Best in Show 2011

February 1st, 2011

"Diaspar" (2010) by Rafe Copeland from the upcoming Best in Show 2011 exhibition at Objectspace. Objectspace's Best in Show exhib­i­tion (on from 29 Janu­ary 2011 — 24 Feb­ru­ary 2011) has become an annual fix­ture. Inaug­ur­ated in 2005, its aim is to show­case a cur­ated selec­tion of tal­ent emer­ging from ter­tiary insti­tu­tions around New Zea­l­and. Areas of prac­tice covered in 2011 include graphic design, digital design, tex­tiles, ceram­ics, con­tem­por­ary jew­ellery and fur­niture. Object­space dir­ector Philip Clarke says that two of this year’s fea­tured makers have been inde­pend­ently selec­ted to rep­res­ent New Zea­l­and in Munich, at the pres­ti­gi­ous Tal­ente 2011 along with other young makers fea­tured in earlier Best in Show exhibitions.

Each Best in Show exhib­itor will dis­play either a lim­ited edi­tion, one-off, or spe­cial­ist type of pro­duc­tion and this often entails few com­prom­ises when it comes to con­struc­tion mater­i­als, aes­thetic decisions and other artistic con­cerns. Some of the con­cepts addressed include "the energy within objects; ran­dom­ness; con­trasts and pur­poses within nat­ural mater­i­als; pop­u­lar tra­di­tions; class; graf­fiti; com­mer­cial brand­ing; digital com­mu­nic­a­tion; apo­ca­lypse; ruins; obsol­es­cence; nur­tur­ing; growth; and the visual lan­guage of exper­i­mental music."

Best in Show 2011 fea­tures gradu­ates from: AUT Uni­ver­sity (Te Wananga Aronui o Tamaki Tamaki Makaurau), Hungry Creek Art and Craft School, Manukau School of Visual Arts (Te Whare Takiura o Manukau), Mas­sey Uni­ver­sity (Te Kun­enga ki Pure­huroa), Unitec Depart­ment of Design and Visual Arts (Te Whare Wananga o Wair­aka), Whitireia (Te Kura Mata­tini o Whitireia).

More info at Object­space web­site.

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Car­son Returns

January 24th, 2011

Graphic design after print: A day with David Carson.

The Image Col­lege founder Gary Hew­lett is on a mis­sion to provide pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment oppor­tun­it­ies for visual cre­at­ive pro­fes­sion­als in New Zea­l­and. His aim is to use the world's finest expo­nents in each field as speak­ers, and insist that each presenter talks about a spe­cific area for which they are well known. One of his first "sign­ings" is “Father of Grunge” David Car­son, who most recently, as far as we know, vis­ited Auck­land for Semi-Permanent '09.

As Hew­lett says, people are read­ing less and less and formats are chan­ging. "How do you use design get their atten­tion? David will give you the free­dom to be your­self. To pro­duce work that reflects your per­son­al­ity and which will make you stand out in the crowd. He will talk about com­mu­nic­a­tion. Inter­pret­a­tion of the client's mes­sage and their audi­ence, and how to use design and typo­p­graphy to com­mu­nic­ate the mes­sage before the viewer even gets to the words. He will be show­cas­ing his latest work, and will show you how to adapt your style to the chal­lenges of the new dec­ade. He will instill pas­sion in you. A pas­sion that will ulti­mately improve your work and delight your cli­ents. This will be one of the best invest­ments you can make in upskilling your­self in 2011. You will learn how you can bring your work up to date, kick­ing and screaming."

Click here for book­ing info. Places are lim­ited. There is an early bird dis­count and Design­ers Insti­tute mem­ber dis­count available.

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Yikes! 2011 Brit Insur­ance Design Awards

January 19th, 2011

Short­l­ist for Brit­ish Design Awards includes YikeBike.

Show­cas­ing a year in design, the fourth annual Brit Insur­ance Design Awards fea­tures an inter­na­tional short­l­ist of innov­at­ive and enga­ging designs from around the world and across seven cat­egor­ies (archi­tec­ture, fash­ion, fur­niture, graph­ics, inter­act­ive, product and trans­port). Final­ists include Yves Behar’s Swarovski Chan­deliers, con­crete Emer­gency Shel­ters designed in Wales, the Apple iPad, six dif­fer­ent app's (includ­ing Angry Birds), the UK Pavil­ion at the Shang­hai Expo – and the New Zealand-designed YikeBike. Con­grat­u­la­tions to YikeBike founder Grant Ryan, and good luck…

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Recon­struc­ted Furniture

December 10th, 2010

There they go, again… mak­ing an exhib­i­tion of themselves…

Fans of recon­struc­ted fur­niture pieces with and objet d'art will be happy to hear that the Boiler Room crew is back with what looks to be another superb col­lec­tion of one-off indus­trial cre­ations. There's a taster below of pieces being exhib­ited at Shed 9 (90 Welles­ley Street, Auck­land,entrance through Deus], but for a longer look at Boiler Room items head over here. The exhib­i­tion is on until 21 Dec. Read More »

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Made Some­thing

December 8th, 2010

A short report on Make Some­thing, a col­lab­or­at­ive art and design pro­ject organ­ised by graphic designer Bevan Tonks.

