London Design Festival

I'm just back  from the London Design Festival and I managed to get through quite a lot while I was over . We ( I had the fine company of Mrs Seven ) started on Friday at 100% Design in Earls Court. Then on to Tent at the old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Saturday morning was set aside for visiting Tramshed in Shoreditch. The One Room Hotel was the highlight of the remainder of Saturday. On Friday night we had dinner at Les Trois Garcons and drinks at Lounge Lover and finally home to The Hoxton Hotel. I will get through the highlights of the trip but first up its the work of Zoe Murphy who exhibited at Tent. She Upcycles pieces of furniture she comes across using screen printed designs based on her home town of Margate. The work had a lovely crisp printed and lacquered finish to it. Mid Century Modern brought back to vibrant life.

Upcycled Furniture by Zoe Murphy at Tent.


Pictures Via Zoe Murphy

About Face

I watched a great programme recently on BBC, All the young dudes Pop and Fashion. It traced the connection of music and fashion through the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties and revisited tribal looks from Skinheads and Glam through New Romantic to Brit pop. The salient moments were Slade in their Skinhead Bover Boots phase,
(A young Noddy Holder with a crew cut was quite a revelation) and Jarvis Cocker confessing that the best pair of trousers he ever had he found in a skip.

The whole programme got me thinking about the connections between music and design. As the programme covered the eighties The Face magazine was mentioned. The Face was perhaps the best example of the almost symbiotic connection between cutting edge iconoclastic graphic design and new music.

Neville Brody was the ground breaking art director at The Face from 1981 till 1986. His creative use of typography and imagery set a new standard in magazine design and spawned a host of imitators The Face continued on after he left until 2004 when it ceased publication and by then it had lost its edge.

Check out some more of the covers

Decal wall graphics by Blik

Blik the wall decal people have joined up with eBoy, to bring out these funky cityscape graphics the range is e-city and they come as self adhesive  vinyl decals. Tokyo featured is the first city in the range. Thanks to the people at Mocoloco for bringing these to my attention.

Jazz Design Film

Following on from yesterdays post this video clip was brought to
my attention by a good friend of mine. The Director is Bante and the film is just too smooth.
Enjoy it !

Hi-Fi by Bante on Vimeo.

Jazz Design

I've always been a fan of sharp suited Jazz. I mean the single breasted three button up 1950s type.
Last year I was lucky enough to visit the Blue Note Club in New York. The music was great but the interior design of the club wasn't remarkable.

Blue Note Records was home to what I might call Designers Jazz, pointed Bebop and Hard bop. The label released Vinyl by Jazz greats such as Freddie Hubbard and Donald Byrd. Blue Note employed a fantastic Graphic Designer Reid Miles to design  the cover art for these albums. He worked with the Photographer and co founder of Blue Note, Francis Wolff. I love Miles's combination of sparse colourful graphic blocks, sans serif type and moody session photography. His work was influenced by the Bauhaus school and for me its a great design interpretation of the music. For more on Blue Note cover design have a look at this Japanese site.

 

Shrigley

Check out the full Shrigley

The Talented Mr Shrigley

David Shrigley is an artist I always come back to. He works on paper and makes photographs. The work successfully and succinctly uses the written word to express the emotions of someone. Whether this someone is Shrigley or an figment of his imagination I don't know. I'd love to use some of the photographs as part of a design.