A little over a year ago Olive was spending most of his time either at the sewing machine making bow-ties or out wandering the streets of London looking for interesting fabrics. It turns out that once you’ve visited one fabric shop you’ve pretty much visited them all. He decided to create his own fabric by digitally printing small runs of material.

“I’ve always believed that true creativity is realised only within boundaries or constraints and I think that this is what is so pleasing about Excel as a design tool” says Olive, “I was pretty obsessed with Anni Albers and all I really wanted was an Anni Albers bow tie. Having looked at a lot of her textiles I thought that perhaps I could recreate some of them using Excel.”

The Mayhew bow-ties (top) are a geometric print bow tie designed in Excel and digitally printed onto Italian heavyweight silk twill. Named after one of the founders of British satirical magazine Punch, Henry Mayhew was also a playwright and a social researcher.

All Charles Olive bow ties are handmade in Kent. They are also self-tie which means that yes, you do have to know / learn how to tie a bow tie. £75, available from Darkroom London

The quote that I have on my business card is “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good”. I love this quote so much as it constantly reminds me not to try to find a new idea or reinvent the wheel but to produce really good projects. There is a lot of pressure to keep pushing forward with new ideas, but let’s not forget the really amazing good design that is changing the world.

When I stumbled across Paul Rand’s own business card, I was nervous whether mine made the cut and clearly it doesn’t or I might have followed through to become a graphic designer post-degree but Rand’s minimal Helvetica card is as beautiful as his logos, understated and hard-working.

One weight, one size, no distraction. I feel a redesign of my own coming on.

You can read more about his business card at Amassblog.

Featuring occasional tables and a stool alongside a sofa and armchair in variations, the duo have created a clever system giving character as well as function to the collection. Each piece sits on distinctive cast aluminium feet that slide neatly between its upholstered elements.

“Given a sofa’s scale and prominence in a room, we felt that the pieces should be formally balanced and calm, expressing their character through detail”, Barber and Osgerby say. “The design concentrates on comfort, proportion and the foot detail which visually connects the sections.”

Scaled for the workplace or smaller apartment, a smaller version of the sofa is available with pieces featuring a lower back and reduced seat depth. Occasional tables and a stool foil the casual aesthetic of the soft seating. A robust cast aluminium base supports both round tabletops or the round wooden seat of the stool. The geometric, elementary framework of the base is an interpretation of the familiar tripod structure; its tripod legs visually contained by two rings.

Armchair starting from £2,676.00 and available from twentytwentyone.

Photography by Ezio Prandini. Courtesy of Knoll, Inc.

Jansen+co is a contemporary, vivid and original Dutch table top design company based in Amsterdam. Founded by Anouk Jansen and Harm Magis in 2006.

“For me the small things in life do matter. Home made cooking, having a good freshly brewed coffee, spending time at my dinner table with friends and family, seeing art, smelling fresh vegetables or flowers, I’m able to see and taste colours in everything! That’s what makes me happy and enables me to design products.” says Anouk Jansen.

As creative director Anouk is in charge of the Jansen+co products, from the design development to the look and content of the complete collection. She traveled the world to work with creative minds and to find the right production partners. Jansen+co value quality above all, their products combine the very best of industrial production with hand finishing. They work with socially responsible factories, passionate craftsmen and ethical manufacturing.

On a recent trip to Skandium, I picked up a couple of the XL mugs for a morning coffee design fix. If you do want to pick up some Jansen+co, you’ll be pleased to know that Skandium are now the exclusive agents for Jansen+co in the UK and in Ireland so it’s very easy to get some colour into your cupboards.

An XL mug is just £11.95.

“I wanted to try and combine all of my passions into one discipline and came up with the idea of the Trading card A to Z prints. Half of the battle with doing these prints is covering all the letters and numerals without compromising too much on the choices. I tried to create the ‘look and feel’ of the cards from the 60′s/70′s that I loved to collect and liked the idea that these beautiful and well known classic objects were represented in a format that is better known for footballers.”
Simon Staines

The Design Classics A-Z is a great piece of affordable design, giving you a way to own 35 of the greatest 20th Century design classics without spending your trust fund. With objects from chairs to cameras, clocks to record players, Eames to Jacobsen, 67 Inc have picked the 35 items they feel represent the most iconic product design and designers of the 20th Century. Note the Dieter Rams calculator for Braun.

Pick up an A2 Giclée print for £40. A steal if you ask me.

