Form

Christian Troels Mutatio Lamp

Look at the Mutatio Lamp, created by Danish designer Christian Troels. What an elegant expression of form, going from a minimalist black cylinder, to an angled abstract shape. In its closed state the lamp is a nondescript cylinder. Just a black tube that doesn’t reveal its true purpose. As it opens up, it not only makes apparent its functionality, and taking on a familiar yet new shape for a table lamp. When open it feels so familiar, yet visually fresh. Christian Troels’ Mutatio Lamp goes from simple to magical and playful in one motion. It looks like it is constructed aluminum, or steel, and painted black. Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of information on his website, and nothing about where or if it can actually be purchased. Which is to bad, because I think these would be a hot item.

Logo Modernism from Taschen.

Over the last seven years, Jens Müller has been collecting and compiling modern logos created from 1940 to 1980. As Müller puts it, this was the golden age of the modernist aesthetic in design, architecture, art, product design. And to a point he is right. Some of the most visually memorable brand marks and logos come from this four decade period. Müller’s collection is what makes up the content of Aachen’s 6000 page tome Logo Modernism.

The book covers pretty much every business and organization of note, and represents a sweeping retrospective modernism and how the style changed over time. Broken into specific sections the book’s main chapters cover Geometric, Effect, and Typographic. Each sub-chapter breaks down each style even further into sections such as dots and squares, overlays, alphabet, color, etc.The book features an introduction from Jens Müller on the history of logos, and an accompanying essay by R. Roger Remington on modernism and graphic design. In addition there are series of designer profiles on masters of the craft Paul Rand, Yusaku Kamekura, and Anton Stankowski focusing on their legendary work.

In typical Taschen heritage, the book is physically huge. at 10 by 14 inches in size and 432 pages of content. And as always from Taschen, the book is multilingual. It’s available for pre-order and this just made my list of books to add to the reference library. Oh and it’s affordable. Just $69.00 on the Taschen site.

A Fresh Approach for OFFF 2013’s Main Title Sequence.

The opening title sequence or main title feature that usually gets shown at a conference often becomes a showcase of abstraction and effects. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is nice to see something that takes it in a different direction.

The main title sequence for the 2013 OFFF conference does just that. Form creates a wonderful story that introduces all the speakers seamlessly weaving them into the narration and storyline. As you watch you’ll see how the names of all the speakers are merged with the memorabilia and souvenirs collected through out the narrators journeys. This title sequence is full of wonderful shots, great editing, and yes special effects. The kind of effects that don’t overpower, but enhance the storyline and help bring the piece to life.

For the entire backstory on this production click here.

Concept, direction and screenplay 

Ashley Govers, Jurjen Versteeg and Wouter Keijzer

Edit
Wouter Keijzer

Color correction and visual effects
Jurjen Versteeg

Set design
Ashley Govers

Music and sound design
 Ben Lukas Boysen

Cello Performed by
Cordula Grolle

Recorded by
Jochen Mader At Audionerve

Drawings
Jan-Maarten Nachtegeller

Narrator
Nick Smith

Actor
Caspari de Geus

Production year: 2013

Cuoiela is Gonna Save My Backside.

The older I get, the less crap I like to carry with me. This means my wallet is supposed to be getting thinner, and more compact. Unfortunately it isn’t, it’s actually gotten a bit thicker which means I can’t keep it in my back pocket when I’m driving or sitting. The thickness makes my butt and lower back hurt. Yes I’m serious. So what’s a guy to do? Look for a new wallet that limits the amount of crap you can carry with you.

Cuoiela is a project I found on Kickstarter from Virginia based Nolla Design. This wallet has roo for 2 to 8 cards plus some cash. The design is thin, compact and flexible. It is a cure for the bulky oversized, overstuffed wallets so many people carry with them today. Cuoiela is a completely smooth wallet with no over stitching, that holds your possessions discretely. The Cuoiela wallet is made from high quality Italian leather and elastic fabric band, and has a nice simple look to it. Once again, form and function joined seamlessly to produce a well designed useful object.

During my design research, I found that many card wallets are simply about function but if you think about it, a wallet is something that we carry around every day and show off to the world. Thus, I was motivated to design the Cuoiela, the wallet that is not only slim and convenient, but also feels stylish and precious to the owner.

cuoiela from nolladesign on Vimeo.