Art Is Everywhere

My college friends Leo (from Brazil) and Ana (from Equador), who both now live in London, were here in Bulgaria for a quick vacation. We traveled around for a couple of days, visiting cities, nature reserves, monasteries and old towns, but throughout the trip, the one trend that emerged - apart from the nice weather, good food and great company, of course - was the beautiful art we encountered everywhere. Whether it was frescoes in a church or graffiti on a wall in the neighborhood of Kapana in Plovdiv, I soaked it up and enjoyed it all. I am loving the way street art can transform a place; the kind of art that embraces the city and is embraced back by it. I get quite annoyed at the aimless scribbles that vandalize buildings, but these works of art are something else.

It's interesting to go from street art to religious art, but they are both gorgeous in their own way. I'd been to the Rila Monastery and Bachkovski Monastery back in the day, but I'd actually forgotten how beautiful these places are. The frescoes are exquisite, and as an artist, I couldn't stop looking. It was a feast for my eyes!

Sunday Morning Rain Is Falling

After an extremely productive Saturday - two presentations written, three loads of laundry done, the first layer of a new painting finished, and my nails manicured :) - my Sunday dawned rainy and slightly lazy. Of course in this case the best thing is to cuddle under a blanket with a book and a cup of tea, which I did for a bit before heading out to lunch.

I was shopping for a gift for a friend of mine on Thursday evening, and after hours of going from store to store and not finding anything she would like, I took a short break and headed to the bookstore to clear my head. I ended up buying a couple of books, and one of them was an amazing edition of E. E. Cummings poems in Bulgarian, published by Жанет 45, which became an instant favorite. The poetry is great (which I knew already), but I was also really impressed by the design of the book and the illustrations by Liuba Haleva. Luxurious paper that feels like satin, a matte laminated cover and thoughtful graphics in red, black, white and gold make the poetry book an experience for all your senses. I loved curling up with it and listening to the rain pattering gently.

Also, I couldn't refrain from sharing a photo of my savory plant - I bought it from a garden store two weeks ago and ever since then it has been growing like crazy, much to my dismay and pleasure, of course. It has brought a definite springtime spirit to my house, and I love it. It smells of new beginnings, and herbs, and nature, and home.

One Design Week 2014: Forum Highlights

Fashion fact of the day: the dress code for this year's One Design Forum was graphic pants and scarves. From years of observation it seems to me that designers and various creative people love scarves, so every year you can see a wide variety of them at the Forum. I think that next year I might do a Fashion @ Design week blog post where I would photograph every person wearing a scarf. It will be like my own little scarf directory.

But let's talk more about the lecturers at the event, not only about the accessories of the audience. I can’t deny that the Forum is my favorite part of Design Week, and every year I look forward to that one or two days of creative ideas. This year, just like some of the previous years, I will write about some of the highlights that I enjoyed and found interesting.

I have always loved tinkering with fonts, for example. Back in high school, I always ended up using some new free font I had found online for my presentations and assignments. I think I was a bit of a design geek back then (and probably still am), and I used every opportunity I got to have fun with fonts. Perhaps this is why I really enjoyed the lecture by TypeTogether, a type foundry by Jose Scaglione from Argentina and Veronika Burian from Prague.

The studio is focused on creating fonts for longer texts, to be used in newspapers, books and magazines, for example, as well as creating fonts that can look good no matter what the quality of the paper or printing is. Some of their well-known fonts are Bree, Adelle, Abril, and Tablet Gothic. For me it was very useful to hear about the challenges that designers face when creating fonts to be printed on bad paper (like newspapers), so that the letters remain legible and with character. It is amazing what a difference of a part of a millimeter in a letter can make when we are talking about fonts and their readability; font creators work on a small scale to create a big impact in terms of how a text is perceived. I have played around with the idea of creating my own font, but I don’t feel competent enough to do it yet. However, this lecture was a step forward. It also pleased the geek in me immensely :)

Another lecture that I found engaging was that by Sven Ehmann from the publishing house Gestalten.  The publisher concentrates on books about cutting-edge visual culture, and as such, its creative director works to set the overall direction of the company’s work, as well as to come up with new topics for books and to decide what projects would go into those books to make them interesting and exciting for the reader. One of Gestalten’s latest books is The Outsiders, which deals with the “refreshing and evolving ethos of today’s smartly successful outdoor and lifestyle entrepreneurs and features interviews with key players from across the outdoor sector.”

