Hasta La Ideas

A sneak peak at the new flagship store in LA’s downtown Arts District

For the last few months, the corner of 5th and Mateo in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles has been abuzz with activity as the WoodSmithe team puts the finishing touches on Handsome Coffee Roasters‘ flagship store. Handsome has made a splash in the specialty coffee world since they announced that Tyler Wells and Chris Owens would be teaming up with World Barista Champion Michael Phillips to launch the coffee company of their dreams.

With the space nearly ready to open its doors, the collaboration between the roasters and the builders—who also happen to be neighbors—seems like a natural one. Also in on the operation is Na Young Ma’s Proof Bakery, whose pastries will be served alongside the coffee.

We met with Owens to see the space coming together and talk more about their process for sourcing and roasting. “Every roaster is going to color the coffee in some way,” he says. “You bring your style to it. The dynamic, interesting, sweet, fruity coffees that we tend to buy are complimented by the roast style. I want to start thinking of it as a partnership between mother-nature and me as a roaster.” Summing up their simple philosophy, Owens adds, “We source beans responsibly and sustainably. We are going to buy delicious coffees, prepare them well, and try not to mess that up. Really, that’s it, I want to get people excited about coffee.”

Handsome’s Tyler Wells and WoodSmithe’s Nathanael Balon also sat down with us to talk about the new ultimate custom-designed coffee bar.

The inevitable question, where did the name Handsome come from?

Wells: We went around and around about names for more than two months. Basically our whole aesthetic and philosophy is about way back when, when things were made by hand. Things were quality, a recall to the days of really cool equipment like sewing machines. I was thinking about old bread ovens because I like baking. One morning I was half asleep in bed and it hit me, Handsome Coffee. We are Handsome Coffee Roasters. I texted Chris: “Handsome Coffee Roasters?” He texted back “expletive… yes!” It was perfect. It’s a little bit tongue and cheek, but as the aesthetic builds and as the brand gets bigger, you get it.

How did you find this location in the Arts District?

Wells: The Arts District was our first choice. Mike was still in Chicago but we had agreed to terms. Chris and I would drive around this neighborhood at least one day a week, but had a hard time finding anything. We met Carl from Creative Spaces. He asked us to describe our dream: Arts District, corner, bow truss, skylights, 3,500 square feet, clearspan, 220 power, three-phase. He called me at 10 o’clock that night and said we were going to see a space at nine in the morning. It was almost fate. When you get to the Arts District you start to understand the community down here. It is not as dense as some of the rest of Los Angeles, but quality-wise it is 100%. Every person down here is doing something awesome.

Nathanael, how does the Handsome Coffee fit into what you do at Woodsmithe?

Balon: I think it made sense on a number of levels. Primarily the local. We are local. This is my neighborhood. This is where I live. This is where I work. I have a built-in high value for new businesses and the types of businesses that are going to take the time to really create a great product and offer it here in my neighborhood. Right off the bat, I started to understand the level of quality coffee they were going to bring into the neighborhood. These guys had language for what they wanted to create. What we do is translate that language into form. We want to work with brands that have great stories and are interested in doing great work. The fact that they are doing it blocks away from our office and shop is just perfect.

How would you describe the WoodSmithe aesthetic?

Balon: I am always striving for simplicity and honesty in design and an exposure of as many of the elements as possible. Our aesthetic is typically pretty strong, fairly masculine with clean lines and simplistic forms. We purposely put as little as possible in the space to be able to expose as much of the process as we could. You can see green coffee in the back on the pallets in bags, and we put in a huge glass wall to showcase the roasting process. Then, you are staring at a finished product.

How did you design the area for the Probat roaster?

Balon: The Probat roaster is an amazing piece of machinery. Its simplistic, strong, and clean. It’s a beautiful machine. Our goal there was to take more of a museum or art gallery approach. Let this unit stand-alone in a clean space and just be beautiful.

The wall by the roaster is made from white subways tiles and along the hallway wood ones. What are those made from?

Balon: The wood subway tile is made from one of Handsome’s core materials…aged Maple. We utilized Handsome’s brand imagery through laser etching to overlay a wall-paper like pattern over the wood layout.

What’s on the menu?

Wells: It reads like this: brewed coffee, espresso, espresso with milk. Three ounces, six ounces, 10 ounces. That’s it. It’s pretty straightforward because if you took a poll of the people who come in here and asked, “What do you think a cappuccino is?” everyone has a different idea. It will strip away the stigma and attitude that often comes with serving great coffee.

Are you going to frown at people who pull out a sugar packet?