Rich Brilliant Willing is, as they say it, America’s premier contemporary lighting and furniture design manufacturer – quite a strong statement. From their Brooklyn studio workshop, Rich Brilliant Willing’s creative team oversee every aspect of their unique process from design to assembly to distribution which creates results that are intelligent and iconic.

Founded in 2007 by fellow Rhode Island School of Design graduates Theo Richardson, Charles Brill and Alexander Williams (see where the RBW comes from?) RBW were named among the “Top 40” designers by I.D. magazine in the same year and have won numerous awards ever since.

Quart table lamp (above) is a reading or directional lamp, with a swiveling shade that can be directed as needed. This is such an elegant table lamp, with an incredibly contemporary stone base.

A seamless curve connects the top of this Fawn Coffee Table to elegant fawn-shaped legs below – perfect for cats to perch on.

Channel is a minimal take on lighting and a lot less expensive than its marble-based sibling. Making use of high efficiency LEDs, the lamp is named after the aluminium channel that houses the bulbs. This is a beautiful, simple light for those late night letter writing (or blogging in my case) moments.

Gerrit Rietveld designed the Zig-Zag chair comprising four planar elements, originally constructed from oak with brass fittings and later changed to cherry with more complex dovetailing, it was, and still is, radically different from traditional chair design. Minimal in section, and easily stacked, it is both practical and revolutionary.

Rietveld was very much aware of the discrepancy between the simple shape and the relatively complicated construction and said himself, it is not a chair but a “designer joke.” The actual goal of the design was to create a functional form which does not displace space but allows it to be perceived as a continuum.

Now officially produced by Italian furniture makers, Cassina (who purchased the rights in 1971), the Zig-Zag chair is, like most design classics, frequently copied and sold. You can spot a Cassina chair by looking on the underside for the Cassina mark and the number etched in to the wood.

The Zig-Zag (not to be confused with the Irish puppets) is an expression of the ‘De Stijl‘ movement and is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1918 Reitveld joined the De Stijl movement which had sprung up around the review of that name founded the year before by Theo van Doesburg, translating certain laws of composition that had already been expressed by the Cubists.

The work of Rietveld is defined by continual experimentation. The brilliant Dutch architect of neoplasticism designed and proposed numerous variations on his most famous models. He loved raw surfaces and sometimes whitened wood with natural reagents such as sunlight or salt. Rietveld created several variations of the Zig-Zag chair, including some with varnished colours and white sections, which are displayed at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

Reitveld possessed a duality of character which was exhibited in two ways. First was as a craftsman cabinet maker, working in a primordial idiom, reinventing chairs and other furniture as if no one had ever built them before and following a structural code all of his own; the second is that of an architect working with elegant formulas, determined to drive home the rationalist and neoplastic message in the context of European Architecture.

Cassina have produced a video showing the modern construction of the chair. Turn your sound down to avoid to bad muzak, sit back and enjoy craft and manufacturing goodness…

The name comes from a character that they invented who could be their guide and boss. They had a list of characteristics and requirements that their ideal employer would have, and that seemed like the sort of person who’d be named Herb Lester.

“We didn’t begin Herb Lester to publish travel guides, we began as a sort of micro contract publisher. We’re interested in what makes places different, special, strange; sometimes those things are obscure and hidden away, other times they’re in plain sight.”

The brain child of Ben Olins & Jane Smillie, both from creative and publishing backgrounds, Herb Lester work with some of the best designers and illustrators to produce wonderful maps and guides to some of the most interesting cities in the world.

They research, write, print and distribute maps and guides to the world’s great cities seeking out the well-used and much-loved, and enjoy the extraordinary as well as the everyday. Old bookshops and new coffee shops, park benches and dive bars, hat shops and haberdashers: this is the world according to Herb Lester.

One of my favourite maps is Clandestine London: for those who prefer to conduct business away from prying eyes. They list 31 places with hidden alcoves and easy exits, neglected restaurants, unreconstructed wine bars, ancient pubs and even natural isolation. In these locations discretion is assured, it’s entirely up to you to decide how you make use of that.

Herb Lester maps are £4 each and make great little gifts.

They employ a materials- and process-focused design approach to create thoughtful, refined objects and their work is produced in a range of materials, utilising production techniques from the hand-made to digital technologies. They hold a strong emphasis on function combined with a considered and appropriate use of materials.

Magi is a practical solution for the storage of magazines. Its compact proportions and integral handle, allow it to be easily moved and placed against any wall or beside a chair or sofa.

The hallway bench is both a bench and storage facility, designed to primarily function in the hallway. A point at which bags, shoes and keys can be stored and a convenient place to perch whilst changing shoes.

