more ingredients

New materials surface slowly. It's now more than fifty years since carbon fibre was first used. A recent visitor to the Hub described how his father worked with the technology at NASA in the 1960s, discovering by accident, that the unwanted air bubbles in the strengthening agent actually helped rather than hindered in preventing crack propagation. Mathias Bengtsson, presently showing in the Hub's main gallery, uses the material with great design flair, but he is a rare user. Carbon fibre is still considered unusual and difficult stuff to work with.

Chirs Lefteri is a materials expert and advocate for innovation. Take time and trouble to look at his Ingredient Magazine, a starting point for a long journey of discovery.

Posted Saturday, October 04, 2008

It's a Wrap

Christine Jeavans, a researcher for the BBC, spent August avoiding plastic. Not so easy in good part. For It's a Wrap she managed to reduce usage to 12% of July's tally.

The article is revealing. Perhaps the 1,800 or so feedbacks to her blog entries are even more useful. There's a lot of people with a lot of thoughts out there.

Posted Tuesday, September 02, 2008

service a spitfire

Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Isamu Noguchi at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

It's our delight that YSP has brought together an exhibition by an artist/designer who has had a remarkable influence on C20 visual culture. Take time to see how the form and imagery appears time and time again in contemporary design.

On until 22 February. The park's web site says very little but the Noguchi museum in New York has a well featured site.

Posted Sunday, August 03, 2008

ted talking

Posted

Guitars and graphics

Michael Jackson, in his speech at Interesting 2008, spoke about the relationship between guitars and the development of graphic design. He did so with a fascinating parade of imagery - a whole history in fifty or so pictures with a decent text attached. The Hub is planning Guitars, a show about the best guitar making in the UK, to be seen from mid November. Anything about the subject interests us.

Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008

ad style races

Audi are the latest car maker to go for style, art and metaphor filled ads to sell cars, in this case, their new RS6. Audi's contribution is refined and laid back - acrobats and dancers performing in the way of a smooth and trusted car engine.

Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008

interesting...

A testament to the eclectic thinking of many designers and people interested in design thinking, a conference in which several dozen speakers of varying presentational skills talked about exactly those things that most fascinated them. The whole has been collected on a web site of great design simplicity.

Subject matter ranged from using an axe to chop wood, Ibsen and the Muppets and nine ways of making better erotic films. It's a good way to spend an hour.

Posted Tuesday, April 08, 2008

DESIGN OBSERVER

A useful gateway to news of all sorts of opinion and working practice of professional designers and design commentators. Design Observer is worthy and restrained but nevertheless contains valuable commentary and authoritative accounts.

Posted Friday, April 04, 2008

micro: very small buildings

There has long been a fascination with very small buildings, miniaturised problem solving for designers and architects more used to much larger structures. Ruth Slavid's book is a joyful wander through structure across the world. Yours for a mere £19.99.

Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008