Wells: No, but they will have to pull out their own sugar packet because we won’t have any. It’s not because we are anti-sugar. I have one hell of a sweet tooth, but I don’t want sugar in my coffee. This coffee is fantastic and it does not need sugar. We have probably served about six or seven thousand cups of Handsome coffee at this point. Almost invariably people come back and say, “this does not even need sugar.”

What do you say to the people who might ask, what’s all the fuss?
It’s just a drink.

Wells: That’s actually fine. Crappy coffee is just a drink. Chris’ sentiment is if you want to opt in, then we’ll nerd out with you. But if you just want a drink that is good, that’s fine too, just come in to order a coffee without having to hear about every detail. On its base level it should be user friendly. That is the whole idea of the space. You come in you know exactly where to order. Someone is right there.

To learn more about how Handsome’s flagship store came to be, check out this video of the building process.

Handsome Coffee Roasters

582 Mateo Street

Los Angeles, CA 90013

Milton Glaser’s latest book shows adaptation as a mechanism for learning

Over the past five years, the highly influential graphic designer Milton Glaser has designed rugs, sculptures, posters and interior spaces for a variety of independent projects. In the forthcoming book based on the 2010 AIGA exhibition of the same name, “In Search Of The Miraculous or One Thing Leads To Another“, Glaser shows how the concepts for these works relate to each other as a continuous evolution of ideas.

Glaser began studying Kundalini yoga in the 1960s from a spiritual leader named Rudi, who believed that your consciousness grows by layering past lives—whether that was the past life of yesterday or long ago. The cover art Glaser did for Rudi’s book, “Spiritual Cannibalism“, not only opens this book, but the guru’s teachings serve as a metaphor for the natural progression of Glaser’s work into new designs born from past ideas.

As design consultant Ralph Caplan explains in the foreword, you can see traces of the book jacket design for “Spiritual Cannibalism” in the identity of Glaser’s graphic design for NYC’s Tibet-focused Rubin Museum of Art in 2004. Glaser was asked to create interior works, including a series of patterned silkscreen prints and a massive gilded copper wall panel inspired by his drawings of Tibetan clouds. Glaser explains in the book that these projects inspired a new interest in pattern design—from there, the unexpected opportunity to make rugs based on the patterns gave new purpose to the work he was doing, eventually giving rise to several new poster designs, and an important study on light and dark.

Another example of Glaser’s penchant for perpetual revision lies in his series of Shakespeare portraits created for the Theater for a New Audience. The various looks Glaser gives the legendary bard not only demonstrate his ability to see something from several different perspectives, but they also served as inspiration for the theater’s annual award, which is an iridescent bust sprayed with automotive paint that changes color depending on how you’re looking at it.

Glaser was once again inspired to experiment with patterns and portraits, which led him to develop a new series in which he explores the point where the image becomes visible through the pattern, like a more thoughtful and visually compelling version of Magic Eye posters.

In an interview with Anna Carnick for her book “Design Voices“, Glaser neatly explains his process of refining and reflection. “The work itself becomes a mechanism for learning,” he says. “And that is the most highly desirable aspect of design or anything else for that matter.”

Glaser will be at Brooklyn’s powerHouse Arena for a discussion and book signing 16 February 2012. Pick up a copy there or pre-order from Amazon for $20.

Our latest video looks at the prototyping process behind museum displays

Due to an unfortunate misunderstanding with Chris Weisbart this video has been removed.

Our collection of the most beautifully detailed and maniacally constructed works from the Miami fairs

In our third selection of the goods from Art Basel and the surrounding Miami fairs, we focus on the meticulously detailed and painstaking work of artists who tend to get romanced by the details. Below you’ll encounter precise and repetitive line drawings, lottery ticket collages and sticker-composed Hindu deities that explore the complicated inner-workings of the creative mind.

This aerial of an imaginary golf community from Clay Ketter reminded us of a bit of a Rorschach test in its creative use of symmetry. Dubbed “Spider Woods” 2010, this piece comes from the Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm.

Tom Friedman displayed “Untitled (Broadway Boogie)” 2011, a complex circuitry of colors and lines from Luhring Augustine, New York. Meanwhile, the Kashya Hildebrand gallery at Art Asia presented Aghighi Bakhshayeshi’s “Untitled” 2011, a dazzling calligraphic composition that had viewers in a trance.

“Veil From Oceanus” 2011 is part of Sam Messenger‘s “Six Veils” series, a set of ink-on-paper pieces that accomplish rich monochromatic textures through razor-thin intersecting lines. This piece came from the Davidson Contemporary gallery.

Also from the Davidson Contemporary gallery, Ghost of a Dream‘s “5 Times Daily” 2011 takes discarded lottery tickets and rearranges them on a panel to make geometric patterns reminiscent of Navajo tapestries.

