Bompas & Parr design spectacular food experiences with a distinctly architectural edge. Exploring how the taste of food is ‘altered through synaesthesia, performance and setting’ Bompas & Parr also design and manufacturer bespoke jelly moulds and kitchenalia. Truly marvellous!
Sam Bompas & Harry Parr have worked with architects including Lord Foster and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners designing jellies for a 2000 person Jelly Banquet at UCL, provided expertise for Heston Blumenthals recent series Feast and worked with the ICA to transform Peter Greenaways The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover for a scratch n sniff event introduced by the director. Quite the career for making jelly, wouldn’t you say?
The lovely people at Crane.tv took some time out to meet one half of Bompas and Parr. Here, Sam Bompas explains their latest venture, a pop-up gum factory open to the public, and talks about making magic with food – including a gin cloud. Yum.
For over 50 years, one man has been shaping the visual language of our urban landscape from parking meters, to trains, to taxis and even giving us a camera to record these iconic designs with. This man is Kenneth Grange.
With a retrospective exhibition at the Design Museum, we’re reminded just how much he has designed over his long career and even designing products that we will be seeing in our towns and villages for many years more to come.
In 1972 Kenneth Grange, with Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes and Mervyn Kurlansky established the world-famous multi-disciplinary design consultancy Pentagram. This partnership was responsible for producing the products, architecture, furniture, interiors and identities of household names across the world.
Grange later worked with companies such as Kodak, Kenwood and Morphy Richards along with public projects like the Intercity 125 train which changed the way we traveled forever. In recent history, the redesign of London’s taxicab has been a hugely successful product, keeping a silhouette that many tourists love to see but bringing it up-to-date with modern cars was key to the success. I heard him speak about this project recalling the conversations that the car was briefed to look radically different and closer in style to the NYC cabs, but Grange resisted and reminded us that this car is something we should celebrate and ‘own’.
Grange has even redesigned the trusty rural post box for Royal Mail, with many of these boxes previously embedding themselves in walls or buildings, a simpler solution was clearly needed and his box keeps the pillar-box red colour that we love but, in the same way as the taxi changed, the shape and materials have been updated.
The exhibition runs from 20 July until 30 October 2011 at London’s Design Museum and for all product geeks and urban landscape fans, this is a must-see to discover more about the man who gave us these products.
Present Joys is a project by Supermundane… the pseudonym of Rob Lowe, a multi-disciplined creative who works as a graphic designer, artist, illustrator, typographer, and art director in London, England.
Selling a very-limited selection of prints from Rob Lowe and other artist-designers around the world, Present Joys has fast become one of my favourite sites to find an original purchase.
Extra Ordinary is a booklet by Present Joys with short stories that tell a very intriguing life. The challenge is to tell an entire story in as few words as possible…
“I’ve never done this kind of thing before.” he proclaimed honestly. But of course she couldn’t reply, not with the tape over her mouth.
…
Without hesitation, Jim said Thursday. Only he knew he was thinking Tuesday all along.
Idiot stories was a later booklet with some longer stories but equally as amusing and intriguing…
Thanks to a report from Seymourpowell, one of the world’s leading design and innovation companies, I was able to get a great insight into the news flowing out of Milan Furniture Fair 2011.
Wining and miniature dining me through their key trends for the future, they gave me plenty to share at ATELIERTALLY.
“For designers and trend researchers alike, all roads lead to Milan. A lighthouse which illuminates the future of design, Milan is both geographically and aesthetically the centre of the emerging design universe; the cultural zeitgeist forms here first”
- Richard Seymour
Having raised the bar to a height that even they could not maintain, Established & Sons have brought us timeless design from the leaders of technology and style, outlandish editions from some of the most famous product designers and now putting their hand to everyday objects with no focus on the superstar names that are usually attached to their collections.
Seymourpowell tells us that we are “not looking for superstars anymore” and Established & Sons have responded to this with a collection that is more affordable, more useful and less focus on the designer who created it.
So much so that the products are not even identified by the designer leaving the choice to buy it down to whether it serves a purpose, looks beautiful and fits in with your life.
How this collection sits alongside products from Maarten Baas is a wonder, but certainly this company is responding to the wide range of consumers for design and taking into consideration the reward that can come from creating a product range that is set to sell in volume.
I am encouraged by this new direction, even if it is only an offshoot rather than a U-turn and pleased to see a company that has found its voice with the press and now the manufacturing strength that can push through into mass-producing good design.
