The magazine explores a 30-year stretch of time, starting in the 1960s with logos for the National Design Institute in India and the Yamada Design Room in Japan, and continues right the way through to the mid 80s.
In a short essay written for the book, editor Richard Baird makes a plea for designers to remember the past, and return to it as a way of making sense of the present.
“This is the story of design,” he writes. “New understanding, technologies and cultural shifts keep design moving forward, from becoming an ouroboros.
“Essential to this (in terms of both cultural and economic value) is an awareness of legacy, the agency to seek out historic resources, the capacity to think through which foundational components and principles of the past may still be relevant in the present, and how these might be best used or reinterpreted for the future.”
There’s certainly no shortage of inspirational fodder in the zine, which features logos of all shapes and configurations – including a few which are reminiscent of the design trends of today. Readers keen to delve into the archive can choose between two covers – either a 1976 symbol created by Yves Paquin, or a 2010 logo designed by BankerWessel (who co-designed the zine) for the Fotografiska gallery.
Shot around New York City between 2010-17, Jeremiah Dine’s new photo book Daydreams Walking brings together unremarkable, everyday scenes and dramatic images of the city, which are thrown into relief through a strong blend of framing, lighting and timing.
He was previously a studio assistant to legendary photographer Richard Avedon, but where Avedon was known for his stark portraits, Dine’s work places the city in the lead role. Found objects, graffiti and rubbish all earn their way into the book, and even when people do star in his photographs, on many occasions the shadows cast on walls and pavements manage to steal back your attention. Dine’s characters are always at one with their surroundings, if not dictated by them.
The project takes its name from a line in Music, a poem written in 1954 by prominent New Yorker Frank O’Hara, which is included in the book. It also features a listed soundtrack of the music that Dine listened to while shooting – featuring the likes of Lou Reed, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker – and an essay penned by author Robert Sullivan, which looks at the city experience by way of the street.
While Dine’s photographic style doesn’t diverge radically from what we’ve seen in the medium, Daydreams Walking captures those fleeting strokes of luck that account for our enduring fascination with street photography. Building on the ground laid by some of the 20th century greats, Dine’s lens brings the city and its characters to life – this time in blistering colour.
Daydreams Walking by Jeremiah Dine is published by Damiani, and will be available for £50 from March 5; damianieditore.com; jeremiahdine.com
With brick and mortar stores facing ongoing battles to stay afloat, immersive experiences have become all the rage in a bid to offer customers what rival websites and apps can’t. Of course, Fortnum & Mason is no stranger to creating fun experiences, thanks in particular its decadent themed window displays and clever use of design (customer experience director Zia Zareem-Slade talked to us about her approach here).
While the iconic Piccadilly department store is used to producing eye-catching displays, it has taken the concept of in-store experiences and run with it for its month-long Chapel of Love installation, where visitors can get married, engaged, toast an anniversary or renew their vows. If Fortnum’s was once known for being a Christmas destination for tourists, this year it seems to have its eye on Valentine’s Day.
Though Fortnum & Mason was already a registered venue for wedding ceremonies, the Chapel of Love is London’s first in-store wedding installation, and will run throughout February – historically the most romantic month in the calendar year.
The chapel runs across three floors of its atrium, and is designed around the central spiral staircase. Adorned with pastel hues, the installation is a more toned-down affair than the louche Elvis-themed Vegas styling that you might expect from a venue called the Chapel of Love – though the flashy red carpets and neon sign ought to satisfy fans of the casino aesthetic.
Chapel of Love is open at Fortnum & Mason until 29 February 2020; fortnumandmason.com
Thinking of mid-century British designers, names that come to the mind might include Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. Less so Barnett Freedman who, despite a proliferation of design work that spanned Transport for London posters, book jackets and royal commissions, has gone relatively under looked.
That might change with a new exhibition, Barnett Freeman: Designs for Modern Britain, held at Pallant House Gallery this March. The exhibition’s curator, Emma Mason, tells Design Week that the time had come for Freedman’s work to be given its due. She attributes it to a growing exploration into the period’s work, as well as renewed interest in the techniques Barnett used such as lithography and print-making. (There’s also a personal touch: Freedman’s son, Vince, is in his 80s now, and a lot of his recollection of his parents proved invaluable in building a picture of his father.)
Barnett Freedman
Freedman was born in 1901 in East London to Jewish immigrants from Russia, and although he was “comfortable” with his Jewish heritage, Mason says that it didn’t play an enormous role in his work. Despite living through World War II, his “optimism” drove his outlook: “He always believed people were good.”
That comes through in his work, particularly with book jacket design. His first major commission in 1931, for publishers Faber & Faber was to design and illustrate Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. This sparked a trend; he went onto design jackets for Oliver Twist, Wuthering Heights, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Those final two are recognised as some of the finest examples of 20th century book design. What made him stand out, Mason says, is that he was a “supreme master of lithography”.
Freedman’s cover for Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
It meant he could “cross boundaries between art and design”, she adds. Mason says: “He could draw or paint a beautiful image, but then he had all the technical ability to transpose it to stone for it to be made into a lithograph and reproduced in its hundreds or thousands.”
