Our London-based editor Justine catches up with the latest action from the London Design Festival!

Yesterday was a preview filled day with so much inspiring design and beautiful exhibition spaces! One of the most exciting press previews was that of Designersblock at the Farmiloe Building (which we also visited recently during Clerkenwell Design Week). The press preview was full of unexpected touches, including elaborate and bizarre costumes and interpretive performances and the stunning Victorian building again played host to some stunning products and installations. More photos on the next page!

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Tags: designers - exhibition - london - preview

Our London-based editor Justine catches up with the latest action from the London Design Festival!

Beautifully refreshing, I was blown away by the setting of this wonderful showcase of Swedish Design. Hemma, which means ‘home’ in Swedish, is one of two exhibitions of Swedish Design Goes to London and is appropriately hosted in the Swedish Ambassador’s Residence, a beautiful 18th century house.

The beauty and elegance of the house works incredibly well with the clean, contemporary designs showcased in Hemma and the venue is a stunning and welcome addition to this year’s design festival. For example, love the contrast between the chandeliers and the vibrant purples of Sara Reinholtz’s Pixtel Shapes. More photos of this stunning exhibition on the next page.

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Tags: designers - exhibition - home - installation - london - sweden

Our London-based editor Justine catches up with the latest action from the London Design Festival!

I’m a huge fan of the work of Noma Bar, who does wonders with negative space and always achieves so much with clean lined minimalism. So I was very excited to hear about his project ‘Cut-it-Out’ at Outline Editions as part of this year’s London Design Festival, especially when I heard we would have the chance to take part and make our own cut outs with his incredible dog (and cat and rat) shaped cutting machine!

The image making machine is a a 2 m high die cutter that weighs over 750 kg and applies 4 tonnes of pressure when the joysticks (located in the dog’s mouth) and depressed. Visitors during workshops can create their own Noma Bar patterns by selecting an A3 sheet of paper (in any of 36 colors) and their favorite of 8 designs. The paper is then careful set between the die and board and swivels the dog’s head into cutting position. Then, a quick and steady push of the joysticks applies the pressure and cuts the image. Great fun and a beautiful way to create a stunning piece of art. More pics of Noma’s screenprints and cut outs, the stunning machine, and our own die cut experience on the next page!

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Tags: art - designers - gallery - illustration - interaction - london - paper

The Design Museum, London is celebrating Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel with his first UK retrospective. Crouwel is renowned for his bold typographic designs that captured the essence of emerging technologies during the 1960s. The exhibit opened on March 30th and runs until July 3rd. You can find out more about the exhibit at the Design Museum’s site for the exhibit: ‘Wim Crouwel - A graphic odyssey’ and see more images of the exhibit below.

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Tags: designers - exhibition - modernism - museum - typography

An amazing gallery exhibition opened up in NY and since i couldn’t make it over ~ my awesome friend, Anna Corpron of Sub-Studio was willing to go be my eyes over there! She’s back with incredible pics of the Gagosian Gallery’s ‘Transport’ a thematic exhibition by Marc Newson that brings together all of his major designs and realized products for transport and human locomotion since 1999 for the first time in one space! Absolutely incredible images from cars to shoes to planes to boats and more! (Thanks, Anna!!!) ~ check it all out on the next page!

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Tags: airplane - boats - cars - designers - exhibition - gallery - new york - sub-studio

Oh, W+K Studio Goodness ~ you guys are SO sweet, and awesomely inspiring. On fun surprises to come home to after the latest round of travels ~ firstly, how adorable is it that they made the envelope pattern align perfectly? I almost felt bad to pull the envelope off to read the card… but luckily i did, since i couldn’t stop smiling once i saw all the many fun signatures and notes within!!!

SO ~ here we have the unboxing/close up look of the incredible, hand screened (with love!), limited edition of 75 (but only 50 for sale here) 2010 Goodness Calendar… this is lucky number 37! Other than beautiful graphics, i love the note on the back… and that its a calendar that runs from Feb 2010 - Jan 2011… and i totally agree with them, i often forget i need calendars around until well into january, so why not offset it a little? It’s still totally useful!

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Tags: advertising - art - calendar - designers - gifts - illustration - screenprinting - shopping - unboxing

On stories that definitely fall under hollywood lore... here's a great one that showed up in my inbox...

Stephen Sprouse moved into Chateau Marmont in 1991 for a month but had no money to pay his bill when he was checking out. So Andre Balazs agreed to let him off if he designed some apparel for Chateau Marmont in exchange...a couple of months ago they were going through the archives stored in attic of the hotel and found 6 original sketches by Stephen by accident - all signed and dated. These are never-seen before sketches. And Andre had not seen them for years - he was really excited to be re-united with them.