An overview of the exhibition at Achilles House, Auckland. Photgraph (c) Phillip Simpson.

An over­view of the exhib­i­tion at Achilles House, Auck­land. Phot­graph © Phil­lip Simpson.

One never knows what to expect with art pro­jects, but it's always nice to have one's expect­a­tions well and truly exceeded. Thus it was with the Bevan Tonks-organised Make Some­thing, which was on show in the dying stages of Novem­ber at Achilles House, down­town Auck­land. As the pho­to­graphs, which are almost art­works in them­selves, shot by Phil­lip Simpson clearly demon­strate, this was a won­der­ful set­ting for some won­der­fully var­ied col­lab­or­at­ive pieces. Tonks, who col­lab­or­ated with archi­tect Davor Popadich on a 'chair' pro­ject called Got Your Back was impressed with the response to the exhib­i­tion – 174 people turned up on open­ing night to view the col­lab­or­a­tions between the design­ers and chosen col­lab­or­at­ors. Read More »

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Lucky Brake

November 30th, 2010

Archi­tec­ture New Zea­l­and editor John Walsh rumin­ates on Brian Brake: Lens on the World, pub­lished to coin­cide with an exhib­i­tion of the same name. Review pub­lished in ProDesign 109, with addi­tional images cour­tesy of Te Papa Pic­ture Lib­rary and Brian Brake Estate.

This hand­some book, pub­lished to accom­pany a Te Papa exhib­i­tion, chron­icles the pro­fes­sional career of New Zealand’s con­nec­tion to the glam­or­ous world of mid-century photo-journalism. Brian Brake (1927 – 88) was a tal­en­ted crafts­man — he was sus­pi­cious of the appel­la­tion ‘art’ as applied to pho­to­graphy — who began his career at a time when any cre­at­ive per­son had to leave New Zea­l­and to sat­isfy his ambi­tion. In the 1950s he headed to Lon­don, and a chance encounter at the Leitz cam­era fact­ory in Ger­many led to his join­ing the fam­ous Mag­num agency, the coöper­at­ive foun­ded by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. ‘Lucky Brake’, as his friends called him, was off and run­ning. For 20 years he trav­elled the world on assign­ment for the great pictorial magazines such as Life and Look.

Read More »

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Bean There: Adven­tures in Infographics

November 29th, 2010

I enjoy a good infographic as much as the next per­son, but this one, obtained from Stephen Richard­son, of Par­into t-shirt fame, almost slipped under the radar (there's noth­ing like a com­puter upgrade to spur on some re-organisation of slack mater­ial fil­ing tendencies).

Richard­son says the poster, below (and a lim­ited edi­tion t-shirt run), was designed in con­junc­tion with Mike Murphy. Richard­son also illus­trated the The Story of Kokako, in which the jour­ney of the har­ves­ted cof­fee under­takes from the plant­a­tions in South Amer­ica to it's real­iz­a­tion as a cup of cof­fee, in a retro 1950's story­book style.

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Grafitti Archi­tec­ture

November 27th, 2010

Graf­fiti archi­tec­ture — "grungy and streetwise" — was how the New Zea­l­and Insti­tute of Archi­tects summed up the slender Perry Architects-designed apart­ment build­ing on Cuba Street. Here at ProDesign, how­ever, we tend to think that the building's refine­ment is accen­tu­ated by another form of letter-based adorn­ment — in this case comes a typo­graph­ical slash sound sculp­ture by Cath­er­ine Griffiths.

ProDesign pub­lished a review on this Best Design Awards bronze-winning pro­ject a few months ago, but we recently found some addi­tional images, shot by pho­to­grapher Paul McCredie, that we didn't run — here now, for your vei­wing pleas­ure, after the jump.

— Michael Bar­rett Read More »

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The Big Picture

November 26th, 2010

There's been a lot of interest in the last ProDesign cover, so for those inter­ested, here's the full ver­sion of the image sup­plied to us by Apro­pos, which was part of a cam­paign for Post-it called Love My Mum. Check out the vid below to see the Post-it mosaic being cre­ated on the win­dow of Whit­coulls, Queen St.

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Showreel Fri­day

November 26th, 2010

Couple of free Fri­day minutes on your hands today? Well, take a trip down whimsy lane cour­tesy of National Park. Showreels can some­times be a bit more miss than hit, but National Park has nailed this one. Charm­ing, hon­est and hand-made indeed. National Parker Stef­fen Kreft was recently one of the many well-received par­ti­cipants at the Blast sym­posium in Wel­ling­ton earlier in the month. More on that in the next issue of ProDesign. Think you've got a great showreel? Let us know…

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