Karim Rashid launched the soundpanel Flo earlier this year at the Stockholm Furniture Fair. Flo is produced by Swedish design company Offecct. The interesting MOD newsletter highlighted the product in their latest issue:
Creating Flo Karim Rashid was inspired by sound waves and digital data. Karim Rashid believes that people today live in a very digital world mentally. Therefore we need to catch up with experiential design in the physical world to create a balance. The Flo panels can be set continuously or broken in different ways. Placed horizontally the pattern conveys a sense of water, and vertically it could be described as light waves.
This is how Karim Rashid describes Flo: “Through dimension, material, color, code, pattern, texture, line, solid, plane composition I can manifest the digits of binary notation and sound waves to communicate a new itinerant form of super-functional decoration that is current and aesthetic with our new sensual world – let your sound flo’.”
If you would like to know more about his thoughts on design, Karim Rashid has also made some prediction about design and the future in one of my earlier David Report bulletin called Design (in) the Future.
There is a lot of talk going around concerning a possible backlash against design and innovation.
And that is very true. I see it all the time in Sweden as well, there is a huge lack of knowledge among Swedish companies (mostly small and mid-size). And it is not because of the lack of clever and talented designers in Sweden. It is the lack of knowledge how to run a design process and how to write a creative design brief. And if we top that with some lack of vision about how design can build strong brands we got the overall picture rather well.
And when this lack of interest and knowledge is putting a lot of unattractive products on the market it is not strange why people wonder what design is really about. We actually live in a world full of bad products and bad design.
I was holding a lecture the other day at the Malmö University with a course called Practical Creativity were I tried to work with the students according to my believes. The design process is in some sense a mechanical procedure. You have to make everything in the correct order according to a defined scheme. The true differentiator of the design process is the design brief. You have to solve problems, deliver to a demand or create new possibilities. You have to add magic and relevance. Your products have to have cultural relevance and they have to evoke meaning.
Bruce Nussbaum from BusinessWeek puts it like this:
“The truth is that the backlash is against the fad of innovation, not the fact of it. The backlash is against CEOs who get up and shroud their companies and their reputations in the rhetoric of innovation while continuing to sell out-of-date, poorly designed products and services. Consumers know this is fake and realize that the talk about innovation is not authentic.”
It is a very important subject and I will return to it soon with some further thoughts.
The spring issue of the Acne Paper is out. It is a collaboration between Acne Jeans, Acne Film, Acne Digital and Acne Creative. Each issue is created around one key idea - a timeless theme (this time it is playfulness) that in various ways touches all those working in the creative fields regardless of age, cultural background or social status. In an eclectic yet coherent mix portrait, fashion and art photography as well as interviews, memoirs and prose the editorial narrative aims to unite artistic minds of all generations. It pays tribute to past luminaries whilst still keeping a firm grip on the present, evoking something timeless, something nostalgic yet refrereshingly modern. By moving effortlessly between high and popular culture Acne Paper is a glamorous and intelligent magazine celebrating personality, authenticity and style.
Acne Paper is available through leading magazine and book stores. You can subscribe to Acne Paper directly at their website.
I did an interview with Acne Jeans in an earlier issue of the David Report bulletin which you can read here.
Swedish online project Scandinavian Design has been one of the best resources of design from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland (yes, when it is concerning design Finland normally counts like a part of Scandinavia…) for many years. Scandinavian design is seen internationally as a designation for simple and solid elegance and that’s what the site is dedicated to. At Scandinavian Design you can read about news and events along with articles from distinguished guest writers. You will also find a nice gallery of the legends and personalities behind Scandinavian design. And if you are getting interesting in any of the products you are reading about you can visit their small shop dedicated to some splendid Scandinavian design.
