Happy New Year!
Hi Everyone,
Welcome to 2009! I hope you all had a relaxing break over the Christmas / New Year period and have arrived back somewhat refreshed and excited about what the year may hold.
In December I traveled to England and Europe for a month before Christmas and took in many galleries and museums and in general tried to get a feel for what is going on outside of New Zealand in the field of visual communication and also in the wider sense of issues that have been hitting our headlines, such as the state of the global economy.
Highlights of my trip included a visit to the London Design Museum. Two exhibitions relating to graphic design were showing.
Alan Aldridge – the Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes, is the first UK retrospective to feature the works of the celebrated illustrator and graphic designer Alan Aldridge.
http://www.designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2008/alanaldridge
Design Cities – which took seven significant places and times from 1851 to now to focus on design’s relationship with urban life over the past century and a half. Cities featured included Vienna, Dessau, Paris, Los Angeles, Milan and Tokyo.
Design Cities although interesting and stimulating in the actual design of the exhibition, designed by Graphic Though Facility was somewhat lacking in depth of information and seemed to feature obvious designs from each era and place. It did make me think back to the time when Tokyo (1987) was the design city and everything cool seemed to be made in Japan and made me wonder if London is the design city of now (2008) where is the next design city to be? Shanghai? Could Auckland or Wellington or New Zealand as a whole find its place as the next design city?
http://www.designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2008/designcities
What did you get up to in your Summer break? What places/people/things that you came across excited and stimulated your mind? Or was it a good book that got you thinking?
If you just simply relaxed and let your mind wander, Design Assembly is kicking off the year with another great evening on March 18 – lined up already we have Askew, graffiti artist and graphic designer among many of his titles, an illustrator and a debate on the design of the New Zealand flag…
Watch this space and let’s hear your thoughts and ideas for 2009.
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March 21
2012
January 20th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Choice Lou. Aldridge’s work is beautiful, and complex! Imagine doing that without a computer.
Tho it seems strange that there might be another ‘Design City’ in such a connected world, I think a city can get known for a style. It is still happening with music but you have to have a “scene” for it to grow in. I wonder what a Design scene looks like? or if you can get known for an approach to design rather than an execution?