urbanized out 09/20/2011
I've been looking forward to Urbanized for a looong time. I really enjoyed Gary Huswit's last two films, Helvetica and Objectified, I'm just bummed there isn't a screening date scheduled for Vancouver. Add Comment reading room 09/19/2011
Taking a break from photo work involves reading articles about design.. i met the walrus 06/08/2011
John Lennon is great. The animation is great. My only question is why is "nothing" on top of Canada? I hope it wasn't intentional! magneato 05/16/2011
This video just made me say out loud, woah, that's fucking cool. Why aren't we playing with magnets more? “Happy” was the theme we were given by the organizers for this year's F5 Re:Play Fest, held in April in NYC, to create this edition's pieces, probably the hardest thing to convey in any artistic expression. After a good deal of introspection, and teaming up with awesome motion graphics artist Gerardo del Hierro, we decided that happy wasn't happy for Physalia unless pliers, microchips and a bit of soldering were involved, and with this idea we resolved to create the happiest machine Physalia has built to date. Credits: Direction: Physalia ( physaliastudio.com ) & Gerardo del Hierro ( grrddh.com/ ) Music: Fernando Dominguez light beamers 04/26/2011
From Dutch Projection Mappers, Mr. Beam, who use space, objects and light to create interesting interior spaces. We created a unique physical 3D video-mapping experience by turning a white living room into a spacious 360° projection area. This technique allowed us to take control of all colors, patterns and textures of the furniture, wallpapers and carpet. All done with 2 projectors. Music: Free the Robots - Jazzhole uh, something to look forward to? 04/20/2011
Designs for life won't make you a living The 50th Milan furniture fair was crawling with millionaires – but are designers being exploited by having to make work for free? JUSTIN McGUIRK - guardian.co.uk Monday 18 April, 2011  Leading light ... The Bouroullecs' Aim lamps – a Milan furniture fair exhibit lucky enough to go into production. Illustration: Macpro Last week, as it does every April, the design world descended on Milan for the furniture fair, accompanied by thousands of journalists and an army of PRs. As the designers and other VIPs moved from champagne reception to champagne reception in chauffeur-driven cars, you could have been forgiven for thinking that they do very well for themselves, thank you. But on the 50th anniversary of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, what better time to reveal that the vast majority of them can barely pay the rent? Edgar Allan Poe might have been thinking of the Milan furniture fair when he wrote, "All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream". In the endless exhibition halls at the Rho fairgrounds, 2,700 furniture brands exhibited their wares over half a million square metres. Many of these lamps, chairs and tables are prototypes produced by designers for free in the hope they will make their money back in royalties. Only the lucky few ever do. I spoke to one young designer who has five items in production with a respected Italian manufacturer – no small achievement. "My royalty cheque last year came to €600," he said. "Half a month's rent." It is not uncommon for manufacturers to commission exciting young talents to populate their exhibition stands with eye-catching pieces that never hit the market. They may be widely published, win awards and earn the brand a reputation for innovation – and still not go into production. In that case, the designer won't make a penny. Most of the time they don't even get advances. "Ah, but think of the exposure, the PR value," the manufacturers argue. But without ample remuneration, designers will keep passing their lack of earnings down the food chain to their unpaid interns. As the British designer Ilse Crawford puts it: "Designers often end up being voluntary workers for millionaires." The trouble is that the royalty system was introduced in the 1950s, when Italy was still the furniture manufacturer to the world. In those days, the risks of a royalty-only payment were worth taking. With an entire country to modernise and a rising middle class, a piece of modern design could shift hundreds of thousands of units. But with the advent of cheap manufacturing in China and budget retailers such as Ikea, Italian furniture is now a luxury industry. Not only do they sell less, there's more competition. And yet no up-and-coming designer would dream of turning down an opportunity from a manufacturer, because there are hundreds of others waiting to take their place if they do. A decade ago, the idea that manufacturers could pay their designers in PR was still credible. A mogul such as Giulio Cappellini could launch the careers of a Jasper Morrison or Marc Newson in the 80s, or the Bouroullec brothers in the 90s, simply by giving them the nod. These days, there is so much emerging talent that companies flit from one hot young designer to the next on a yearly basis. In the fashion-driven novelties market, product cycles are becoming shorter and shorter – another reason why the royalty system (the designer gets 3% of the wholesale price) doesn't pay off. Eero Saarinen, designer of the classic Tulip chairs for Knoll in the 1950s, made only five chairs in his career, and all are still in production. The Munich-based superstar Konstantin Grcic can boast that many this year alone (if you include a stool and a sofa). It is no wonder that designers see what they exhibit in Milan as marketing – what Mailer called "advertisements for myself" – in the hope that exposure will lead to a job designing an interior, or a bathroom tile, or if they're lucky a limited-edition gallery piece. Because none of this is sustainable – not financially, let alone environmentally – and the facts of the matter seemed to hit home this year. If 2010 will be remembered as the time the Salone's attendance was decimated by an Icelandic volcano, 2011 was the year journalists quizzed manufacturers about their payment