Blog / Seen & found

Blood, Sweat & 11 Years. 11-16th September at Dray Walk.

An exhibition of the past 11 years worth of work to come out of the design studio Build.  I can’t wait!

I just couldn’t resist making an Olympic themed post.  I am lucky enough to have a view of the stadium from my living room window, from which we were treated to a fabulous firework display on opening ceremony night, and this week I went along to see the Mens 3m Springboard Diving semi-final in the Aquatic centre designed by Zaha Hadid.  The atmosphere was great, huge roars from the crowd for GB diver Chris Mears, but what I really want to talk about is the venue.

Much has been written already about the design effort for London 2012, and my personal opinion is that it has been a mixed bag.  I’m still not a fan of the logo although it has become less offensive with familiarity, the posters I thought were really weak, the colouring inside the venues however looks great really fresh and clean and I love Stella McCartney’s outfits for team GB. But what really annoys me is that the various design elements just don’t feel like they belong, there is a lack of overriding theme.

But without a doubt my favourite piece of design is the Aquatic Centre.  It is a crying shame about the temporary wings for the extra Olympic spectators but I accept it is practical and at a time of recession I am very pleased to see the government making frugal decisions. The curves of the building both outside and inside are beautiful and the finish on the building is elegant.  My biggest surprise on entering the building was the interior, the sweeping curves around the pool and the sculptural diving platforms cast out of concrete are stunning.  Below is a little snap I took on the day but I recommend checking out the images of the building including how it will look once the temporary seating blocks are removed over on Zaha Hadid’s website.

Splash!

I love the work of Hey a Barcelona based design studio.  Really great bold graphics and use of colour.

Build are without a doubt one of my favourite design studios, and they’ve just updated their website with a new navigation and new work.  http://wearebuild.com

I love the simplicity of and elegance of this work by artist/illustrator Liam Stevens.

I love these photographs made by artist Jim Sanborn.  Light is projected onto a landscape revealing its topography and then photographed at night with long exposures.  The result is something that looks almost computer generated and surreal feeling.

In 2010 Ben Barry created the design work for the Facebook f8 conference with a variety of techniques including generative programming for the projections used during events and at the aftershow party.  The most impressive thing is that he learnt Processing just for the project showing just how easy it is to learn and apply to real projects.

For the 2011 conference the entire graphic system was developed using Processing.

At university I went through a phase of making monochrome paintings and still love them today.  For me a plane of colour is the purest expression of an enjoyment of seeing.  It’s absorbing and uplifting and not at all limiting.  One of my biggest ‘ah ha’ moments came when reading the thoughts of Belgian artist Marthe Wéry, who said that the more restrictions or rules she placed upon her practice the more options opened up and she was free to be creative within the boundaries. Something that I think applies to most other practices as well, especially design.

I was reminded of my love of monochormes the other day when I came across this series of sky photographs by Eric Cahan.  I hope you enjoy them too.

I was simply transfixed when I came across this interactive light installation by creative collective rAndom international. Such a shame it was only on display in Switzerland…

Kit Webster is a new media installation artist and composer from Melbourne, Australia.  His videos show incredible light and sound shows that play with perspective and illusion.  My personal favourite is Enigmatica shown below.  Check out more of his work on his website and on Vimeo.

I just love these crazy brightly coloured patterned vinyl records from AI.  The images below are from the anniversary special album When I Was Ten available to buy from Bleep. Beautiful.

Series of sound and visual code experiments.  A team of coders posted an experiment every day in September last year, each post was tagged with ‘hackpact‘, here are the results from Gabor Papp.

This is the experiment posted for day 22.  Check out the rest on his site.