AND... NOTCOT has an exclusive to show you one of those 6 sketches (as to be expected, the other 5 will be popping up around the net as well)!!! Can you just imagine living the life in a hotel for a month? Only to magically work something out bartering your craft? And it certainly does seem timely that just as the new Sprouse book and LV's Sprouse revisit pop up, that they *happened* to find these sketches... For those unfamiliar with the late Sprouse's work, i'm sure you've seen it everywhere... he's known for pioneering that classic 80's graffiti/pop/punk melded with mainstream fashion with a love of the florescent ~ who went from 70's band photographer to 80's-90's fashion designer/artist! See the full sketch on the next page!

p.s. i'll add the other sketches when possible!

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Tags: art - chateau - designers - fashion - hotels - los angeles

New contest! This is all pretty new to me, and the whole NOTCOT world, but as you've seen the last month, we're learning to give stuff away more and more! Latest is a collaboration with NVIDIA and their fun Speak Visual campaign (you know, the green one where we get to SPIN the ads), that brings us, Core77 (so excited to be officially on this with them!!!) and Behance together is this 3-part State of the Art Contest ~ (clicking through there you see my header... they made us all make different ones).

So here's the gist of it ~ you have a chance to win a kick ass NVIDIA Quadro CX Graphics Card, which is THE graphics accelerator for CS4 (i want! who doesn't want more monitors?) as well as Adobe CS4 Master Suite (granted this license is good until CS5 arrives, that's still some pretty good time with the full bundle!)!!! To win it? Make some art ~ pictures and video are fair game, just blow our minds! (Accepted formats are: .avi, .mov, .mp4, .jpg, .png and .gif ) And if you're super busy, but have previous work that fits, submit that in too! There will be 3 mini contests ~ and the first prompt is from Core77 ~ SO... "Visualize the Screens of the Future" - How do screens help us communicate, experience and create? Are there 3-D e-books or LED skyscrapers? Show us your design for the screen of the future.

I have this funky feeling its going to be super tough to figure out which of the entries are from you ~ so if you want me to pay special attention to checking yours out, leave a link/name/etc to the entry in the comments here, and maybe work NOTCOT into your description or if you're feeling extra sneaky, slip the logo into your creative somewhere! My prompt starts Dec 29th... so watch out for that one! Go check out the contest here!

Tags: art - contests - designers

NOTCOT Note: I've been so curious about the Target Bodega's popping up in NYC, thankfully, Anna was able to stop by and take a few pics to share with us!

I stopped by Target's Bullseye Bodega in Union Square this weekend - one of their four pop-up stores in Manhattan (open for only four days, today being the last). The store design plays on the classic New York bodega and is filled with exclusive Target home, fashion and beauty products from the likes of DwellStudio, Converse One Star, and Michael Graves to name a few. Besides products already in Target stores, the bodegas offered a preview sale of four new lines that aren't yet in stores - Sigerson Morrison, Anya Hindmarch, John Derian, and Jonathan Saunders.

I preferred the design and concept behind the stores to the products themselves, and have a bunch of pictures on the next page showcasing the fun graphics and bodega-like installations in the stores.

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Tags: designers - home - new york - popup - sub-studio - target

NOTCOT Note: Here's another fun discovery from Anna of Sub-Studio! Have you noticed she's become one of our new heavy contributors to NOTCOT.org?

I first met Andrio Abero back in 2001 at a party in San Francisco where we bonded over a mutual love of music and design. Andy went on to become one of the foremost graphic designers in the Pacific Northwest, particularly known for his show posters. His work is smart and graphic, and I love the way he plays with texture and typography in his illustrations. Since founding 33 RPM in 2000, Andy has produced a huge body of work (I had a hard time choosing my favorites for this post), including the Bumbershoot 2006 campaign, and a bunch of magazine illustrations for New Scientist, Business Week, and The New Republic to name a few.

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Tags: art - designers - illustration - music - sub-studio

My brain isn't quite sure how to handle it when two completely separate obsessions merge ~ today i was on Dezeen and it was Olivia Lee's "Limited Edition Designer Dolls" ~ bringing together my love of toys and designers - who are now like designer super heroes?

ZAHA! Empress of Architecture! KARIM! King of Plastic! JAIME! Chief of Ceramic!

I want them all. I also want the animated series to come out... Olivia's site says: Have you ever bought something only because it was 'designer' regardless of practicality or cost? Do you faithfully attend the various furniture fairs around the world from Milan to Shanghai? Do you have a favourite designer? Do words like Icon, Blueprint and Wallpaper mean more to you than a random string of nouns? If so, then welcome to The Cult of Design.

Limited Edition Designer Dolls pokes fun at the Design cognescenti. By carefully studying the visual languages and distinct personalities of some of the Design world's most formidable designers, this project is an observation of how designer personalities are literally becoming synonymous with the objects they design.

Not sure about you ~ but "pokes fun"? I think it's more like it embraces the obsession, and creates even MORE for design lovers to buy. See more pics of them in the making, packaging, sketches, etc on the next page!

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Tags: designers - kids - toys