Olympic Torch Evolution

The New York Times article on the design on the olympic torch over the years is fascinating. ( Via core 77 ), is worth reading, if only for the images. I can only imagine how many people are involved in approving such designs, ( an we think we have it bad!). In design, new isn't always best - but sometimes, it is. Evolution, sometimes can be subjective - or stunning.

BEYOND TREND - the Book: Now at your local bookstore, worldwide

OK, it's not about plants, but it is about design!

I think what is most different about this book, is that this is the book I wanted to buy. This is a book about trends, about the future of design, written not by a marketer, or a business person, but by a designer - a creative's vision on why the future is so hard to design.

It's not negative, it's optimistic ( for creative people). Basically, it's easy today for ANYONE to call themselves a designer, heck, they can buy a computer, buy the software to design a logo, and buy the fonts, and the best thing is, the computer comes with all of the colors you would every need!


At Home Depot, on a Saturday morning, young house mates choose color palettes themselves, to design their own space. On TV, reality shows pit everyday people in designing against each other, DIY has become a trend, and design is suffering for it. Design today is trivialized, diluted, and yet, it has never been in such demand by big-business.

Mass retail now knows that 'Design sells', Target and competitor, Wal Mart know the secret, heck, we are even fooled and challenge ourselves to identify the differences between a TV commercial from JC PEnny, Sears and Target - they all start to look the same.....so what's next? And Is there a next? Or, can there always be a new 'next
?

Those are the sort thoughts that keep designers up at night, and this is what my book BEYOND TREND is all about.

Please consider picking it up, you might enjoy the 200 pictures, or the quick and hopefully, easy read!


Thanks


BEYOND TREND - How To Innovate In An Over-Designed World by Matt Mattus hit's the shelves in bookstores and your fav. online book stores from Borders to Amazon to Barnes and Noble in the States, to Kinokuniya in Japan, and Asia, David and Charles in the UK, and, well, it seems most major retailers from Wal Mart to Target. ( eeek ).

A little more about BEYOND TREND.

I was asked by the publishers of ID magazine, HOW magazine and PRINT magazine, F & W Publications ( also the publishers of HORTICULTURE now, strangely enough!) to write a book about design trends and the future of design, something that I speak about at design conferences, and what I do, at Hasbro, as a Visual Brand Strategist.

The result, this little hardcover book with over 200 color images of everything from Sir Norman Foster's architecture to Zaha Hadid's renderings for the 2012 Olympics to Hand bag designer Kate Spade and everything in between. Visual design today is becoming boring, as is gardening, I must say. We live in a world where we are obsessed with the idea of 'New', and trends seem to come and go faster than ever before. As a trend hunter, I was being asked, "what is next?", and after traveling the world, I had to say " not much". But that was not the entire story.

BEYOND TREND examines my journey through this realization of discovery. As I edited the visual sameness searching for the next, hot color. What I discovered surprised me. Maybe you will find the read and the visual ride exciting too.

Juxtaposition -I Heart Paige Russell

RV's and 4 x 4 vessels
I love it when I discover something that feels both new, and familiar. Meet designer Paige Russell, and her funny and beautifully modern ceramic work, as featured on her ETSY store.

Talk about must-have. Her Bad Beaver vase, is on my wish list, and certainly the entire set of 4x4 and RV vessels are too. ( not to mention the paint-by-number backdrop, which perfectly shows off her pieces, and would be a requirement for display. After all, the only problem with this work would be where to actually 'display' them, for they are more art, than object, and they demand vintage wood paneling or paint-by-number, certainly.


Bad Beaver Vase by Paige Russell

A feature animated film on a Mac?

This August, check out Sita Sings the Blues, a remarkable achievement created by one amazing woman, who WIRED magazine calls "A One Woman Pixar". Meet Nina Paley, a woman who not only designed and created a feature animated film, she did it at home, on her Mac. Although animation is not new to Nina, since she is a longtime veteran of syndicated comic strips, creating "Fluff" (Universal Press Syndicate), "The Hots" (King Features), and her own alternative weekly "Nina's Adventures." Things changed in 1998 when she began making independent animated festival films, including the controversial yet popular environmental short, "The Stork."
In 2002 Nina followed her then-husband to Trivandrum, India, where she read her first Ramayana. This inspired her first feature, Sita Sings the Blues, which she animated and produced single-handedly over the course of 5 years on a home computer. Nina teaches at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan and is a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow.

