Design Storytelling

Here’s a lovely video interview with Max Lamb from the...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:58:00 +0000

Here’s a lovely video interview with Max Lamb from the @proteinfeed crew, in which he talks about happy making things such as the importance of truth to materials, working with your hands and knowing that there’s a human behind a product. Yes, indeed, this is a heart warming way to end the week that has me pining for the workshop.

"I design stories. And I write stories about design."

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:07:00 +0000

““I design stories. And I write stories about design.””

- Me - with a sprinkling of innovation, environment, community and culture.

*note to self*

"Delighting people is design’s super power."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:10:00 +0000

““Delighting people is design’s super power.””

- The last word from @fchimero. Thanks for a great talk at Build Frank. It was indeed a gift and, in fact, made my Saturday.

"The technical know-how, the skill, the craft, and art. Involved in production, manufacturing and..."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:23:28 +0000

““The technical know-how, the skill, the craft, and art. Involved in production, manufacturing and making. Using good deliberation, understanding, resulting in deliberate desire. To be carried out with cleverness.””

- Ahaaa.. turns out I need to be reading Aristotle too, for definitions of design. Thanks @fchimero. I ♥ that you talked about classical philosophy at a web design conference. You see, things can be other than what they are.

"The goal isn’t to do business with people who need what you have. The goal is to do business with..."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:51:42 +0000

““The goal isn’t to do business with people who need what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.””

- Excellent to re-watch this TED talk from Simon Sinek today; reminding me how to progress with Creative Data.

"A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:45:31 +0000

““A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.””

- Love this from Bruno Munari, via @fchimero in his talk at the Build Conference.

The quote comes from Munari’s book Design As Art - one I surely should have read by now. Must find it.

“The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:48:00 +0000

“The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that everything is learned.”

That is just one gem from this extraordinary talk by Wilson Miner - When We Build.

Miner shares many wonderful observations about the way we design and why we design.

His talk is beautifully constructed, majestically paced and emotively soundtracked for maximum impact. The medium is the message - indeed.

The thinking of Marshall McLuhan is clearly important, as is the zen philosophy of the ‘don’t know mind’. But really, my favourite part is Miner’s explanation of Robert Irwin’s work; his study of spaces, his visual reactions to them and the way his beautifully minimal installations change people’s perceptions of their environment.

Something to truly aspire to.

Thanks to Simon Collison for posting and to those who tweeted his link.

How flippin’ beautiful are these Syzygy lights by OS &...

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:55:00 +0000

How flippin’ beautiful are these Syzygy lights by OS & OOS?

Thanks to @sight_unseen for highlighting them in their new Self Portrait column.

I love the solid sculptural forms and the incredible sensitivity to touch they have. I think Barbara Hepworth would have loved them.

“The amount of light emitted by the LED can be adjusted by turning either of the two foremost glass filters by hand. Rotating the filters left or right in nearly endless configurations allows users to change the light atmosphere with extreme subtlety; every millimeter turned gives a different effect.”

A Syzygy, they tell us, is a term in astronomy that means, “A straight line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system.”

More from the designers Oskar Peet and Sophie Mensen on Sight Unseen:

We were “looking at light or sunlight itself, and the discrepancy between the way most lamps operate and the fact that the transition between night and day isn’t an instantaneous flicking of a switch, but a wonderful graduation that takes time. The physical blocking of light, as the basis for our concept, gave us the ability to fade from light to dark gradually, just like in nature.”

I’m excited to see more work from these brilliant Eindhoven graduates soon.

OS & OOS

"Everything I make is to touch, and people usually do, which pleases me. It’s very important..."

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:08:00 +0000

““Everything I make is to touch, and people usually do, which pleases me. It’s very important with sculpture not just to go sort of plonk, up and look, because it changes all the time. So the real thing for people is to move with their bodies. If I can make them do that, then I’m very happy.””

- The wonderfully inspiring Barbara Hepworth on her passion for making sculpture. You can get a lovely taster of her work in the excellent Tateshots series. Take a look here.

I waited all week to watch this short film via @Brainpicker and...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:59:00 +0000

I waited all week to watch this short film via @Brainpicker and boy was I rewarded for my patience. Such humour, beauty and lust all set in one of the most romantic books stores in the world - Shakespeare & Co in Paris. Where, once upon a time, I sat in the sunlit window over looking the city while being read to by a man I loved.

