D&AD, January 2014

The D&AD has just published an article I wrote last year about the importance of design in education, featuring Jay Osgerby, David Irwin and John Miller…
David Irwin

In May 2013, John Miller, co-founder of furniture brand MARK, curated an exhibition called Making Designers, inspired by the fact that he still owned things he’d designed and made at school and could still remember every detail of designing and making them. He suspected he might not be alone.

Continue reading…

D&AD, November 2013

Following the 2013 London Design Festival, I wrote a series of articles for the D&AD about the materials that seemed popular. This has since been turned into a feature section on their website called “Inspired by Materials.” This piece was about bronze, copper and brass aka ‘warm metallics’.
HAM

Tom Dixon has been using bronze, copper and brass since he launched his eponymous brand in 2002, but it seems the rest of the design world has taken a little while to catch on. Finally, these ‘warm metallics’ are everywhere. Bronze, copper and brass bring a touch of understated luxury to anything they touch. It might seem inappropriate in these austere times to appear too indulgent, but we all need a little bit of luxury, and that’s where these metal finishes come in. Warm metallics work particularly well with dark or neutral schemes where they can look quite Scandinavian, or combined with an industrial aesthetic to create a contrasting ‘rough luxe’ look.

Continue reading…

D&AD, October 2013

Following the 2013 London Design Festival I wrote a series of articles for the D&AD about the materials that seem to be en vogue at the moment. One of those was cork…
boet by note design studio

My London Design Festival started when I walked across the bridge over the V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance Galleries and encountered the first of many installations there. The bridge, for the duration of the festival, was covered in a cork flooring installation designed by FAT Architecture in collaboration with cork producer Amorim.

Continue reading…

D&AD, July 2013

I was interested to know how people stay creative and inspired when they do it day in day out, so I wrote an article for the D&AD on that very subject…
stranger

Yoga, running, headstands. Art galleries, good books, time with friends. Getting away from your desk, away from the problem, away from it all. Total immersion followed by total distraction. Coffee, alcohol, mind-enhancing drugs. The ways in which we seek inspiration are as varied as the briefs we’re trying to crack.

Continue reading…

D&AD, May 2013

The D&AD sent me on a mission – to spend a day living by the ten rules of Lomography and report back – here’s what happened…
Lomo_01

Life Through The Lens Of A Lomo

The story of Lomography begins in 1991 when a group of Viennese students discover the Russian-made LOMO LC-A in a vintage camera shop in Prague. They spend the rest of their trip experimenting with it. The results are vibrant colours, deep saturation and vignettes that frame each shot. Effects caused by flaws in the camera, like sticky mechanisms and light leaks, fit their experimental aesthetic perfectly.

Continue reading

D&AD, May 2013

Following Milan Design Week, I wrote an article for the D&AD in defence of concrete…
Beton Brut

Venerated architect Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote: “The concrete block? The cheapest (and ugliest) thing in the building world.” Concrete enthusiast and architect Leonard Koren cites people describing concrete as “hostile,” “ugly,” and even “aggressive,” and using phrases like “unrelenting stretches of coarse greyness” and “depressing soullessness.” Many people simply associate it with failed and rain-stained post-war social housing experiments.

And yet we’ve been using it for millennia – in its most basic form, it dates back to ancient Egypt. Today, concrete is the single most widely used material in the world. We produce 7.5billion m3 annually – that’s enough for a cubic metre for every person on the planet every year.

Continue reading…