The book features a wide variety of points of view on the subject of doing something outside; it is a collection of cool products, interesting outdoor living and apparel companies, new trends in outdoor sports and experiences, beautiful photos and illustrations, acting as an inspiration to those interested in the lifestyle. Head over to Gestalten’s website http://shop.gestalten.com/ to browse through their book collection.

I was also fascinated by the lecture on information design by Catalogtree, a Dutch design studio that specializes in infographics. Information design is such a specific branch of design, and it requires a particular way of thinking, as well as a talent to distill complex trends and data sets into clear and exciting visual images. Not everyone can do that and have such talents, but it seemed to me that the Catalogtree team was quite good at it. I enjoyed hearing about their part in visualizing data for a documentary about trading called "Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box." Also, I liked the Unspeak project that they worked on, which explores how language can manipulate our understanding of events, based on a book by Steven Poole. You can see the project at the following link: http://unspeak.submarinechannel.com/dictionary/.

Several interesting ideas were presented by design duo Studio Swine, who like to travel, but also to recycle, which ultimately leads to culture-specific ecological projects that have the potential to help anyone create design objects out of trash or waste. An issue that they tried to tackle, for example, was plastic waste in the sea that is bad for the fauna and for the fishermen. They devised a little portable furnace and molds that help fishermen made little stools out of the plastic that they catch in their nets. You can see the video below:


Sea Chair from Studio Swine on Vimeo.

Head over to their website http://www.studioswine.com/projects for more projects like this one.

Theodore Ushev showed some great posters from his portfolio, but I really didn’t like how bitter he sounded about everything. Oh, poor graphic designers, selling their work to clients with no taste like hookers sell their bodies, how awful (pretty much what his opinion was). I mean, enough already. It’s a business like any other, and most graphic designers are pretty far from being the misunderstood geniuses that they think they are. It’s a bit of a cliché, the idea of the designer who is so amazing, but who is forced by evil clients to produce ugly projects. Sure, I know from my own experience that you have to make some compromises when working commercially in order to please the client, but I think that if you are such an amazing designer, you will find a way to produce something great even when the client wants something that you don’t agree with. Then again, Mr. Ushev will probably say I am young and naïve :) Although, don’t constraints usually make people look at things in a fresh and new way?

Anyway, Theodore Ushev is now best known for his animated shorts, and you can see some of them here https://www.nfb.ca/explore-all-directors/theodore-ushev

Finally, despite my initial misgivings, I did enjoy Jessica Walsh’s lecture on advertising design and her personal projects. The Forum booklet description of her started with the fact that she is young and beautiful, so you should excuse my reluctance to take her seriously at first. However, she was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed her presentation, which had to do with work and play, and how these two concepts should go hand in hand when you are a designer and/or you work in advertising (and in at least a couple of other spheres as well, probably). She is quite the gutsy young woman, not afraid to put herself out there (naked or not) and do some crazy stuff or turn her relationship attempt into a web/design/blog project (see 40 Days of Dating). By the way, her 40 Days of Dating project will be made into a movie, which lead me and some designers I was with at the Forum with to have a discussion about how it is very important to be at the right place at the right time. If someone makes a project like that one in Bulgaria, people might notice and talk about it, and some TV shows might invite you to speak, but it will probably end there. If you do the same in the US, however, you get on the Today show and then Hollywood comes knocking, buying the rights to your life story for millions of dollars. Location, location, location!

Anyway, I liked some of the work projects that Jessica showed us, such as logo design for a shop called "Story", which changes its theme and decor every six weeks, the Levi’s "We are all workers" billboard, and their overall work on the Aishti and Aizone brands.

We Are All Workers - Levi's Gears Billboard from Satellite Office on Vimeo.


Aizone, Spring Summer 13, Behind the scenes from Sagmeister & Walsh on Vimeo.


Aizone FW13 Behind the Scenes from Sagmeister & Walsh on Vimeo.