Ahhh… animated amour.

This is a wonderful creative collaboration between designer Olympia Le-Tan and directors Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn. Incredibly they animated 3,000 hand cut pieces of felt to create this literary love story, with the delightful end result of two skeletons jumping each other’s bones.

Here’s Spike Jonze talking to Nowness about the glorious absurd quality of the film.

Do you go with your gut instinct?
If it cracks me up. We were talking about the skeleton coming off his book and the girl in the Dracula book waving at him. Olympia is someone who is just absurd, she’s used to just saying anything. She just started making the blowjob gesture as a joke to make us laugh but I was like, “We’ve got to do that.” It’s about taking things that could just be a joke while brainstorming and actually going for it and using it.

Finally I also adore the upbeat end credits soundtrack - Hump and Jump by French singer Soko.

Oh look what someone went and did. Here’s Ira Glass’...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:34:00 +0000

Oh look what someone went and did. Here’s Ira Glass’ amazing words on the gap between your killer taste and your work in sleek graphic poster form.

That’s something good to bash your head against on the studio wall, in the early hours, when it all seems too difficult.

Kudos to young designer Sawyer Hollenshead for taking the time to make this.

You can watch Ira’s related interview here.

It’s one of the most reassuring expressions of creative frustration I’ve ever heard and I just keep going back and back and back to it as I try to narrow that gap.

“You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I’ve been a fan of Georgia Russell’s beautifully...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:17:06 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Georgia Russell’s beautifully delicate cut paper work for some time now. How wonderful to see her new work featured on designboom.

It’s fascinating to me, as a multidisciplinary designer, how artists can be so focused on one technique and find such depth and breadth in that medium.

Russell is constantly evolving her distinctive scalpel work into new realms.

How I would love a chance to see this new exhibition in Tokyo -...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:01:00 +0000

How I would love a chance to see this new exhibition in Tokyo - Irving Penn and Issey Miyake: Visual Dialogue. One of my favourite photographers and one of my favourite designers worked together for 13 years. What’s more, the exhibition is designed by one of my favourite architects Shigeru Ban. Aesthetic heaven.

I dearly hope this will become a touring show, and make its way to London soon enough.

Amazingly Penn never went to a Miyake fashion show and Miyake never attended a photo shoot of his clothes by Penn. They both wanted the results to be a surprise every time. As designboom writes: “Their collaboration was based on complete creative trust.”

Together, but apart, they created iconic images of great beauty. I still treasure those first Penn/Miyake silhouette images I tore out of fashion magazines as a teenager and put on my wall.

“Things are the same with writing and knife making - it...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:24:00 +0000

“Things are the same with writing and knife making - it just takes buckets of blood and sweat and fucking work to get there, that’s it. To get good, to get competent. Then once you get competent maybe you have it in you to become an artist, maybe you don’t.

Before you get to a place where you can actually make art with the skills that you learn, you have to master the basics. It takes a lot of work to get there and when you get there, that’s day one. Then you can start and you can be making something that you maybe call art.”

Great words from artisan knifemaker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn - part of the Do One Thing Well movement. Above is Made By Hand’s beautiful film of Joel at work.

This photograph by @cobbing has made my day today. It is a...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:50:00 +0100

This photograph by @cobbing has made my day today. It is a breathtaking shot, as are many of his, but it wasn’t until he pointed out the hidden text beneath the image to me that it hit home just how special this photograph really is.

Go to Nick Cobbing’s site and click through the Surface Tension story until the end. When you arrive at the image shown above ‘The Town of Narsaq viewed through a hole in the iceberg in the bay’, click on the i for information below it.

Read the story. You will gasp. Just like I did.

"So, what do you do if you’ve been put upon the planet with an insatiable jones to create, but not..."

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:17:00 +0100

“So, what do you do if you’ve been put upon the planet with an insatiable jones to create, but not the ability to handle the potential angst that goes along with leaning into the unknown?”

- Thx to @mssngpeces for sharing this @the99percent article today on Jonathan Fields new book - Uncertainty: Turning Fear & Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance.

