12.24.13

Up and Coming

Studio AH–HA, Graphic Designers

Working as a design journalist confers some pretty amazing benefits — travel to international design fairs, VIP invitations to parties, the occasional holiday gift — but this, right here, is hands down our favorite part of the job: discovering something so new and exciting we get a rush just from being the first to be able to share it with you. We originally met Portuguese graphic designer Catarina Carreiras a few years ago during the Milan Furniture Fair, where she was helping staff the installation of her then-employer, Fabrica, and we've kept in touch with her ever since; in 2011 she joined forces with fellow designer (and OMA alum) Carolina Cantante to start the communication and design agency Studio AH—HA, which now operates out of Sam Baron's office in Lisbon. Carreiras still does work for Sam and Fabrica, but as of this very story, she and Cantante are officially announcing the existence of their burgeoning practice — and its brand new website — to the rest of the world. You'll want to stare at the duo's gorgeous work for ages; seeing as it's the last story we'll be posting until January 2 as we embark our annual holiday hiatus, you'll have plenty of time to do just that. Happy new year, and enjoy!

12.23.13

Excerpt: Exhibition

Come All Ye Faithful, Curated by Carson Chan

In our most recent Saturday selects post, we pointed out a recent mini-trend of design exhibitions being staged in residential contexts, including the subject of this post: Come, All Ye Faithful, a show in which Berlin-based curator Carson Chan has replaced all of the objects in Zürich curator Florian Christopher Seedorf's home with works by his favorite European artists and designers. Opening last month and running through January 12, the exhibition was timed to coincide with the holiday shopping season, when consumerism runs rampant and people are in a state of frenzied acquisition. With Come, All Ye Faithful — which also functioned as a kind of tongue-in-cheek holiday pop-up shop, since everything in it is for sale — Chan wanted to examine the consequences of all that acquiring. "When purchased objects enter the home, they assume new roles, entangling themselves with the lives and emotions of their new owners," he explains in his curators' statement. "Come, All Ye Faithful is an exhibition that observes our relationship with the objects we live with." Chan took time out of his busy holiday schedule to answer a few questions about the project for Sight Unseen.

12.23.13

Excerpt: Magazine

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Lost Interview with Ettore Sottsass, From Surface Magazine

It's no secret that we're devotees of the work of the late Italian design legend Ettore Sottsass, but to the extent that everyone we know has been caught up lately in the more superficial elements of his influence — the post-modernist colors, patterns, and geometries — we jumped at the chance to share with you this reminder of his intellectual legacy: one of several previously unpublished interviews with Sottsass conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2001. It was given to us as a little holiday present by Surface magazine's new editor Spencer Bailey, who oversaw its inclusion in the Dec/Jan Art Issue, which was co-edited by ForYourArt founder Bettina Korek and is the fourth since Surface was redesigned and reimagined this past July. Says Bailey: "Last fall, I was talking with Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist over dinner in London about his unpublished interviews with artists and designers. He mentioned that he has several with Ettore Sottsass, so I asked him to send them to me. This one in particular blew me away. Hans Ulrich is a master interviewer, and Sottsass is, well, Sottsass. When I was putting together Surface's first annual Art Issue, I just knew I had to publish it." Sight Unseen is the only place on the web you can read the entire edited interview as it ran in the magazine — check it out after the jump, including images added by us, and don't forget to subscribe to Surface when you're done!

12.21.13

Saturday Selects

Week of December 16, 2013

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, and events from the past seven or so days. This week: the best patterns of 2013, a new stationery set by one of our favorite fashion designers (pictured above), Design Prom, and more.

12.20.13

Excerpt: Book

Dixonary

If we had to elect the most Sight Unseen–like book ever published, Tom Dixon's Dixonary might land at the very top of that list. In the intro he writes, "A book about me? I wasn't sure I needed one — at least until I am dead, at which point people can write what they like." But personally we wish this kind of book existed for all of our favorite visual artists. In it, Dixon pairs photographs of his own designs, dating all the way back to his early-'80s punk days, with the images that inspired them, and then tells the micro-stories behind each one.