One interesting thing that she said was the fact that they only present one idea to the client when they make a pitch, which is very unusual in advertising. Back when I worked in CAS, we always presented the client with more than one idea, I guess both as insurance that if a client really doesn’t like our first idea, we have backups and as a proof that we have put a lot of effort in working on their brief. However, Jessica explained (and I tend to agree with her when I think about it) that when the client sees a couple of things, they usually end up wanting to take one element from one campaign, another from a second campaign and so on, making the final design look like a Frankenstein of sorts, all patched up together and not quite working.


Jessica Walsh from Like Knows Like on Vimeo.

I’ll end this post on this note: it would be great if all of us could find something to do where work=play. Sometimes that works for me, sometimes I can’t manage to do it. How about you?

Highlights from Sofia Design Week 2012: Numen/For Use

Would you call it architecture, design, art, or installation? No matter how you classify the work of Numen/For Use, you would most likely say that it's completely awesome. At least that's what I would say. I'm sure if some critic read what I just wrote, they would frown at the word "awesome" and demand a more sophisticate way of saying the same thing, but for us regular bloggers "awesome" would have to do.

Numen/For Use are, or were, mostly known for their furniture design, but I was very impressed by their installations and theater set design. I'll start with the installations, since they have the most "fun factor" and they completely astound with the simple fact that they are done with nothing more than....wait for it....TAPE! Yes, you heard that right - tape!

The Croatian-Austrian design collective makes amazing architecture-like structures from tape, and these structures go on to become fun-filled playgrounds for the young and old alike. I never would have thought to do anything with tape, but here these people are, making architectonic forms out of the material. The fact that tape is elastic and just gradually stretches or bends if it has to carry heavier loads instead of breaking makes it perfect for people roaming the structure, like you can see on the photos below (the photos are all from the Numen/For Use website - no copyright infringement is intended). The photos are from installations done in Melbourne and Frankfurt. I would have loved to play around in installations like these. How great would it have been to have something like this in Sofia?!

 
Apart from the tape installations, I definitely found Numen/For Use's theater set design very intriguing. You can look at their website for all of their projects, including a set made all of glass and mirrors, but here I'm just going to show you one of their projects, which made a particularly strong impression on me. Again, I think what I was most impressed about was the fact that very simple tools were used to create a very original effect. For a theater production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Zagreb, Numen/For Use created a set made pretty much entirely out of curtains. They played around with the idea that the curtain is what separates the real world in the theater from the imaginary, fantasy world. Here they cut the red curtain into strips, so that they could achieve a smooth and very magical transition between the real world and the story, as well as between the city and the woods, where all the magic and confusion in the play happens. The curtains turn into magically lit trees, with people and fairy creatures moving in, out, around and above, appearing and disappearing like they are truly a part of a dream. Watch the video below and you'll see what I mean.

Head over to the website www.numen.eu/ to enjoy more projects like these.
All photos in these post feature projects by Numen/For Use and belong to them.

Highlights from the Sofia Design Week Forum 2012: Raw Edges Design Studio

It’s that time of the year again! No, it’s not Christmas…It’s Sofia Design Week!

I attended the Sofia Design Week Forum for the first time last year, and I was blown away by some really great presentations, unique projects, and lots and lots of creative design. That’s why this year I was really looking forward to attending the forum again. Unfortunately, I had a Marketing exam scheduled on one of the forum days, so I missed something like three lectures. I was quite annoyed by this development, as you can imagine. Oh well, what can you do…

Anyway, last year I wrote two posts describing some of the interesting ideas and designs that I saw (which you can read here and here), but since I missed some lectures this year, I thought that this time I would do a series of posts highlighting some of the most imaginative and exciting things from what I did see.