Looks like it will press many of my fear, angst and uncertainty buttons. Ahhh we meet again, my old nemesis, self doubt. I know you will eat up my inner steely will up if I listen to your nagging whiney tones too closely… *places hands firmly over ears*

But thankfully:

It’s possible to effectively build “uncertainty scaffolding,” practices that allow you to do what you do (a) without ending up a psychotic mess, and (b) giving you access to an often untapped reservoir of creativity.

I wonder how sturdy my uncertainty scaffolding is? There are definitely days when I feel it swaying in the breeze, but it hasn’t toppled over quite yet. Perhaps as Jonathan Fields says I’ve trained myself into constructing it subconsciously.

For a far greater number of high-level creators, across all fields, the ability to be okay and even invite uncertainty in the name of creating bigger, better, cooler things is trained. Sometimes with great intention, other times without even realizing it.

Also, admittedly, I’m a sucker for the adrenaline kick that comes with not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Mickey Smith has an amazing poetic economy with words. So I am...

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:33:00 +0100

Mickey Smith has an amazing poetic economy with words. So I am not going to say much about this, except please watch and listen.

Thanks to Mickey for blowing us all away with honest passion in the Do Lectures tent last week.

Interestingly, Mickey’s film sits beautifully alongside one by American surf photographer Chris Burkard that I posted recently.

Oh now really, how lovely is this Manual Photography Cheat Sheet...

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:11:00 +0100

Oh now really, how lovely is this Manual Photography Cheat Sheet from @Yatcher on Zazzle. I just wish I’d had it with me at The Do Lectures last week when I was playing with my new camera (Canon 600D for you geeks out there, no I couldn’t lift the 5D). As it turns out, through trial and error, I did just about ok without it.

At least Wired.co.uk thought so today when they used one of my pics to illustrate a beautifully crafted feature on the Do Lectures 2011 by the talented Ella Saltmarshe (@saltsea). It’s been a not so secret ambition of mine, for some time, to get my foot through the WIRED door.

I figured it’d be the words that would work their way in first. But hey, thanks to Ella, it turned out to be a photo of the wonderful Mickey Smith instead. As this young wise man likes to say, I’m armed with a smile.

Thanks to my gorgeous sis for this cheat sheet top tip.

"Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art..."

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 22:03:00 +0100

“Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world and create an energy. Actually the fact that art cannot change things, makes it a neutral place for exchanges and discussions. And then enables you to change the world. What we see changes who we are. When we act together the whole thing is much more than the sum of the parts.”

- JR

Fantastic winner of the 2011 TED Prize. Amazingly powerful image making with local people around the world in their communities. If Creative Data can come anywhere close to this, in terms of future landscapes and environment, it will have achieved what I set out to do. Help people see their own world in new ways.

Use Art To Turn The World Inside Out

Follow the Inside Out Project on Twitter - @InsideOutProj

Oh, how can you not love this? An electric, Bucky inspired,...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:06:00 +0100

Oh, how can you not love this? An electric, Bucky inspired, geodesic surfing camper on bike wheels. Or as Fast Company describe it: “a wood-paneled Airstream.”

I love this so much because it reminds me of my great friend Polly Brotherwood, who I met while working at Heatherwick Studio. We became fast friends toiling away in Thomas’s workshop on intricate models of fabulous sculptural concepts. La belle Polly is a super talented designer who now lives in France.

She has always inspired me and this camper reminds me of her final project at Goldsmiths, many years ago, a customized camper inspired by her love of skateboarding and surfing (wish I had her wonderful sketches to show you).

Seems like Jay Nelson is a kindred spirit. Polly always loved, and I presume still does, the Cali laid back style. This is what Fast Company has to say about his work.

Glancing over Nelson’s projects, we’re struck by how brazenly Californian they are. Only in California - and in San Francisco in particular - would a wooden Airstream on tiny wheels not look out of place puttering around the streets.

Polly and I have a shared love of pod-like mobile structures (micro architecture) and I have fond memories of one summer, many moons ago, when we had an wonderful time working with Erwan Bouroullec at the Vitra Boisbuchet Summer Workshop making little pod shelters from plastic pipes and sellotape.

Hands on experiments with materials and form are something I really miss from my early design days, which is probably why Jay Nelson’s work has induced such nostalgia in me today. One day I will get back in that workshop.

And it looks like I’m not the only one who is nostalgic for making. Coincidentally Justin McGuirk has also tapped into this theme today in the Guardian:

The art of craft: the rise of the designer maker.