The substantially proportioned Polymer clock is made from plaster polymer using a casting process to produce the clock face with raised and embossed digits. The hand casting technique means that no two clocks are exactly the same.

The Vacc tray explores the practical issues presented when picking up and carrying a tray. The integral handles allow the trays to interlock when stacked and the 3mm birch ply-wood insert gives the tray its rigidity.

Since forming their company in 2005, Wayne Pottinger and Nathalie Cole’s work has become widely known for its quirky, often humorous designs. Their Twiggi coat stand with angles of which might imply 1960s photo-shoots, but could equally reference the branch of a tree has attracted the majority of press attention, but Pottinger + Cole’s work can primarily be defined by strong silhouettes.

In 2008 they were recipients of the Craft Council Development Award which they invested in some significant purchases in order to advance the work of their studio.

Based in Wolverhampton, Pottinger + Cole mostly design and prototype forms, while the making side is contracted out to manufacturers. Luckily for them the West Midlands has fabricators galore, some within only ten miles of the studio. So whether they choose to work with metal, wood or plastics, there are more than enough skilled hands nearby to realise these forms.

Sometimes referred to as the first social network, these parties used word-of-mouth marketing when we didn’t even have the term for it. I often cite the Tupperware party as great inspiration for how social networking can operate, by bringing people together in a social environment to learn about products from the mouths of customers that use them. It still fascinates me that this simple idea, which was so effective, is often referred to as retro and irrelevant to today’s culture.

Image courtesy gatochy

Tupperware was developed in 1948 by Earl Silas Tupper (1907–83) in Leominster, Massachusetts. He developed plastic containers used in households to contain food and keep it airtight. Tupperware pioneered the direct marketing strategy made famous by the Tupperware party.

In 2003, Tupperware closed down operations in the UK and Ireland and it is almost impossible to get Tupperware now in the UK. They announced a relaunch in 2011 but before the year was out the relaunch plans were cancelled.

In the same year, the company boasted that a Tupperware party was held somewhere in the world every 1.7 seconds, driven by a direct sales force of 2.6 million – still mostly women – in nearly 100 markets, said Rick Goings, the chairman and chief executive who arrived over 20 years ago from Avon.

The famous Tupperware ‘burp’ of opening an airtight container is what most remembered about the product when they were introduced. Many have copied the idea since, but there is still a warm feeling towards the pioneer company that was present in many people’s homes.

In a world where we can be in touch with whomever at whatever time, through the power of technology, real-world meetings are still widespread and those personal connections are ever-important. The online social network meetup.com boasts almost 14 million members worldwide, with almost 400,000 meetups happening each month. This network is successful due to its power to bring people together with similar interests, even if you have never met before.

I still believe there is a place for Tupperware parties and the culture that they inspired, these plastic products were more than a technologically-advanced kitchen product but a culture shift that has shown us how socialising and commerce can go hand-in-hand.

Image courtesy arts_enthusiast

The best thing about Pinterest is the ability to store, in folders, products that I love. I stumble across them on blogs, on web-shops, on Tumblr and more often than not, on Pinterest itself. It’s like a visual Twitter. I love how images create a conversation between people, unspoken, but recognised by the act of ‘Re-pinning’ something you love. A traditional scrapbook would never garner this level of feedback so this is a real asset to their community.

I regularly pin products to my boards and go searching for new images to store away… they give great blogging content and keep me updated on what is interesting and trending. I’d implore you all to join today.

Join now and follow ATELIER TALLY →

Mum, if you are reading this and want a bit more of a handhold then watch this little video which shows how easy it is to use Pinterest and the delights that await you inside…

And before I sign-off, this community wouldn’t be a community if I didn’t talk about another great ‘pinner’ and I get the pleasure to introduce tomorrow’s #PinItForwardUK participant, Helen Edwards from East End Prints who will tell you exactly why she loves Pinterest. You can follow her graphic prints on Pinterest also.

Richard Brendon is a London-based designer well known for his considered, refined and dynamic designs. His business started shortly after he graduated from Kingston University in 2010, with a degree in product and furniture design. He has also attracted high profile stockists such as Liberty, Lane Crawford and Le Bon Marché.

These platinum-gilded cups mirror the pattern saucers, reuniting them as a perfect couple. A trademark Brendon style, the mirrored cups take upon the pattern of the saucers and when removed have a perfect solid colour to them giving them a contemporary feel.

Made in Stoke-on-Trent, the bone china cups are hand painted with platinum and then paired with orphan saucers, which are meticulously selected from antique dealers across Britain.

