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“X” Marks The Spot! #15
By Le Vin Chin
We’ve already featured many design blogs so far in “X” Marks The Spot! but it seems there are still always new ones to discover, new islands of thought-provoking design commentary in the never-ending internet ocean. This month we’d like to highlight Gentle Pure Space which features graphic design, typography and everything inspirational for good design. Then there’s the Mid-Century Modernist, which focuses its lens on – wait for it – Modernist design of the mid-20th Century, the movement, the artifacts and their relevance to today, tracing the lineage via architecture, design, fashion and even film and TV!
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Last of the blogs – for this month! – the David Report has a great design blog section, but also features the eponymous David’s excellent and in-depth monthly trend report bulletins on topics such as the meaning of “luxury” today, the search for credibility in advertising and new definitions of “sustainability” for design – all topics we’ve also covered in the exclusive Color Trend letters attached to our Newsletters, and David Carlson more than does them justice. Specifically on the subject of sustainable design, he’s also published a book, Designboost 07, wrapping up the proceedings of his Designboost event (Carlson’s design knowledge company is also called Designboost) in Malmö last year, which focussed on issues of sustainability.
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Yet another essay in the David Report’s bulletins is about the “convergence” of Design and Art (the issue is interestingly called “Vulgarism”), a topic of high debate today. You could not call it a trend – it’s been around for at least half a millennium, depending on how you want to define it, but as design events proliferate, we see them being filled more and more with objects of no discernible functional value beyond the aesthetic and which are only made available in limited editions. The market is thriving, as Alice Rawsthorn points out in her article in the International Herald Tribune and new buyers are starting to buy into the idea of buying design in the same way they buy art. Can Design Miami/Basel be to blame, as David Carlson thinks? We’ll keep you posted …
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Ciba in the news: our North American colleague Rick Kistler talks about our Effect Explorer, Color Trend Vision concept, metallic effect pigment and Ciba® XYMARA Nordic™ glass-based effect pigments in a new article by Coatings World. Check out their conclusions on current styling and effects trends!
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Continuing our trawl through internet resources for architecture and interiors, I found danish-furniture.com, a seemingly inexhaustibly comprehensive database on Danish designers of the mid-century (a thematic link to the Mid-Century Modernist mentioned above!) and their work. If you’re more interested in contemporary Danish design, go to the Danish Crafts site. We loved their exhibition space in Milan and we pleased to present you with an interview with one of their featured designers, Ditte Hammerstrøm, here!
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Lastly, you will already have seen them featured elsewhere, but they’re much too much fun for us not to as well! Olivia Lee’s Limited Edition Designer Dolls (click on “more images” to see the rest of the set) somehow magically capture the purest essences of three famous designers – their publically perceived personalities and their design aesthetics … The fact that they’re “Limited Edition” (NB. I’m not sure if these are actually meant to be produced at all, ever!) speaks volumes to the debate we touched on above as well as to the value placed on the work of these famous names.