We Made This

China Design Now

China Design Now opened recently at the V&A, so we made our way over there this weekend to check it out.

The show is divided into three sections, each representing one of China's major cities: Shenzhen (population: 10 million; average age: 27), Shanghai and Beijing. Each of those sections loosely represents a particular area of design, so that the Shenzhen section mainly features graphic design, Shanghai is all about fashion, and Beijing gets busy with lots of new architecture (much of it by some familiar western names).

Given the staggeringly vast subject the show is covering, it can naturally only offer an itsy-bitsy little taster; but if you view it as just that, it does its job brilliantly.

And there's some great stuff in the gift shop. We picked up a Hi Panda vinyl toy by Shirtflag (that's its box up top).

The show runs until 13 July.

Black is the new white

Google (in the UK only) has slipped into a little black number today.

There was a lot of coverage when the search page Blackle was set up, allegedly saving power by leaving pixels ‘unlit’ in black instead of Google's usual white, but it turned out that most modern computer displays use the same amount of power no matter what colour the background is.

So instead, Google are doing this to raise awareness of Earth Hour, which is taking place this evening at 8pm GMT. You can read more about it on this page from Google.

Early Designs

Our friend Andy over at Now in Colour has set up an interesting project that kicks off today.

He's been asking the great and the good of the creative industry to post up their old college work, as part of what he calls a ‘raindrop idea’, where the individual contribution is small, but where it collectively has a noticeable effect. (A good example of this being done really well is the Blog Action Day that we took part in back in October.)

Alistair’s picked a couple of projects from his time at Central Saint Martins, where he studied on the BA Graphic Design course:

First up is Bob Book, a story about “the brief life and untimely death of an elastic band”. I put this together in my first year at St Martins, and it’s still one of my favourite projects. The typography is rubbish (14pt Arial? I didn't have a clue...), and the mix of photography and hand drawn images is peculiar, but it’s got real heart to it, and that just about carries it through. And I’m still quite proud of the binding, which is just a series of elastic bands stretched across two corrugated plastic boards. You can see the full book on this Flickr slideshow.

Next up is a series of pictures I took of Simon Pegg and Jessica Stephenson when they were writing the second series of the TV show Spaced. It was just a great way to spend a day. As a project it reminded me that there’s a real freedom you have at college to get in touch with people, and it’s hugely important to make the most of that.

You can see more work from other creative folk at the Early Designs Flickr group.

Reference Library

Reference Library is the fantastic blog from Philadelphia based designer Andy Beach (you can see some of his work in the recent book of hand drawn type Hand Job).

The blog is principally a pictorial compendium of the various bits and bobs that Andy failed to win on Ebay.

Which could be a bit depressing.

But instead of getting down about it, he’s created a rich visual feast, ranging from lettering to apparel to storefronts. (And saved a huge amount of cash in the process.)

He’s a damn fine curator. Go take a look.

Jacob Holdt

We made our way over to the Photographers’ Gallery on Saturday to check out the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Four photographers were nominated for the prize, and it was won by Esko Männikkö from Finland for his retrospective show Cocktails.

But for us, the real winner is Jacob Holdt, nominated for his recent book United States 1970 – 1975, published by the rather brilliant Steidl.

Here's what they have to say about the book:

In the early 1970s, when Jacob Holdt first arrived in the US with 40 dollars in his pocket, he planned to travel quickly across the country to South America. But, totally shocked and fascinated by what he discovered, he ended up staying five years. His family could scarcely believe the letters he sent them detailing the poverty he saw, so his father sent him a cheap amateur camera in order that Holdt could send home proof of his claims. Living as a vagabond, selling his blood twice a week, hitch-hiking over 100,000 miles, he depicted an incredible and unique portrait of America and its underclass. He befriended whomever offered him a lift in their car and a lift frequently became an offer to stay a few days. He never said no and ended up visiting more than 350 homes where he photographed the people he lived with: poor blacks from the ghettos, millionaires, junkies, members of the Ku Klux Klan. Holdt’s images echo the pictures of the F.S.A. and together with the work of another Dane Jacob Riis, his series have widely inspired the film-maker Lars von Trier for the movies Dogville and Manderlay.

The book features a selection of images from his American Pictures series, originally published in a bestselling book in 1977, and toured worldwide as a slideshow ever since. He’s an incredible man – just check out his curriculum vitae.

The show runs at the gallery until 6 April 2008, and is really fantastic. If you get a chance, go.

We Made This is 2

Well, caramba, where does the time go? Seems like only yesterday we were celebrating our first birthday, and now here we are again, getting busy with cake and candles. (We're assuming the presents are in the post...)

In the intervening time, blogging seems to have finally entered the mainstream consciousness. Hopefully we won't have to put up with any more articles debating whether or not blogs are useful - quite simply, as with any other form of creative expression, there's some good stuff, some bad stuff, some incredible stuff, and some complete wank. And being the intelligent, sophisticated creatures that we are, we'll pick and choose which ones to read, and ditch the ones that don't manage to continually tickle our fancy.

(With that in mind, we've recently updated our list of Blogs We Dig (in the right hand column), so why not make a cup of tea, kick off your shoes, and take a browse through all manner of design brilliance?)

And, if you'll forgive us a moment of unbridled schmaltz, thank you all for your feedback and comments - do keep them coming. It really is great to be hooked up to such a lovely bunch of people.

All together now: group hug... mmmm!

Uncredited

A great big thank-you to everyone who has added to our list of rather fine motion graphics - Alistair has been sellotaping all the suggested films into his collection of favourites on YouTube, so do take a look. If you know of any other bits of great typographic film, just sling the links our way.

And if that whets your appetite, you might want to take a look at the decidedly brilliant Uncredited book by Gemma Solana and Antonio Boneu.

A comprehensive collection of graphic design and opening titles in movies, it features a simply staggering amount of work from the greats of title design, and even has a disc with a stack of QuickTime movies of those titles (though it would have been fantastic if it had been a DVD instead).

Lovely stuff.

Harmonie Intérieure

Harmonie Intérieure is the fantastic online shop selling delicious designs by French couple Frédérique and Fabien. They've created a stunning range of interior decorations, including large format vinyl stickers, mounted photo prints and posters.

Our favourite is this typographic sticker from their Temps Retrouvé collection. You can pick and choose from a range of colours and sizes.

(They've also got lots of lovely images over on Flickr.)

Magnifique.

Words of wisdom

We've just been doing a bit of a spring-clean round the studio, and found these two letterpressed sheets that we picked up in 2006 at the Gregynog Press in Wales (sorry, that's just a Wikipedia link, but the press's website seems to be down).

There's lovely.

Two shows, one (stolen) space

The folks at StolenSpace are keeping themselves mighty busy at the moment, consistently putting on some of the best shows in town.

Up next is the Draw show, which starts this Friday, 7 March, at their gallery at The Old Truman Brewery. The show originated at the Fuse Gallery in New York way back in October 2006 - you can check out a full gallery of the work over here. The exhibition features over 300 bits of pencil based goodness from the likes of D*Face, KAWS, HR Giger and EINE, and runs till 23 March.

Not content with that, StolenSpace is also putting on Lightness of Being, an exhibition of light based portraits by the wonderful Chris Levine, including some of the work created while working on his portrait of HRH (shown above).

(There's a good interview with him over on the Creative Review blog.)

It promises to be a great show, and kicks off on Friday 14 March, in an extra 13,000 sq feet StolenSpace have taken over at The Old Truman Brewery especially for this exhibition. It's only on until 23 March, so don't dawdle.