The range of antique saucers date from 1870-1930 (with the odd gem from the 50s occasionally too). Richard has also sourced some rather rare saucers pre-1850. To qualify as rare they must be produced by a prestigious factory and be very beautiful.

Cup and saucer £70
Cup, saucer and plate £90

To ring in the new change, the building was covered in a large banner wrap to conceal the building work from the street whilst they nip and tuck the inside of the building in to a glamorous affair to be filled with some of Soho’s most expensive apartments.

© Steve Speller

A giant new artwork by young illustrator Rebecca Hendin was hoisted (good word) onto the front of the former Central Saint Martins building on Charing Cross Road. Jointly commissioned by new owners, Foyles and Saint Martins Lofts, the artwork, entitled ‘All Paths Lead to Foyles’, celebrates the building’s ongoing status as a cultural landmark at the centre of a London’s historic music and bookselling district.

“I decided to create a surreal London cityscape, composed of London-like buildings and including a smattering of its landmarks, as well as flowers, oversized animals, trees, musical instruments, vehicles, teacups, bottles, ships, the river, the Underground, and more.”
Rebecca Hendin

The artwork – Hendin’s first in the public realm – will be on display until September 2013, with the building open for business in April 2014. The building might have been empty for some time now, but I do love the history of the building and, in particular, the great names of people that got some of their early inspirations whilst walking around it. If I had the cash for an apartment then I could be tempted… but I don’t.

Hendin’s artwork was selected as the winning design in a competition curated by cultural placemaking agency Futurecity. Ten recent graduates from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design were selected to develop artwork proposals that would celebrate the character of both Central Saint Martins and Foyles, exploring the status of the two buildings as cultural icons and bringing their heritage to life.

In a collage reminiscent of Heinz Edelmann’s hallucinogenic design for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, Hendin’s illustration sees a collection of exotic, knowledgeable creatures infiltrating the city, above and below ground.

Drawing inspiration from the evolution of Charing Cross Road, Hendin captures “the Lego-like build-over-build-over-build quality of the London cityscape” and the ephemeral, energetic spirit of the capital: “there is not one thing that makes London what it is; rather, there are a huge number of pieces that, when joined together, make one very interesting, and complete, puzzle”.

I certainly like it and will always look up whilst walking along Charing Cross Road whilst it remains in place.

Leading Italian shoe manufacturer Alberto Guardiani has created a new luggage range, designed by André Klauser and commissioned by international design magazine Wallpaper*, during Salone del Mobile. Designed around a travel theme and produced in an elegant but hard-wearing canvas, Klauser’s capsule luggage range includes a large overnight holdall incorporating a shoe compartment and featuring an opening designed to mimic the shape of an unworn loafer, a travel document sleeve and a tablet sleeve.

To design the new travel range, Wallpaper* chose Hanover-born, Royal College of Art-educated designer André Klauser, who once worked under Jasper Morrison. Now established in his own studio in East London, Klauser had already impressed Wallpaper* editors with his eco-friendly ‘Mechano’ chair and ingenious ‘Trivet Stick’ for keeping scalding hot pans off a work surface.

“The central piece of the collection is the travel bag. It is dimensioned to fit the essentials for a short trip and small enough to take on board a plane as hand luggage. The basic shape of the bag is inspired by the uncomplicated tote bags that have become so familiar in recent years. The design references formal details and materials of the Alberto Guardiani Wallpaper* Limited Edition shoes, such as the reinforced bottom panel made from shoe sole leather. A simple document sleeve, a tablet and a laptop cover, all referencing postal envelopes, add to the collection.”

Andre Klauser

I am biased, but one of my favourite pieces is the Clothes Horse by Jonah Takagi for Another Country. Regular readers will know that I have written about Another Country many times before but this product surprised me as it is not the typical functional product that I am used to seeing by them. Saying that, it does reimagine something of a past tradition and I can think of no better company to produce this product than Another Country.

“The daily ritual of dressing takes centre stage with this modern clothes horse by Jonah Takagi. The arching clothes rail, which incorporates a full-length mirror and vanity shelf, builds on his previous explorations of creating structures that work to define a larger space.

Together, the all-encompassing dressing unit forms a worthy alternative to what might be typically found in the bedroom. Despite its straightforwardness, there is still a theatrical thread in the piece; from the front, most of the stretched wooden rail is hidden from view.

British wood specialists, Another Country, were the perfect partners to bring this modern piece to life. Realised in ash wood painted in the brand’s signature Pigeon Blue, the piece is a timeless vision that boasts exposed brass hardware and visible joinery to highlight the honesty of its construction.”