Archive for “Design”

Jane Smallcombe is a creative whizz with a needle and thread. We recently designed her logo and some gift cards for her online boutique ‘Applique Originals’ which sells one-off handcrafted accessories. They’re complete gems and very reasonably priced too. She’s just been picked for a solo exhibition at the Mushroom Works Gallery in Newcastle which will be worth a visit if you’re up that way at Easter. Go girl!

Here is one of our new cover designs. ‘Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World’ is creating a bit of a buzz in the media at the moment and you might have seen it on Newsnight last week. We’ll leave you to decide which camp you’re in.

I like the humorous and innovative ideas that are coming out of the Konstantin Slawinski design group. Designers often favour the austere, so it it great to see classic designs that combine a bit of wit – the ‘Mother in law’ cake mould is a winner.

There were countless goodies at the Paris show, yet more objects for the christmas list…

Beautiful colours and simplicity in Mud Australia’s ceramic collection

And delightful containers by Vincent Van Duysen for aptly named ‘When objects work‘

A while ago I promised some continental news from the Paris design show and now we’re post chicken pox, I can deliver. We ate croissants morning, noon and night (Granny, Wilf and I) and ended up sharing a bed in our tiny rented Montmartre apartment which was interesting with a fidgety 20 month old, but all in all it was fun and enlightening. It is a vast show with too many beauties to put on one blog post, so here are some treats from the Belgium contingent for starters…

Everything about Domani’s stand was inspiring – products, display, lighting, even the giveaway sweeties were well received.

Ateliers Bodart & Vange had some innovative products too, in particular Christian Desile’s folding chair and the slinky style bench by Charles Kaisin.

Atelier Vierkant’s creations are bold and beautiful, perfect colour and form. Oh to have a huge garden and an even bigger budget.

Just flagging this up in case you are at a loose end this week. The London Design Festival covers all bases… Making the Future shows 42 of the country’s top furniture designers, ‘Made it’ has London based contemporary ceramics on display and there is even an exhibition on hair at the London College of Fashion – Cuts, Curls and Crimpers. The list goes on… almost for too long, I started to feel a bit confused.

Things might be a bit slower than normal this week as we’re moving into our new studio. Providing there aren’t any hiccups, we’ll be shipshape by next week and orders will be dispatched on the 8th. I’m also sneaking in a quick whizz to the Maison & Objet show in Paris on Thursday/Friday, but will bring back lots of continental goodies.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with Mr Anglepoise, a British design icon who is celebrating his 75th year.

This is a dream job for any designer and we were really privileged to collaborate with Harper Collins on the relaunch of 80 Agatha Christie books. David had to delve deep into his creative reserves to come up with forty individual cover designs and here are a few from the collection. It was a mammoth task, but hopefully the end results speak for themselves.

Topping the summer reading lists in one of our designs. Perhaps this success is more down to the content than the cover, but even so we’re delighted that sales are booming. Junior Officers’ Reading Club is up there, here is the BBC Newsnight review if you’re keen to know more.

Did you see the BBC David Hockney documentary? He is growing on me. I saw his exhibition at the National Portrait gallery a while back and liked (not loved) his work, with the documentary you get more of a feel for the man and he is very genuine with some great insights. He has that naughty twinkle in his eye of someone who has really lived.

The programme follows his homecoming to Yorkshire from California, as he discovers an activity he’s never tried before – painting outdoors. And boy does he paint, literally hundreds of paintings sometimes repeating the same scene at different times in the year. There is a bit where he is painting in some Yorkshire field and a car pulls up, a man shouts ‘I’ve got a frontroom needs painting when you’re done here’. Eeeek! Hockney handles it like a pro and just gets on with the job at hand. I do admire his work ethic, he really focusses on the subject and blocks everything else out.

If you have an hour to kill, it is worth a watch. And here is a little uplifting quote from the man in the flat cap…

‘The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent’ – David Hockney