 I thought I’d dedicate this first post to Raw Edges Design Studio, a design collaboration that I actually knew of before the forum. In case you don’t know who they are, they are the ones that made the gorgeous parquet floors shown below for Established & Sons, Stella McCartney stores and Design Miami/Basel Global Forum for Design. These beautiful floors in lush colors are featured pretty much on every design blog I’ve read, and it was a real delight to be able to have Yael Mer and Shay Akalay as speakers in this year’s forum.

http://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyear

 

I found quite a lot of their projects very interesting, such as The Pond and Plaid Bench, which you can see on their website. I’ve included a photo of the benches below as well (© 2012 Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay). I am fond of their bright color palette, which is close to what I use in my jewelry and abstract art. I also love their Hole In The Floor shelves for books, which you can also see below. These look simply adorable to a bookworm like me.
http://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyearhttp://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyear

Photos from http://www.raw-edges.com/projects/byyear No copyright infringement is intended. All photos feature work by Raw Edges Design Studio.

SOFIA BREATHES: DESIGN

As promised, this post is about Sofia Breathes: Design, the conclusion of Sofia Design Week 2011. A true summer day, sunny and hot, this past Saturday was a perfect day to spend outside on Shishman Str. In fact, I think half of Sofia was there at one point or another, lounging on the sidewalk or in One More Bar, or otherwise strolling around, taking photos (just like I was), drinking a bottle of organic lemonade, playing Foosball, or looking through the stands and the posters with logo design projects for Sofia as an European Capital of Culture.

All electric transformer kiosks (or switchgear kiosks, or whatever these are called in English) were painted with different images and designs, which was probably my favorite part of Sofia Breathers, along with the window frames turned into white sculptures by studio Lumagi. Check out the photos below (I apologize for the deep shadows and bright areas, but it was around 3 in the afternoon when I shot these, and the light was far from optimal).

I'm loving the bird theme here (what a surprise..hehe)


This one is also a favorite of mine. It's so summery!

The one with the painting of the square in front of the National Theater is just plain awesome! That's also my favorite place in Sofia.


Stands for clothes by independent designers:

One of the Lumagi "windows" and a real window of The Gourmet House, which is still quite cool:

The handmade paper workshop was a nice touch. It's good for kids to know how things are made!

HIGHLIGHTS FROM SOFIA DESIGN WEEK 2011 - SEMINAR DAY 2

Since I started yesterday's post about the first seminar day of Sofia Design Week with a small fashion review, I thought I'd continue the pattern and do this again today. Day 2 was the day of scarves and iPhones. You're bound to wonder why I'm referring to the iPhone as part of my so-called "fashion review," and my answer is that at this point I believe that for many people the iPhone is more of a fashion statement than anything else, or at least a kind of statement that doesn't have that much to do with functionality. Of course, from a design standpoint, the iPhone is a great choice, so I guess what I want to say is that I'm not judging but merely observing a trend. I loved all the scarves, of course, since I am a scarf person myself, and also the handmade earrings, again for the obvious reasons.

The seminar day started with a lecture by Michael Marriott, who talked about objects, what they mean, and the stories they tell. He talked about the idea that the way people put together objects tells an even more complex and rich story, which I found to be something that I can agree with. He talked about the poetry of the "misuse" of objects, or the beauty and humor that can be seen in the way people use objects outside of their original purpose - rubber boots as door stops, bottles as chairs, and so on.

The second lecture was focused on creating visual identities for companies and institutions and was presented by Walter Bohatsch and Julia Krauth from Bohatsch und Partner. The projects that they presented were great illustrations of excellent design that employs the grid system, careful selection of type, and very successful use of patterns that are especially created for their clients with the specific project in mind. Even the logos that they design are usually formed in such a way that they can be used and stacked to produce a pattern, which I thought was very interesting. I especially enjoyed their work on Schulzentrum Krems and Bad Radkersburg.


It's a pity that the website of Bohatsch und Partners doesn't work at the moment, but hopefully in the future you would be able to browse through and see all the work they did for the school center - from wallpaper through pictograms and maps to outdoor signage - as well as their work of other clients, such as the mountain resort Arlberg.

Krassen Krestev's lecture on the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet was definitely one of the high points of the day. Krassen is an excellent presenter, and his lecture was exciting both visually and intellectually. He presented some very interesting characteristics of the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet in comparison with the Russian Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets that I had never thought about before. It turns out that the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is more readable and dynamic than its Russian counterpart, even if it is not as efficient in terms of the space it uses. A curious tidbit to learn was that the letter t, or "m" in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet as compared to the "т" in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, is the one that makes the text take up more space. The conclusion was that the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet has a strong identity that has to be protected by all of us; it is the kind of legacy that should not be left in the past.