Now, her greatest achievement yet, is winning major awards at film festvals around the world. Sita Sings the Blues is a story about Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."

The art is amazing, stunning even. I can't wait to see it myself for many reasons. The artist in me wants to be inspired by the visuals, the girl in me wants to be moved by the story, and the animation director in me wants a kick in the ass to go make my own film!

INFLUENCE - James Welling

I hate stating this but as a designer and an artist...more and more frequently I am finding contemporary art boring.

Certainly not influencial and rarely exciting me.

But then, along comes hope......a book by photographer James Welling.

If you are lucky enough to live in NYC, check out the Donald Young Gallery, if not, certainly buy his book which should be in any library of a curious designer.


James Wellings' latest images seem at first to be influenced by another movement we are all so familiar with - the vector floral sillo's seen everywhere.....but his unique effect of using shadow and natural form combine to create a surprisingly fresh expression. Surely, this will be ripped off in a plethora of homage's over the next few years, but steal it now, while it is still new!

Retronation

A Joe PItt title card for Nick

Vintage Ray Payton illustrations


I don't know about you, but I can't can't count how many projects get dismissed by 'clients' because they slam-down-the-stamp of RETRO on them. What the hell? First of all, it's not all that simple, and second of all, it's not really retro, it's today.AND, yeah, there is a huge difference between retro and 'informed by movements of the past. Besides, there is no movement today, other than the extreme luxury for talented people to choose from the palette of history, much like new chef's today can mine the past and merge influences- influences that may, or may not 'work' but which also may fuse brilliantly. Dismissing something as merely retro frustrates the crap out of me.

I frequently, if not constantly, find myself fighting the future...the future of the past. I mean, a future which unescapably MUST include the past. As an artist, designer/whatever I am, the past, is what feeds style today, and any of you who create for a living, undoubtedly know this-it all comes down to three things: the influence you you choose to inform you, the reason WHY you select what informs you ( intellect) and the recipe you create ( 1 part mid-century modern, 3 parts textures you create, 1/2 part Mary Blair, a drop of Gergely, 5 parts random 80's influence, and perhaps some circus poster influence in a wood-block way). This defines talent today, in some of the planets most gifted artists and animators.

Evolution Revolution

Soft Wall, freestanding wall
Tyvek and industrial felt
Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen. Molo Designs, Canada.


RISD's new exhibit, Evolution Revolution: The Arts and Crafts in Contemporary Fashion and Textiles

A new exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum entitled "Evolution/Revolution: The Arts and Crafts in Contemporary Fashion and Textiles", ( February 22 - June 15, 2008) promises to be interesting, and it in on my "to do" list for the weekend. Curator Joanne Ingersoll, quoted in a recent interview in American Craft Magazine's web site, say's "...around 1995...I started observing a lot of designers who were being impacted by the digital revolution, but rather than dismissing it, they saw it as liberating—they were showing me things that were a merging of high technology and the hand."

It makes me think even deeper about graphic design product design, any design being created today, and how technology affects it's development in both negative and positive ways. These are all issues that I address in my new book, BEYOND TREND ( available 7/11/08), but I never really thought about the impact on craft...nor even a connection with craft, so this exhibition fascinates me.

The CRAFT article, by Marc Kristal, states a new vision for craft in our culture, something which we might lable as a post Arts & Crafts movement..... Krisal say's "the similarities between then and now inspired Ingersoll to mount “Evolution/Revolution,” which showcases over 20 international designers, artists and architects, all active in fashion and textile design, who represent what, in the curator’s view, amounts to a latter-day Arts and Crafts movement: makers responding to the world-altering cataracts of the digital age by using technology to innovate creatively, take greater ownership of the production process, and incorporate ideas about sustainability, community and human rights into industry.