+ stuff

+ This month’s dfactory @ the Powerhouse Museum

+ Annanne Label is launched reviving the knitting abilities of our Grandmothers.

Via Dexinger

+ Pantone announces new colours

+ Design does affect the way we shop, work and feel. Download the full report via Autodesk

+ It is almost impossible to fully cover Salon del Mobile let alone see all the events …..if you’re lucky enough to go there. MoCo loco has a very good coverage via a series of links. Spend the time to get an overview of new direction for 2007

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New contemporary jewellery by Insync Design

These are beautiful designs by Iris Saar Isaacs and Jane Barwick. Made from stainless steel each piece is carefully crafted from design through to completed shapes as broaches or bracelets, and are then powder coated in bright fashion colours.

Street style at Salone del Mobile, Milano

Via Sartorialist

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An interesting little label with a twist – Locher’s

Feel like expressing yourself in a unique way, find you have lots to say but don’t know how to do it? Well this is an interesting approach taken by a cheeky new label, Locker’s. The designs and fine embroidery looks so sweet nonna and mama would love them – unless they get too close!

Very cheeky, very French!

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Best of Milan Fair according to 3LC

…………………predominant themes,…………… Moving East, orange, rope, oversized, white, fish, mesh, paper, assymetry, fur/hair, femininity, spoons, crochet/weaving……..

The Doshi Levien pieces for Moroso

via 3LC

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Biennale of Craft and Design Denmark

4 may to 29 july

Something to look forward to at the Cooper Hewitt

Design for the other 90%
On view May 4–September 23, 2007

On view in the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden, this exhibition highlights the growing trend among designers to create affordable and socially responsible objects for the vast majority of the world’s population (90 percent) not traditionally serviced by professional designers. Organized by exhibition curator Cynthia E. Smith, along with an eight-member advisory council, the exhibition is divided  into sections focusing on water, shelter, health and sanitation, education, energy and transportation and highlights objects developed to empower global populations surviving under the poverty level  or recovering from a natural disaster.

See a previous post on the Q drum

More on Wood

Recently posted on Coolhunting is Laura Woods latest project using plywood links and geometric chunky jewellery.

Laura says that this project focuses on reduction of material wastage; by using the laser cutter to make concentric plywood forms the most is made out of the wooden sheet. Even the spacers are made from the remaining material in the center.

This has tempted me to take another look at her website where I also found these cut glass ceramics (have been recently posted on her site) using

Slip cast mix porcelain slip ceramics designed using composites of found cut glass such as a 70’s nibbles tray and ice cream bowls.

+ Stuff

+ Sydney Opera House has been rebranded by design giant Frost*.

Frost Design has created an identity for the Sydney Opera House, the first time in more than ten years that Australia’s iconic landmark has updated its marque. The consultancy chose a strongly typographic identity because the Sydney Opera House sail shape has become ubiquitous in logos of Australian companies, says Frost Design general manager and senior strategist Cat Burgess.

+ In the meantime Mumbai traffic police coasters wow us all with a very clever drink driving campaign . Whilst you may be enjoying a drink or two you are subtlety reminded of the dangers of drink driving by the images on the coasters appearing to bleed when moistened by your glass. A cleverly placed invisible red ink creates an eerie and effective illusion leaving me to wonder if this is a little more than just advertising? Very clever.

via 1+1=3

+ Designers need to become more responsible not only to remain relevant but also credible or face becoming their own worst enemy. Read this article by Bruce Nussbaum and this one in Core77 that highlights a growing ‘disaffection’ for the big name designers, a disaffection also felt by the protagonists. Does this finally mean designers will become more practical as well as responsible or is it elitist resentment against designs’ success?

Jasper Morrison comes to the rescue of design, crafting the way forward expounding an

“approach to design, of leaving out the design, [which seems] more and more of the way forward.” By this he means working hard to ‘design out’ designerly flourishes, so as to get at the essence of an object and reach an understanding of its appropriate position within a historical visual context—or as he puts it, crafting objects that know their ‘place in the society of things.’ (via Core77)

+ Take a look at Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa selection of objects for the Supernormal exhibition during the London Design Festival and enjoy the dialogue on the blog – an unusual privilege that accompanies the exhibition with comments continuing to this day.

+ Open Architecture Network has launched (8 March)