Charlotte and Peter Fiell have been making waves in the publishing industry for many years, since they were in charge of the design books for Taschen, creating some of the most memorable books of our generation.
One year ago at the London Book Fair, they shocked everyone by launching their own publishing house, Fiell.
Today, they are back at the London Book Fair showing everyone just how far they have come in the past year and that this was a move that paid off in spades. I took a little time out with Charlotte and Peter to discuss this success…
ATELIER TALLY: Almost one year on, has the launch been as successful as you had hoped?
Fiell: Obviously starting up in the midst of a recession isn’t easy, but actually the first year has been a pretty good one considering the tight ship we are having to run. We now have a great team in place to move forward with and we have a number of books out in the wild, which is helping us gain traction. We realise it is going to take time to build up our list and also the Fiell brand, but considering it has only been a year we think we are doing pretty well. It is just frustrating because we would love to do so much more, but we are currently constrained by having to grow organically one step at a time.
AT: How has the industry accepted your venture. Do they feel it was a bold move considering the economic climate?
F: We are basically content providers and unlike traditional publishers we don’t see ourselves tied to print, although we still believe in the printed page. We certainly have had a lot of good feedback from book distributors and booksellers who like the fact that our books are quite innovative and have more content and better images than most other illustrated books out there. We are currently developing a range of digital products alongside our print books and think that this is going to be a significant area for us because our books are so accessible yet visually and information rich.
AT: Which book has been the most successful for sales and which has been more critically acclaimed that you have produced at Fiell?
F: Our bestselling book at the moment is “Cult-ure” by Rian Hughes, which is a graphically impactful and thought-provoking exploration of media convergence in the digital age. The book that has had the most critical acclaim, however, has been “Tools for Living: A Sourcebook of Iconic Designs for the Home”, which was recently named “Best New Home Design Book” by Jay Johnson at Home Design Examiner.
AT: If there is one thing that has surprised you the most from ‘going it alone’ what would you say that was?
F: The very long hours and the incredible amount of stress. It is certainly not a 9 to 5 job, but it is also good to be doing something that we really care about and feel is making a difference.
AT: You use your blog as a way to share things you like, do you find that this is an essential tool or something you enjoy to post to occasionally?
F: Our blog is a very important way for us to convey information about our books, but also it is a means by which we can communicate about other things we find interesting, whether it is a new poster campaign or the world’s first-ever home gaming console.
AT: You talked to Wallpaper* last year about digital publishing being something that you would have to consider in the future, are plans moving along for this?
F: We are working closely with a number of major digital developers and will have some excellent digital products coming soon to a device near you.
AT: Being a very visual publisher, I imagine you choose the paper stock incredibly carefully to make the most of the images… if you publish to an iPad or Kindle, do you make any special considerations for how the images will be displayed on these and is this a worry for you?
F: Good question, we are actually working on this very issue at the moment!
AT: You describe yourself as a global publisher, have you found that sales are increasing in countries that you previously were not expecting to see, or is it a very stable market?
F: International sales are pretty much as we expected, but these can vary a lot depending on the book. We have a couple of new titles in the pipeline that could easily surprise us, especially in less well-developed markets such as Brazil and Japan.
AT: Finally, I work in the design industry and have my favourite objects, including the wonderful Vitsœ shelving which your office walls are adorned with, but I wondered after all of these books if there was one object that really stood out to you as your favourite… and of course I am sure you have different ideas, so it would be great to hear from both of you on this.
Charlotte Fiell: It has to be any chair by Pierre Paulin, because they are just so comfortable and with their sculptural forms they look great in any interior setting. [see upholstered chairs in attached photos]
Peter Fiell: The product I really enjoy using every single day is the Ciacapo teapot by Kazuhiko Tomita. As a Japanese designer working in Milan, Tomita has developed a wonderful design language that synthesizes cultural influences from both the East and the West. His teapot for example references the traditional Japanese tetsubin, but with a slight Italian quirkiness. It’s very poetic, yet very functional. I love it.
Reuters talked to them both upon the launch of the company. Watch the video interview…
Fiell publishing will be at the London Book Fair from 11 to 13 April 2011. Find them at stand i705.
Chilean DJ Matias Aguayo caught my eye this week with his music video for ‘Ritmo Juarez’, so I wanted to share a couple of great tracks from him and some really nice visuals…
Born in 1973, Matias is one of the few artist that can nowadays claim true originality in the music he creates, with a unique vision that since its first inception has been challenging the common expectations on electronic music performers and composers.