structures, posting whatever they could dig up on Twitter. Milan may be the annual blowout of a multibillion pound industry, but it's a mirage, and not just for the designers. The embossed invitations of lavish parties are often fig leaves over the manufacturers' own awkward finances. But let's not forget that it's also a major cultural event, and there were artefacts worth mentioning. Londoners Barber Osgerby produced a chair for Vitra that wasn't just about styling. The Tip Ton has two seating positions, one tipped forward for upright working and the other tipped back for a more relaxed posture. Designed specifically for schools, this stackable, durable chair might have graced classrooms across the country before the government's axe came down on the Building Schools for the Future programme. It was also good to see the Bouroullecs' Aim Lamp go into production with Flos. These vine-like spotlights began life as a limited-edition piece for Galerie Kreo in Paris, and while the industry has sometimes viewed gallery pieces as extravagances, for once the argument that they are pre-production experiments turned out to be true. Similarly, I was surprised to see a 1970s classic by the 80-year-old Alessandro Mendini revived by Magis. His Proust Armchair, a rococo heap daubed in pointillist brushstrokes, was an icon of postmodernism, and here it is reincarnated as an industrial plastic chair. Beyond the fair, among the hundreds of fringe events across the city, a pair of far more youthful Italians were garnering attention. The Botanica collection by Formafantasma, who are actually based in the Netherlands, was a definite highlight. Their installation at the Spazio Rossana Orlandi showed an extraordinary series of vases and other objects whose pretext was that the age of oil-derived plastics had never happened. Made of plant-based polymers and odd materials such as bois durci (a 19th-century recipe of sawdust mixed with animal blood), the collection evoked a lost Amazonian civilisation discovered by Darwinian anthropologists. It's an atavistic eco-fantasy, done with flair. Finally, the show by recent graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven demonstrated again that no other school consistently produces such imaginative work. Massoud Hassani's wind-powered anti-landmine ball was inspired by his native Afghanistan, a country rumoured to have more mines than people. Even more impressive was Dirk van der Kooij's use of a retired production robot from a Chinese factory to print out chairs made of plastic from old fridges. Eindhoven's students are going places. The question is: where? As design schools churn out ever more graduates, their future looks ever more precarious. There are some important lessons to be learned, though. Today's designers need to be tougher business people; they need to negotiate harder and hold on to their copyright. But if there is one moral to this story it is this: design is a way of life that so many people want to participate in, they'll do it whether or not there's a viable living in it. Even some of the manufacturers are haemorrhaging cash to hold on to this dream within a dream. holy buck 10/23/2010
a Bucky dome >> doomed and demolished I'm listening to a TED Talk on Charles and Ray Eames. It's always great to learn more about this design duo. | check out my Case Study No. 8 - Eames House photos from this summer | http://www.kristajahnke.com/case-study-house-no-8---charles-eames.html too nice for your butt 05/16/2010
I'm not a cigarette smoker and don't necessarily condone smoking in general, but my sights have been set on getting an ashtray or two. I've been searching for something unique for my apartment for awhile now and have come across a LOT of really cool and interesting designs. Below I've listed a few of the playful and classic contenders, although the more I search the harder the decision is becoming. Which makes me think maybe I should just start collecting...                 dream car...le sigh 11/22/2009
I often think about this car, the 1961 black cabriolet Porsche 356. She's a beauty. According to the wiki: The Porsche 356 was the company's first production automobile. It was a lightweight and nimble handling rear-engine rear-wheel-drive 2 door sports car available in hardtop and convertible configurations. Design innovations continued during the years of manufacture, contributing to its motorsports success and popularity. Production started in 1948 at Gmünd, Austria where approximately 50 cars were built. In 1950 the factory relocated to Zuffenhausen, Germany and general production of the 356 continued until April 1965. It is estimated approximately half of the total production of 76,000 Porsche 356s still survive. The basic design of the 356 remained the same throughout its lifespan, with evolutionary, functional improvements rather than yearly superficial styling changes. Nevertheless a variety of models in both coupe and convertible forms were produced from 1948 through 1965. Cabriolets (convertibles) were offered from the start, and in the early 1950s sometimes comprised over 50% of total production. One of the most desirable collector models is the 356 "Speedster", introduced in late 1954 after Max Hoffman, the sole US importer of Porsches, advised the company that a lower-cost, open-top version could sell well in the American market. With its low, raked windshield (which could be removed for weekend racing), bucket seats and minimal folding top, the Speedster was an instant hit, especially in Southern California.  It'll take a hefty six figures to make her mine, or I can go for the cheaper replica... either way, I'd be happy. And at the risk of committing vintage vehicular blasphemy, I would also be inclined to convert her to electric, but that would add on another 10 large. A girl can dream can't she? | krista + blog = klog
> what the world needs now, is another blog <<<<<<<<<<  authorKrista Jahnke lives and works in Vancouver, BC and likes to ask archivesJanuary 2012 categoriesAll   |
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