Love vaulted ceilings, love skylights, love plenty of angles. Is this a home or a cabin? Not sure of the details on this, if anyone has any info let me know in the comments. Obviously a few things could have been handled with a bit more restraint (never been a huge fan of oak), but overall it’s a great feel. If some crazy design comes off the wall and turns into a bed, you really can’t complain much. $20 says there’s a matching Porsche parked out front with perforated leather driving gloves in the console. Seems to be some variant of the Marcel BreuerWassily Chair in the foreground, name that couch.
Whenever I see setups like this I always wonder who lived in them, did they actually get much use out of the place? Wonder what it looks like now….probably totally gutted and replaced with stock art fake paintings and plastic floral arrangements everywhere.
Just started to process all the photos from this summer’s Barcelona trip where I was speaking at the OFFF design conference. Unfortunately, my third Lomo LCA has broken so I lost half the shots (the film was not advancing properly half of the time). If you’re not familiar with the Lomo LCA, it’s a small Russian-made camera famous for it’s lofi vibe and heavy color saturation. It also has this really cool vignette effect that sort of pulls all the attention to the center of the photo. But as my three dead cameras will atest, they are very temperamental and prone to breakage. I treat all my equipment with almost obsessive care, yet these still fell victim to their own shoddy construction. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, they use to be only $99 a pop. But since they gained popularity and became a cult favorite around the turn of the century, Lomo has jacked up the price to $250 usd. In a side note, I owe my name in part to this camera and French designer Arnaud Mercier. Arnaud taught me a lot about photography and first suggested that I try the LCA with Fuji’s “ISO50” speed slide film, hence the moniker. After all that talk of the Lomo, I have to admit, the image above was not taken with it. This is a digital photo taken with a Nikon D80 or a CP8800 (can’t remember which I was carrying that day). Since I lost the film shots of this scene, I tried to make these digital shots appear as much like the output of the Lomo as possible. You can be the judge of how successful I was (Hint: Not very..). As I get these together and scan the remaining slides I will post them here and to my Flickr.
One of the original posters from the 64 Tokyo olympics. Simple and effective, the gold/red color scheme is perfect. Love the grain of the photo, yet another beautifully organic phenomena we have lost to the digital revolution.
Design magazine Issue 239. Very nice color combo, similar to the Mexico Olympics cover. The cover story reads “Perspex and the transparent look”. Perspex is a transparent glass alternative heavily used in 1970’s interior design. They utilized fluorescent colored Perspex for all sorts of furniture and installations. My neighbor had a lot in his old SF Victorian until they remodeled. Should have snagged a picture before they tore it out. The colors featured in the illustration on the cover of this magazine must have been the common choices, as I recall his were all in these tones as well.
A collaboration with car makers Citroen and Pirelli Mario Bellini built what amounts to a minimalist mobile home. This would make a great car for an impromptu camp out.
Avant Garde Magazine #8 next to the Command Print. Thought they made a nice pair. Avant Garde was a short lived art/culture magazine in the late 60’s-early 70’s. The magazine itself always had great art direction and layout, but it’s main contribution was, of course, Herb Lubalin’s logo which was the basis for the ITC Avant Garde typeface. This has always been a very controversial font in the design world, many claim it is overused and abused. Lubalin himself thought the face was misunderstood and overused, rendering it something of a 70’s cliché. Whatever the case may be, I have found it to be a striking and versatile font in my own work. The Madrone print is a good example of how I like to use Avant Garde, it’s strict forms and tight angles make perfect building blocks for large scale use.
