been named design director of the weekly, which lost Chris Dixon to Vanity Fair in September. The appointment is another boon for the art side of New York‘s masthead, following the recent appointment of Christopher Anderson as the inaugural photographer-in-residence.
“Tom is a hugely talented designer and maybe more importantly a very smart one, and I am thrilled he has accepted our invitation to become the next design director of New York,” said editor-in-chief Adam Moss in a statement issued Friday. “There is a long history of big design talents at this magazine’s helm, and I feel confident that tradition will continue.” Alberty has been with GQ since 2004, most recently as art director, and previously worked at New York, Travel + Leisure, and Men’s Journal. He begins in his new post on February 6 and will join art director Randy Minor, photography director Jody Quon, and the rest of the magazine’s visual team to create what Moss describes as “the next, exciting incarnation of New York.”
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In a move that we hope will land him the network-TV variety show he so richly deserves, Chip Kidd will give a talk at this year’s TED Conference, which gets underway on February 27 in Long Beach, California. The charismatic author, editor, art director, book jacket designer, Batman expert, and rock star will lead off a March 1 session entitled “The Design Studio,” according to the program line-up released today. Kidd will be followed onto the TED stage by Andrew Bolton, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, who may shed some light into the global phenomenon that was “Savage Beauty” (he organized the McQueen blockbuster) or just help to get the audience thinking outside their boxy polos and khakis. Rounding out the session is IDEO founder and Stanford professor David Kelley, who is expected to address his passion for “unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely.”
Meanwhile, New Yorkers have a couple of imminent opportunities to get their Kidd fix (and wouldn’t Kidd Fixx be a great name for that TV show?). Tomorrow evening, the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art hosts an evening of Bat-Manga. Kidd will discuss the Japanese Bat-mania phenomenon, the basis for his 2008 book, amidst the museum’s current exhibit of original artwork and lavish cover art from the Batman-manga comics. And on Thursday, January 26, he’ll be on hand for “The Next Chapter,” an AIGA/NY-sponsored look at e-publishing dynamics. What does Kidd know about digital publishing and the future of the book? Absolutely nothing, so he’ll be moderating a panel of people who actually do, including Carin Goldberg, Craig Mod (500 Startups, Flipboard), and Jeremy Clark (Adobe).
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You probably know Allan Chochinov as the core of Core77, the beloved industrial design megasite of which he serves as editor-in-chief. The designer and educator’s latest creation is a new MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. As chair of the MFA in Products of Design, Chochinov has devised the graduate program around a new way of considering the design of artifacts, experiences, sustainability, strategy, business, and point of view. The design star-studded faculty ranges from Paola Antonelli (MoMA) to John Zapolski (Fonderie47). “We have created a program that I feel represents a optimistic, rigorous, and future-forward step in the future of design education,” he says, adding that applications are now being accepted for the inaugural class. “We are looking for all kinds of applicants: the highly-skilled, seeking more meaningful applications; the deeply-knowledgeable, looking for greater scale and impact; the passionate, looking for more rigor and process; and of course the iconoclastic, looking for a home.” In answering our seven questions, Chochinov gives us the full scoop on the program, discusses some of his own career highlights, and proves that unwieldy edibles (or useless machines) make the best gifts.
1. What led you to create the MFA in Products of Design program?
I’ve been teaching design at the college level for 17 years now, and I’m passionate about students, creativity, and point of view. When SVA approached me about creating a new MFA program, it was an incredible opportunity to spend time researching, conceiving, and collaborating on a program that would represent future practice and equip students with the skills and fluencies that the world will demand of them. The program that resulted, I feel, is at the sweet spot of business, making, storytelling, and stewardship. It’s a program that aims to engage, ennoble, and empower. It’s also going to be a ton of fun.
2. What can prospective students expect from the program, in terms of coursework, faculty, and experience?
The program is rigorous but joyful, multi-disciplinary and multi-sensorial. There are no grades. Most of the classes are in the evenings. Several classes happen off-site (the Design Research and Integration class is held at IDEO in SoHo, for example; the Materials Futures class is held at Material ConneXion). Two of the classes are co-mingled with MFA Interaction Design students. There’s our new Visible Futures Lab fabbing space next door, and a city brimming with design making, design thinking, and design doing right outside the door. We’re dedicating a lot of the architecture and curriculum to food and food systems, and we’ve got a faculty comprised of some of the most fascinating, progressive practitioners in design.
3. What’s been the most challenging and/or rewarding aspect of working on the program?
The most challenging aspect has been to clarify this very fuzzy place where I think design needs to be right now. (That last sentence is a bit fuzzy in itself!) Referencing the challenges inherent in designing for systemic, interconnected conditions, faculty member Manuel Toscano remarked to me that “we will need students who are comfortable being uncomfortable.” I think that’s very true. Design is at an incredible moment right now, but the challenges of production, consumption, labor, resilience…these demand a nimble kind of practice.
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With dynamo conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the helm and the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall as a venue, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is a cultural force to be reckoned with. This year, the LA Phil kicks off a three-year project celebrating the operatic collaborations of librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with some impressive collaborations of its own. The upcoming production of Don Giovanni will feature sets by Gehry and costumes by Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte.
