Matchstick Garden

Bought at the Design Museum of London

matchstickgarden.com

The Parmesan Pencil

(design agency Kolle Rebbe)

Parmesan? Sharp your pen on your pastas (truffles, chili and pesto flavours)!

Brit insurance Designs of the year 2011 -Design Museum

images:

Home made is best, book for IKEA

Margaret Howell plus shirt

The Thin Black Line Chair (doesn't look conformable btw)

What you can see at the Design Museum is not just about Kenneth Grange! You can also see the Brit insurance Designs of the year 2011. “The Design Museum’s annual exploration of the most innovative, interesting and forward-looking new work in design of all kinds, from around the world.”(1) http://www.designsoftheyear.com/about/

The exhibition that surrounds an incredible variety of categories (architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product, transport) is definitely interesting! Among the 100 projects, you can find the Barclays Cycle Hire, little cousins of the Montreal’s Bixis!

One of the projects I found interesting is the E.Chromi project: A strange gathering between synthetic biology and design by undergraduates of Cambridge University. They created bacteria E. Coli that can secrete colors visible to the naked eye. Potentials uses are explained as colored feces for different types of diseases (If it’s red in the toilet your probably have colorectal cancer, if it’s green aids and etc.).

E. chromi from Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg on Vimeo.

Kenneth Grange- Design Museum of London

Pentagram Kodak

The exhibit about Kenneth Grange, founder of the famous design studio Pentagram, runs until the 30^th October at the Design Museum. It’s presenting a retrospective of the product designer’s work, considerate to have “made Britain modern”.

Born, as he says, in "a bacon and eggs kind of house" of the London’s East End in 1929, he designed over the years a long list of items. Among them, the first Kodak 44A in 1959, the 1997 version of London black cabs, Parker pens, Kenwood fool mixers, the anglepoise spring lamp, the first UK parking meters, Thermos etc. In fact, if you live in England, even for people that Grange’s name still unknown, you definitely already travelled or utilized once his designs in your day-to-day life.

Influenced by his national service and his early jobs as an architects assistant, Kenneth still working. Funny and maybe true, in an interview with The Observer, he said that Mac is overdesigned and some modern furniture might be “absolute icon” but still not comfortable and “designed to make the space look brilliant." Hopefully, according to him, his chairs are “bloody comfortable”. (1)

I enjoyed it but I made it through rapidly. However, British people can find it nostalgic as they recognize objects of their past. The 7£ entry was worth it because of the Brit insurance designs of the year exhibit that you can see at the same time.

(1)Kenneth Grange: half a century at the forefront of british Design, Rachel Cooke, The Observer