Seen at Pulse, Joan Linder‘s hyper-detailed drawing “Purple Weed (71st Street D Line MTA left and right)” 2011 uses old school quill-and-ink techniques to record a fascinating natural subject—shown by Mixed Greens.

Adam Fowler cut and layered graphite renderings to create “Drawing One (trilogy)” 2010, which we caught at Pulse through Margaret Thatcher Projects.

We loved the radial design of Dean Smith‘s “Untitled (a18)” 2011, a work of graphite on paper on view through Gallery Joe. His short, slender marks create hypnotic movement that belies the static medium.

This fun and colorful take on ritual Hindu iconography uses a multitude of stickers to compose a distinct take on a timeless image. Called “A World of Joy” 2009-11, we were lucky enough to catch this piece by Ye Hongxing at Art Asia.

Building off of the minute fragments of broken LCD displays, Josepha Gasch-Muche’s “17.2.2011” is a luminous piece that combines ethereal abstraction with gritty construction. Seen through the Heller Gallery at Art Miami.

Marco Maggi’s “Graph” 2011 is a graphite-on-graphite drawing from Nara Roesler at Art Nova. The industrial geometric forms are endlessly complicated and multidirectional, giving the piece many distinct points of interest.

Sticking nickel-plated pins into gatorboard, Tara Donovan’s “Drawing (Pins)” 2011 further develops the artist’s dedication to simple compositions rife with tactile innovation. The Stephen Friedman Gallery exhibited this famed American’s work last week.

Contributions by Josh Rubin, Jonah Samson and Karen Day

Our exclusive look at how a 300 year old tree became a key element in Cadillac’s ultra-luxurious concept car

The Ciel is Cadillac’s latest attempt to reinvigorate the company’s heritage of American luxury—reflected both in its attention to detail and its desire to explore the journey of traveling by automobile. One of the concept car’s most striking elements is the solid olive wood used inside the passenger cabin. When talking to the car’s design team we learned about the extensive process they went through to integrate the wood into the design. Project Manager Alessandro Zezza from Cadillac’s Advanced Design Group shared the story of its creation—a long journey that began early in the design phase around two years ago. Make sure you check out the amazing images in our slideshow below.

Based on the complexity of the car’s initial drawings the team realized that veneered wood was not going to be an option, so Christine Ebner, who heads up color and trim in the studio, set out to find a hardwood solution. In addition to the usual concerns about finding wood that complimented the car’s design, the designers realized that they needed to mill the components from sequential planks, and that they needed 11 two-inch planks—four of which had to be glued together to create the interior’s larger pieces. That’s a very big, old tree and issues of sustainability were a big concern in the studio.

Christine, located what seemed like a prime candidate—a very rare, 300-year-old olive tree that had fallen in a storm in its native Naples, Italy—at Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford, PA, a wood yard outside of Philadelphia. Rick Hearne worked with Christine to find the perfect tree, and fortunately this one had already been dried in a kiln and been sequenced. Fortunately, the designers loved the Italian olive wood’s rich grain and markings, and the team set to work.

The journey began on a beautiful planer from the 1940s, which took on the 30″ wide trunk with ease. The planks were sanded, photographed, and aligned on a gantry mill (a large platform designed for cutting planks) with their outer skin still on. Registration holes were drilled, and XYZ coordinates taken. The planks were then replicated in Alias’s Autostudio using texture and planar maps, which enabled Alessando to analyze the grain and develop a very intricate map of from where each piece would be cut. An incredibly complex 3D puzzle, each piece needed to be cut around the tree’s knots and splits while also ensuring that the grain direction and tree ring orientation matched. There was only one trunk to work with, and every piece had to be accounted for.

Darryl Grijalva, the studio’s shop manager, then created the tool paths for each plank and part. Dowel pins were used to ensure that the boards lined up properly and stayed in place when they were glued. Once the blocks were ready they were sent over to 3D Mass Design and Engineering in Glendale, CA. Rocky Gonzalez, who oversaw the fabrication there, had to work around concerns of chipping and warping, but the wood cut beautifully.

From there they were sent over to Metalcrafters in Fountain Valley, CA for test fitting and then to Tom Houlden, who ensured that the wood was finished to spec with its final staining (medium warm) and finishing (clear satin). After their lengthy journey—from Italy to Philadelphia and from studio to studio around Los Angeles, the 21 completed pieces were brought back to Metalcrafters for their final fit, and then back to the GM studio for final assembly.

It seems appropriate that the journey of the wood, through the vision of the design team and the many skilled artisans who crafted the interior, isn’t that different from the kind of relaxed, refined and elegant journey the Ciel was designed to take.

Photos provided by the GM Design Studio; photos of the finished car by Josh Rubin. For more images see gallery below.