Here is one of Krassen Krestev's fonts called DTL Paradox BG, which is an example of Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet.

Nelly Ben Hayoun's lecture about interactions design was so much fun, not only because of the projects themselves, but also because of the amazing enthusiasm of the artist. Nelly focuses on recreating thrilling experiences - seeing a volcano erupt in your living room, living through a liftoff into space by sitting on a special chair, experiencing a sonic boom in a balloon tunnel that mimics the Kamioka neutrino observatory.


"The Other Volcano"

"Super K Sonic BOOOOum"
Photos: www.nellyben.com

Dessislava Vardjieva-Eckhardt took us through some design projects that her students at the School of Visual Arts in Leipzig are working on, followed by the guys from Rich Brilliant Willing, who talked about some of their designs using ready-made components. They use off-the-shelf and ready-made parts to design their furniture and just tweak these components to create design objects. It was DIY turned into a design business, which I thought was a very nice idea.

The seminar concluded with a lecture by Konstantin Grcic that contained lots of images of chairs:). It was a nice overview of the evolution, or rather the life and variety, of chairs throughout the years, followed by some of his designs of chairs.

All in all, this was definitely a great, informative, and fun day of design lectures. Still, Sofia Design Week is just beginning, so there's lots more to see in the coming week. I am also looking forward to its conclusion next Saturday with a "Sofia Breathes" day of design workshops on Shishman Street, which will be closed for traffic. See you all then!

HIGHLIGHTS FROM SOFIA DESIGN WEEK 2011 - SEMINAR DAY 1

Day 1 of this year's Sofia Design Week Seminar was cloudy and cold, but that did not stop it from being quite interesting and exciting. It was a day of cool bags and Converse sneakers, as I think that for the most part everyone from the audience was wearing one or the other, or sometimes both. Seriously, the number of great bags I saw today was staggering; even the guys had very cool bags. The Converse sneakers definitely seem to be back in style among creatives, although this makes me wonder whether I can count myself as a creative person if I don't actually own a pair...the thought is worrying:) Anyway, I guess it was fitting, since the cherry of the cake in the first seminar day was actually an awesome interactive campaign that the studio Perfect Fools has created for none other than, yes, Converse! Check out just one of the videos featuring the Converse screen of sneakers, where each sneaker is a pixel:



Most of the product designers, such as Matali Crasset and Ding 3000 studio were circling around the idea of the multifunctional and convertible object that reflects the fact that life is always changing - a chair that turns into a table, a coaster for a small pot that flips and turns into a coaster for a big pot that looks very different are just a few of the objects mentioned. Even Johanna Agerman Ross, who is the creator of the new biannual magazine Disegno, talked about this idea of the double-purpose object. I loved Ding 3000's ideas about humor in design. I do believe that people should have fun and it's a good way to bring some designers back to Earth, since there are a few out there who take themselves way too seriously. The "Dividing the Cake" cake mold was one of my favorite objects stemming from the idea of humor in design. It has different size pieces because some people want a smaller piece and some want a bigger piece, and it's just not practical to cut a cake in pieces that are the same size:).

Photo by Ding 3000: S-XL Cake


Photo by Ding 3000: INENDOUT Coaster

I enjoyed Thomas Feichtner's design of a crystal chandelier and wine glasses.


Photo: thomasfeichtner.com

David Pearson's lecture on book design and book covers was refreshing, funny and full of great visuals, and it was one of my favorites from today, since I just love books. Head over to his website by clicking on his name in the previous sentence and make sure you browse around, because there are some great book covers there. After him, Gerard Saint from Big Active took us to the world of design for the music industry, and I was very excited to find out that Big Active worked on Keane's Under the Iron Sea visuals, which are usually on every blogger's list of great CD covers.

Book Cover Designs by David Pearson


Photos: davidpearsondesign.com

Keane - Under the Iron Sea

Photo: bigactive.com

There were so many great ideas and products that were presented today that it's impossible to put them all down in a blog post, but I hope that the ones I've mentioned would still be inspiring for you and will give you a taste of what the first day of the seminar was like! I'm sooo looking forward to Day 2!