He picked up that skill from his varied educational background; he trained as an apprentice at a printmakers and also at an architectural practice, which is where he developed his skill at lettering. But he also studied portraiture and painting at the Royal College of Arts, lending his design work a fine art quality. Accompanied with those skills was a sense of “humanity”, Mason adds. The book jackets, as well as inventive use of type, feature prominently the iconic characters’ faces. Being able to transfer his art to lithography (a method of reproducing prints by using stone) meant he was able to retain all those details. Freedman also cared how the books were designed on the inside, too. His work on illustrations, as a vital accompaniment to text, was influential for book designers after him, according to Mason.
A design for the London Undergound
Freedman’s son Vince recalls his love of people, and their stories and capturing a sense of their personality. It’s what served him well as an Official War Artist during World War II – which includes first-hand illustrations of the aftermath of the D-Day landings – where Mason says he was more interested in “people’s faces than their rank”. Despite his Jewish heritage, the time spent aboard submarines and among soldiers, was happy for him, she adds.
The exhibition brings together a lot of Freedman’s work for the first time, placing his lesser-seen oil paintings next to his commercial work. Some of that latter body of work is very recognisable: his posters for the London Underground, for example, have been widely reproduced. It is a fitting way to appreciate Freedman’s work, according to Mason. “He gave the same amount of attention to designing letterheads for a biscuit manufacturer as he did a large Transport for London poster,” she says. By embracing commercial work, Freedman was also able to focus on passion projects as the financial freedom enabled him to do smaller, less well-paid projects like illustration.
Claudia, a typeface Freedman designed and named after his wife
As Mason says, “he saw no difference between commercial work and fine art”. And Freedman made his views on commercial work public, by writing about it for publications like The Penrose Annual and Signature. His nickname at the RCA was also Soc, short for Socrates, because he was always debating with people. About his lithographic work, Freedman himself said: “The direct outcome of the work of original artists on lithographic stones are works of art in their own right.”
However a lot of the commercial work, despite its distinct styling, is relatively anonymous. People might recognise the designs, but they won’t necessarily associate it with Freedman’s name. That might explain why he has gone relatively underlooked compared to his contemporaries, Mason says. Neither does it help that he died young. Plagued by respiratory problems, Freedman spent a lot of time in hospitals as a child, where he learned to read, write and play music with the help of doctors and nurses. The asthma-related illness never went away, though: He continued to spend time in hospitals throughout his life and eventually died of a heart attack in 1958. Mason says that if he hadn’t have died so young, the work he would have gone onto do would have cemented his status as one of Britain’s most influential designers.
The King’s Stamp
A clue as to what that potential work – and its widespread appeal – might have looked like can be seen in his final projects. In 1953, he was chosen to design The King’s Stamp, a commemoration stamp for King George V on his silver jubilee. He would also go onto design a stamp for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Like a lot of his work, The King’s Stamp started as a lithograph before it was mass-produced which mean that there was an “awful lot of detail” in it, Mason says. “The edges are full of little details, which is a very Barnett Freeman design, and they were quite different to stamps that had gone before,” she adds. It sold in its millions, and a newspaper of the day commented that Freeman was the world’s biggest-selling artist because of it. The Post Office also believed it be an important design – they filmed the process of him making it.
A Guinness poster Freedman produced for the company’s new book of world records
It is perhaps his final project, poster work for Guinness, that sums up Freedman best. He was brought in every month to advice the company’s executive on arts and letters, and provide wider context about why it was so important that businesses and the government support the arts. His poster designs for the alcohol company – once again, based on lithography and featuring everyday scenes of darts and football – were displayed in pubs to celebrate the launch of the Guinness Book of World Records. “Working with executives at Guinness, and in the studio with art technicians and lithographers, as well as designing for audiences at the pub,” was a happy combination for Freeman, Mason says. And though his life was cut short, that final project “fit him perfectly”.
Barnett Freedman: Designs for Modern Britain runs from 14 March – 14 June 2020 at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, PO19 1TJ.
Concrete surfaces and just a smattering of furnishings provide a "silent stage" for members using this Berlin co-working space, designed by Annabell Kutucu.
The co-working space – which interior designer Kutucu named Brutalist Silence – is set inside Marina Marina, a creative hub that sits beside the waters of Berlin's Spree River.
When tasked with developing the interiors, Kutucu opted for a "reduced" design scheme that was reserved in its use of colour and materials.
"I believe creativity needs space and a silent stage," Kutucu told Dezeen. "This is an unconventional approach based on simplicity, silence and aesthetics – it's the beautiful environment that inspires."
Simple in arrangement, the office features a sequence of rooms that run off a central corridor. Concrete walls are left exposed throughout, including marks and tiny splashes of paint left behind from the construction process.
These surface blemishes are meant to offer a subtle nod to wabi-sabi – an ancient Japanese philosophy that focuses on the acceptance of imperfection and the notion that beauty is transient.
The abundance of concrete in the space also comes in reference to the materiality and monolithic nature of brutalism, a controversial architectural style that emerged in the 1950s, giving the space its name.