07.15.11

Excerpt: Magazine

David Lynch’s workshop in The Chronicle #2

It wouldn’t be totally wrongheaded to view The Chronicle — a new biannual publication produced by the cultish Copenhagen ready-to-wear brand Rützou — as a fashion designer’s mood board, come to life. For each issue, the creative team — which consists of Rützou’s designer, founder, and namesake Suzanne; her husband, creative director Peter Bundegaard; and editor-in-chief Frederik Bjerregaard — selects a thematic framework and then collates together visual inspiration to support it. Called “Poetic Realism,” the first issue was abstract and moody, with photographic essays on pattern or urban decay and collages of the magazines’ own diverse inspirations, including Luigi Colani, Matthew Barney, Ernst Haeckel, melancholy, and a Mott Street acupuncturist in New York’s Chinatown. The latest issue, called Sense and Sensibility, more literally serves as a scrapbook for creative inspiration: “Sketches, abstractions in watercolor, visual logbooks, black-and-white imagery, personal portraits, simple doodles, this vast collection is a glimpse into a range of international artists’ creative processes and their final work,” the team writes. By international artists, they mean the likes of Marc Newson, Julie Verhoeven, and David Lynch, who offers a glimpse into his Parisian printmaking lair in the excerpt we’ve reprinted today on Sight Unseen.

12.19.13

Sighted

Sunglasses by Joséphine Choquet & Virgile Thévoz

We're planning a bigger story on up-and-coming designer Joséphine Choquet in the new year, but before then, we wanted to share with you some work the French-born designer recently sent us: these gorgeously styled shots of the Luns sunglasses she created earlier this year in collaboration with fellow ECAL master's grad Virgile Thévoz. "The sunglasses use classic as well as more witty acetate patterns, as a tribute to this material, which carries on the essence of vintage and kitsch yet remains utterly contemporary," the designers write. There are 10 different models at the moment, in search of a producer, with a second collection already in the works for 2014.

12.18.13

Up and Coming

Lola Lely, furniture designer

Lola Lely was born in Hanoi, Vietnam, but, having moved to London when she was only five, the rising design star can claim native east Londoner status — a rare feat in the area’s bustling international design scene. Her interest in making dates back nearly as far; her mother, a seamstress, was always “knitting or crocheting, making clothes or coasters.” Her Foundation tutor, ceramicist Bo Davies, guided Lely down the path to product design, to satisfy her interest in various disciplines and materials. But now that she’s there, she says, “none of my projects seem to have an end point. I like restlessness, when I don’t know where something is going. It's a little bit serendipitous.”

12.16.13

Sighted

Daniel Entonado, Illustrator

Daniel Entonado is a Madrid-based illustrator, textile designer, and graphic designer whose drawings are dense, whimsical, and often totem-like. We stumbled on his work randomly on Instagram, but apparently according to some he's the "zine king of Madrid" — check out selections from his portfolio below, then see one of his zines in action on Vimeo.

12.14.13

Saturday Selects

Week of December 9, 2013

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, and events from the past seven or so days. This week: a designer-made winter salad recipe, a stunning new furniture collection by POOL (pictured above), tools so chic they make us want to start gardening, an explosion of pop-up stores and sand piles, and more.

12.13.13

Gift Guides

50 Gifts We’re Coveting

Introducing the first annual Sight Unseen holiday gift guide! We've been scouring our favorite shops, both here and abroad, and starting yesterday we've been featuring 25 items per editor. Today's picks come from Monica, whose taste runs more towards all things monochromatic, graphic, and geometric.

12.12.13

Gift Guides

50 Gifts We’re Coveting

Introducing the first annual Sight Unseen holiday gift guide! We've been scouring our favorite shops, both here and abroad, and over the next two days we’ll be featuring 25 items per editor. Today's picks come from Jill, whose taste runs more towards all things pretty, colorful, and mid-century.

12.11.13

Fair Report

At Art Basel and Design Miami 2013: Part III

We never quite know what to say after attending a large art and/or design fair. Did we see anything that particularly stood out? Of course. Did we identify any trends? Does it matter? Sure, there were motifs here and there — marble abounded once again in the design tent, as did Prouvé, while the artists seemed really into pineapples and coconuts this year — but all that feels pretty inconsequential. When we attend shows like these, we have a lot of fun documenting them as we go, and meeting new people doing interesting things along the way. Then we come home with a trove of new talents to explore for future Sight Unseen stories. That's really the heart of it. So while we'd planned to tell you more about what sold (Sebastian Errazuriz's motorcycle, clocks by Humans Since 1982, Vuitton's Perriand cabana), what didn't sell (actually we have no idea), and what the mood of this year's show was like (It was better than last year! It was worse than last year!), we think we'll leave it at this: 134 annotated photos on our Facebook page sharing our highlights from the fair, so you can make some discoveries of your own.

12.24.13

12.23.13

12.23.13

12.21.13

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07.15.11

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12.18.13

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12.13.13

12.12.13

12.11.13

Trends, interviews, home tours, fair reports, and more.