Recently in Design Category
This fascinates me. Johnny Lee exposed his discovery on YouTube and the I.T world went crazy for it. He was then invited by the brilliant TED to deliver a talk, which thankfully breaks it down into slightly more basic terms for people like me (although it’s still quite nerdy). I admire Johnny for both his curious and creative mind, and also his attitude to knowledge sharing. He could have hidden away with his idea, or sold it to Nintendo or Apple. Instead, he made it available on his website for free.
In 1999, a leading designer with an international reputation was invited to a give a lecture near Detroit on behalf of AIGA, the professional association of design in America. He was also asked to design the poster for the event. How could he visualise for people the pain and suffering he put into every single design project, the kind of effort he believes to be part and parcel of the creative process? Simple: he got his assistant to carve the lecture details into his skin with a knife.
Such is the life of Stefan Sagmeister...
“I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling to realise that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation." - Andreas Pavel
How far we have come. If your iPod is of the Nano persuasion, kudos to you. If you’re packing 6G’s, you rock. iTouch? Awesome. iPhone? Spectacular. Anything electronic that has pinching, flicking and caressing as standard operating procedures deserves all accolades.
What holds all that together though is an enduring idea. One that was laughed off by the likes of Grundig, Phillips and Yamaha. One that plays an integral part in many of our lives - rest, work, play, exercise - you name it. Quite simply, the idea that it is nice to add a soundtrack to real life.
Andreas Pavel created the original portable personal stereo player. He fought court battles for 25 years with Sony who called their dubiously similar version the ‘Walkman’. He was at one point indebted to the tune of $3m in legal expenses. Eventually Pavel was awarded $10m plus royalties on a variety of future Walkman sales. The imagination of a man who wanted to hear his music on the go, no matter how many weird looks he got, is to be honoured. The determination to never let his creation be swallowed up by the power of Sony is inspiring. Pavel’s Stereobelt of 1972, while devoid of MP3, JPEG, WiFi, YouTube and the rest of the gang, represents the official birth of an era defining icon. Surprisingly enough, we couldn't find a digital photo of one...
Some people are really bad at table football. So bad, in fact, that they can barely muster enough power in their goalkeeper’s clearance to reach the opponent’s back line, let alone breach it. I know one such man. I came face to face with him not along ago and it was embarrassing to say the least. Mostly, though, people can play a bit. They partake once in a while and occasionally do something half decent on the pitch - a pass, say, or even a pass followed by a goal. There are also those who can play with their left hand only and still beat you hands down. They are few and far between, a rare breed indeed.
More rare, though, are those who love the game so dearly that they set out to design and build the most glorious ode to table football you could possibly imagine. That, dear friend, is what you see here.
Read more about it here.
There are few things in this world that are at once insanely eccentric, staunchly traditional and devoutly practical. In most circumstances there is no room for tradition while technology and design are forging new and improved paths, especially in an environment that is obsessed with innovation - the motor industry. From the moment Henry Ford rolled out his Model T, the race has been on to be the most modern, the most advanced, the quickest, the safest.
How extraordinary, then, that a small, privately owned British car company, Bristol, has for 60 years turned its nose up at fashion and convention in favour of what some might see as archaic practices in car design. The styling is discreet, penned by aeroplane engineers rather than car designers. Bristol cars are an acquired taste:
“As a company, we have no interest in slavishly copying automotive fashion. We crave instead integrity of purpose and an unmatched level of engineering perfection. We pursue a mindset that designs and builds our cars with a useful life of many decades in mind. The labour hours to build a Bristol are four times more than those of any other specialist luxury cars. This we happily accept as the cost of perfection.”
From their origins as the Bristol Aeroplane Company, they have exhibited a certain Britishness that has always seen them through. Having embarked on a joint venture with car manufacturers AFN Ltd. in 1945, BAC Director HJ Aldington used his military connections to visit the bombed BMW plant in Munich several times that same year. He gathered detailed plans of BMW cars, no mean feat considering Munich was in the ‘American Zone’ and the plant was due to be dismantled and crated up for shipment to the USA. These plans were subsequently declared to be ‘war reparations’ by Aldington. The first car then, the 1947 Bristol 400, bore more than a passing resemblance to the pre-WW2 BMW 327. Cunning.
Their motto is ‘Nicely Understated. Never Underrated.’ However the V10 ‘Fighter’ (below) has brought Bristol into the 21st Century with an almighty bellow. Understated? Well, maybe not. But who cares. Its mental, it goes 210 mph and we love it.