Other details include sliding partition walls crafted from smoked oak wood. The timber is also used to create a communal work desk, a gridded bookshelf that's inset in a wall, and the cabinetry in the break-out kitchen.
Kutucu scoured her favourite antique haunts in Berlin to source the few decorative elements that appear in the office, which includes earth-toned ceramics and slim-stemmed floor lamps.
There are also a couple of Lotus chairs by designer Daniel Wenger. Originally designed in the 1960s, the chairs boast a narrow, brown-leather backrest and a wide seat that is intended to mimic the form of a person in the "lotus" yoga position.
Kutucu is an interior designer and stylist that works out of Berlin. Her Brutalist Silence project is notably more pared back than recent co-working spaces that have popped up across the globe.
Women-focused co-working company The Wing opened a branch in London last year that drew upon a "mosh pit" of references ranging from Gaudi buildings to English gardens. Rooms inside are a clashing mix of paisley-print walls, chequerboard floors and bright velvet furnishings.
About two years ago, while I was doing a photoshoot for a renowned hairstylist, this cute little boy walked in with his parents, and I instantly liked him. He was quiet, but he wasn’t shy at all. The hairstylist’s team had invited him to the shoot so that he could get a glimpse of how photoshoots work. He was also allowed to help them with the hairstyling creations that we were shooting for the most prestigious competition in the hair industry, the North American Hairstyling Awards (NAHA).
When I asked the team why CJ wanted to be involved in the photoshoot, they quickly explained to me that CJ’s dream was to become a hair and makeup artist and that he’d been passionately learning hair and makeup styling.
I immediately liked him even more! I loved the idea that no matter what his gender was, he had a keen interest in a female-oriented field (makeup) so early on. I loved seeing how focused he was on learning as much as he could about a hair and makeup career.
Sometime later, I came across an Instagram account that was run by a mom who was raising a ‘gender creative child.’ I started looking at the photos and immediately discovered that it was CJ from the photoshoot! I spent at least an hour reading the descriptions underneath the Instagram images and getting to know their story. It was awful to learn about the bullying he had to go through in his school. My heart broke for him, and I couldn’t believe how people could be so blind and cruel. And I am just not referring to the children bullying him at school how could parents tell their kids not to be friends with CJ (even though they had liked him before) because he had come out as gay? What kind of message is that for their children and future generations?
We all want to be accepted and loved, and everyone deserves the right to be accepted and loved. His peers rejected this little boy, and rejection is one of the cruelest things you can do to another human.
When people bully or are cruel to someone they don’t understand, I always wonder what they would do if they were in the same position. How would they feel if they put themselves in his shoes for a day? The thing that is amazing is that CJ only uses these experiences to help him grow stronger and be a role model for other children like him.
According to federal law, students have the right to dress and present in a way that is consistent with their gender identity, so long as they follow rules for how to dress that apply to all students. This includes how they dress at school every day as well as for dances, graduation, and other school events.
It’s super easy. Watch. Instead of saying “Dress for students should be collared shirts and casual pants for boys, and dresses or nice pantsuits for girls. If girls choose to wear spaghetti straps or strapless dresses, they must wear a sweater at all times.” Try something like this “Dress for students should be collared shirts, casual pants, dresses or nice pantsuits. If students choose to wear spaghetti straps or strapless dresses, they must wear a sweater at all times.”
He says “I haven’t always felt that way. I’ve been bullied, badly, but I’ve always come out stronger. Bullies aren’t going to get me to stop being me. I think it’s important for people – including bullies and haters – to see me because people need to see there are kids like me out there. Gender creative kids need to see other kids like themselves. The more people see people like me, the less ‘different’ we are and the more they accept people like me. Besides, I’m not ashamed of who I am.”
Not only has CJ been brave enough to follow his own path, but he has also helped to raise awareness in his school and community. He is currently an advocate for the LGBTQ and nonbinary communities and says that “My mom says that if you are in a position to help other people, you should. So that’s what I do. I helped make my elementary school the first school in the district to adopt a dress code that wasn’t gender-specific. One year later, the dress code was used as a model for implementation at every elementary school in the district. That’s 26 schools! Through meetings and email campaigns, I got my school district to stop sex/gender segregation in elementary school PE classes and to stop having special event dress codes that were illegal because they discriminated against gender creative students. If I can see a way to make life better and easier for gender creative people, I always try to do it. Being kind, sticking up for others and not being a jerk. That’s what life is all about.”
Getting a new job can be a drag. There’s lots of ups and downs, twists and turns, and lying-on-the-floor-thinking-I-am-a-failure moments. But also some ridiculous and hilarious stuff like weird relocation offers or CEO interviews with unexpected twists.
Anyhow, since the career space is already full of all sorts of “motivational” and “actionable” advice, we decided to mock that out a bit too. Because let’s face it: there’s too much #recruitinghell going on already. Why add up to that?
So guys, let us know what you think of our Career (Con)Quest series. Yay or nay? Can’t relate? We would really love your feedback on our first batch!
Below are some of our favorite comics created in 2019 (more coming up on a weekly basis in 2020!)