How many times have you been standing in front of the wine shelves and been wondering which wine to choose for a certain dish? Pairing really does matter. People just don’t do it because it’s been so hard to do…until now. Wine that loves has come up with a nice solution to this everyday problem…
The wines in the series are designed to pair with different dishes. They are tailored to food lovers, but their world-class quality, distinctive character and winning style also will delight wine aficionados. I think it is a nice and democratic product as it offers a solution to a quite difficult and sometimes elitist knowledge and makes it accessible for a wider target of persons. The different combinations have been made by Ralph Hersom, the Wine Director of Wine that loves, who is a renowned wine expert and professional wine taster. The five first wines are chosen to work together with pasta with tomato sauce, roasted chicken, pizza, grilled steak and grilled salmon.
Wine that loves says; Good food is great. With the right wine, good food is even better. Who could argue with that?
I wrote the other day about the new shopping center by Gert Wingardh in Malmo. In the same area called Hyllie the Danish architects CF Moller has designed a building that goes under the name Malmo Tower. It has a strong Scandinavian identity and an architecture that expresses our times. I like the facing of Malmo Tower a lot, especially the two large built-in gardens. Malmo Tower consists the highrise building and a lower part which will hold an exclusive shopping center. The first entrance on Swedish side of the Oresund bridge of the new underground in Malmo will be placed right beneath Malmo tower. The project is developed by Malmo based Annehem and is planned to be ready 2010.
When I was in Tokyo during the design week 2005 I saw a nice exhibition called Retired Weapons. I just got the information that this design project for peace will propose its first appearance outside of Japan through an event during the Milan furniture fair next month. Retired Weapons is launched by art director Yuji Tokuda and producer Junya Ishikawa and combines incisive graphic design with a straight message of peace through a variety of tools including an inflatable real-size tank with a flower in its gun.
All the design elements like rifles, land mines and bombs carry flowers to spread the message of peace. Seeds of flowers will be handed out as an invitation to happiness and dialogue. I planted the seeds I got in Tokyo in my garden in Falsterbo which brought happiness to my friends. Also stickers and cards, screensavers and postcards will enable the visitors to circulate the Retired Weapons peace message. By doing that everyone is contributing to make the 21 century an era of dialogue.
Curator of the Retired Weapons event is Yoichi Nakamuta, a well known design expert from Tokyo. The event takes place 18-23 April at via Lombardini 22, Milan. DJ Gak Sato joins with selected music. All the staff of Retired Weapons is excited to meet new people and expand friendship.
This year we celebrate the Carl von Linnaeus year in Sweden. Due to this Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm is re-launching the Flora chest of drawers by Josef Frank. The updated version called Flora Chest of Drawers Carl von Linnaeus is decorated with reproductions of painting that actually hanged on the walls in the Carl Linnaeus home. The production is limited (I wrote about another limited product earlier today) to 50 pieces. Flora Chest of Drawers Carl von Linnaeus number one is reserved for the His Majesty the King of Sweden and number two will be donated to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II of Great Britain at the Chelsea Flower Show in May 2007. The original Flora chest of drawers was design 1951 and produced until the beginning of the 1970’s in very few editions and has in recent years been sold for record prices at contemporary design auctions.
If you have put aside some 12000 Euro, the new Flora Chest of Drawers Carl von Linnaeus can be yours.
Designers Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel of Studio Job has made a nice limited-edition lamp for Moss in New York. It has a wooden and cardboard frame with printed graphics on papier-mache surface; coated with polyurethane.
Each piece in the ‘Graphic Paper’ collection is produced in a limited and signed edition of 12 pieces (exclusive to Moss). As a mentioned in my latest bulletin Future Luxury limited-editions allow us to feel special in a time when the globalisation forces us to buy the same products from the same brands all over the world. The limited-edition series offer something else; individuality. The fewer distribution points the more desirable is the product. In this case - one place -Moss at Greene street in New York.
This is a cool video from a disco dancing school in Finland during the late 70s. I remember seeing it some years ago and when I came across it today I thought it could be nice to share it with you. Take a look at the cool Finnish Karhu sneakers the male teacher is wearing. I remember having a pair as well during that time.