“This is a project very close to Gustavo Dudamel’s heart. He knows the music like the back of his hand, and has a unique vision that I find very exciting,” said Gehry in a statement issued by the LA Phil announcing the creative team and cast for Don Giovanni, which premieres on May 18. “Kate and Laura’s work reminds me of my early days—it is free and fearless and not precious.” This marks the Mulleavys first foray into operatic costume design, following their show-stopping tutus for the film Black Swan. “Opera has always been a part of us; our grandmother was from Rome and studied it as a young girl,” said the sisters, now at work on costumes that will create “a timeless context” for Mozart’s characters. “Working with Frank Gehry in the concert hall that he designed, alongside Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a dream.”
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If you happened to have run into Apple‘s resident design guru, Jonathan Ive, this weekend at a New Year’s party, let’s hope you didn’t embarrass yourself by just calling him Mr. Ive. Instead, after this past Saturday, when he was award knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, you’d need to refer to him as Sir Ive. Or better still, Sir Ive, Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. This latest award by the British monarchy for his design work was preceded in 2006 when Ive was given the Commander of the British Empire. Here’s his statement about becoming a knight:
I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making. To be recognised with this honour is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful. I discovered at an early age that all I’ve ever wanted to do is design. I feel enormously fortunate that I continue to be able to design and make products with a truly remarkable group of people here at Apple.
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Hungarian-born designer Eva Zeisel died on Friday at the age of 105. Best known for her sensuous ceramics, Zeisel described herself as a “maker of useful things” that ranged from tableware and furniture to rugs and “jewelry trees.” “She brought form to the organicism and elegance and fluidity that we expect of ceramics today, reaching as many people as possible,” MoMA’s Paola Antonelli told The New York Times. “It’s easy to do something stunning that stays in a collector’s cabinet. But her designs reached people at the table, where they gather.” Inspired by the natural world, Zeisel eschewed the label of industrial designer and the notion of innovation. “Industrial designers want to make novel things. Novelty is a concept of commerce, not an aesthetic concept,” she told the audience at the 2001 TED Conference (video below). “Makers of things: they make things more beautiful, more elegant, more comfortable than just the craftsmen do….To describe our profession otherwise, we are actually concerned with the playful search for beauty.” She spoke of her creations in refreshingly human terms and was concerned with how they related to one another. Among her final projects was a collaboration with Leucos that marked her first light fixtures: two pendants, two wall sconces, and two table lamps. “I always like to design at least two shapes together, so that I create a family that relates to each other,” she said earlier this year. “These lights are cousins.”
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In a year studded with beautiful new volumes by and about artists and designers ranging from Alexander McQueen to Andrea Zittel, these are the five that we found most inspiring.
Autobiography of a Fashion Designer: Ralph Rucci (Bauer and Dean) by Ralph Rucci, with photographs by Baldomero Fernandez
Fashion designer and artist Ralph Rucci has been betrayed by key members of the fashion press, who should have made him a household name years ago, but critics, curators, and connoisseurs have picked up the slack. This just-published volume is a fascinating follow-up to Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness (Yale University Press), published in 2007 to accompany the Museum at FIT’s exhibition of the designer’s work. Like Rucci’s exquisite creations, Autobiography of a Fashion Designer rewards patience and close-looking, with pages of lush color photos and descriptions of the couture techniques used (and in some cases pioneered) in the Chado Ralph Rucci atelier. Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography (1980), a kind of exhaustive visual index of the artist’s life, this book also tells the stories behind 20 objects Rucci has collected in his lifetime. It’s a fitting tribute to an uncompromising designer with the soul of artist.
Alexander Girard by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee (Ammo Books)
Treat yourself to the amazing Alexander Girard mega-monograph by designer Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee. The product of nearly four years of research and, at 672 pages, an innovative scheme of printing and binding, this book is a must for any design lover. Oldham was granted exclusive permission to sift through the fastidiously kept archives of Girard (1907-1993), who is best known for his folk art-infused textiles for Herman Miller but also designed everything from buildings to typography. “I’d estimate that 90 percent of the work in the book hasn’t been seen,” Oldham told us earlier this year. “Wait ‘til you see the stuff from his early design career, in the ‘20s.” And take a closer look at the image credits: many of the archival photos were taken by frequent Girard collaborator Charles Eames.
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Can’t make it to the Museum at FIT’s brilliant Daphne Guinness exhibition before it closes next Saturday? Peek into the style icon’s colorful imagination with her new limited-edition collection for MAC Cosmetics. Now available nationwide, the 24-piece line includes chilly-toned lipsticks, eye shadow, and nail polish named for some of Guinness’s earthy favorites (Japanese spring, azalea blossom, seasoned plum) and out-of-this-world fascinations (red dwarf, borealis, nebula).
After MAC approached Guinness about a collaboration, she hunkered down with art supplies in her room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I had parchment papers spread all over the floor and all sorts of different powders and watercolors that I was mixing together, and my finished pieces were drying on the balcony,” says Guinness, who points to Old Masters such as Titian and Francisco de Zurbarán as a perennial source of inspiration. “And I might say that I’m absolutely fascinated by butterflies and outer space. Blimey, I have pictures from the Hubble space telescope and some of those are just extraordinary, and if you look very closely at a butterfly’s wings or even perhaps a jellyfish, you’ll see there are similarities.” Among her favorite items from the MAC collection is Hyperion, a frosty blue-green nail polish. Explains Guinness, “It resembles this almost grey, steely light that is pure Whistler from the 1890s, when he still had fog in the paintings.”
Looking for even bolder makeup? Next up for MAC is a collection created with rara avis Iris Apfel. Stock up on Toco Toucan (fuschia) nail polish and Early Bird (bright coral) eyeshadow beginning Thursday.
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