I really enjoyed the BBC documentary last night focusing on the life and work of Australian designer Marc Newson. If you missed it, bad luck. He has a captivating manner and, in spite of his astonishing creativity, was able to explain his motivations and passions in layman’s terms. He wasn’t dumbing down, but rather letting us all into his own little secret - that simplicity and function constitute the key to great design:
“People ask me where creativity happens. For me it’s about aspiring to something functional and then joining the dots. Creativity is the space between the dots."
The program, presented by Alan Yentob, was absorbing for a number of reasons. For a start, the breadth of Newson’s output - he has designed restaurants, boutiques, coat hangers, vibrators, surfboards, bottle openers, cars and marble tables. Furthermore, the guy is likeable. Despite his familiar Lockheed Lounge chairs (see below, one of only 13) going for up to £2.4m each, he remains down to earth and humble, a rarity for one with such prodigious talent. Newson has designed for Ford, Nike, G-Star, Dom Perignon, Alessi and many more. And on top of that he is currently Creative Director at Qantas Airlines and responsible for plane interiors and First Class lounges. If I win the lottery I’ll book a first class trip to Sydney for the soul purpose of immersing myself in his work.
Remember the classic titles from the original Superman film, with each line coming at you from the depths of space leaving a laser like three-dimensional trail? Kyle Cooper, in respect to those original titles, reinterpreted the idea for the 21st Century update Superman Returns and, by capitalising on new technologies, took us round planets and into solar systems on a one man solo flight through space. Watching the sequence reminds me fondly of all the times I’d creep downstairs as a child before anyone was up, slip the dusty Superman VHS into the recorder, and sit there, entranced by the story I knew almost better than my own name. And don’t pretend all you guys didn’t do the same...
It’s this kind of emotional resonance that Cooper, the man behind such legendary title sequences as Donnie Brasco and David Fincher’s Seven, aims for in all his work, and it’s the reason his new company, Prologue Films, has that name: for Cooper, the film titles are not simply a means to deliver information, but the first scene of the story at large - a prologue, much like Stephen Frankfurt’s eerie sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird (see below), a piece of work that continues to influence Cooper even today:
“Achieving that poetic intimacy and melancholy, that’s very difficult,” he recently told Eye Magazine. “But the thing is, we have a tremendous platform, yet what are doing with it? There’s something redeeming about always doing the best you can. Doing something positive that advances other kinds of messages and doesn’t just entertain the culture - it does matter.”
Cooper won’t ever underestimate the significance of good design in film.
Digital’s good. Analog’s good. Combine the two, and what do you get? Lots of things actually, among them the various creations of 45 iPod, an inventive little company that transforms old vinyl and cassettes into protective cases for both Classic and Nano iPods. The inspiration came from the realisation that the centre hole on a record matches the dimensions of the Classic touchwheel exactly, and so old vinyl is thus contorted into the shape of an iPod holder, with the centre hole framing the wheel exactly. They do a similar thing with old cassette tapes for the Nano. It’s analog meets digital in the truest sense.
The list of available cassettes and records to choose from is limited - the modest collection includes such luminaries as Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Culture Club and Stevie Wonder, to name but a few - so the next step, surely, would be to allow people to send in a record to be reborn as a case. But then, who would be willing to part with those treasured twelves in the first place? Oh the conundrum: to have it spinning on your 1210 or adorning your own digital library?
Stevie Wonder it is then...
No, not a Facebook wall, but this year’s Diesel Wall. The popular art competition is set to launch again for 2008 with Diesel already laying down the gauntlet on their wall website. And this year there will be a UK wall - in Manchester - so all you budding British artists need to get your thinking caps on with a view to submitting your entries. There’s no entry form just yet but keep your eyes peeled. It’s a unique opportunity to get your work seen on a massive scale. And besides the wall in Manchester, there will be spaces in Barcelona, New York and Zurich, too.
Now that magenta is safe, we thought it time for a bit more colour chat. According to the futurists over at the Future Laboratory, Pantone 395C will rise in 2008 to become the undisputed, all singing, all dancing king of colour. Yes, the greeny yellow you see on the end of that banana you eat every day - the bit you rip through - is set for a big year:
“This jaunty tone is one of the key colours for 2008 and beyond. Yellow will see an increased use in advertising and communication, conveying notions of immediacy, action and emotional warmth. Expect complex tones rather than straightforward brights.”
I’m not sure I like being told what colours to like but hey, these guys need to make a living. Time will tell if they’re right or not. Watch this space in twelve months time...
