CES, the inaugural consumer electronics show held in Las Vegas every January, is the highlight of every tech geeks calendar. This year, it showcased over 20,000 new products, so Seymourpowell sent two fully charged members of the team to trawl every inch of the 4 million square feet showground to bring you some of our favourite picks from the week long tech-stravaganza.
Belkin
Transforming the Internet of Things from theory towards reality was the story of CES 2015. Adaptors, switches and gizmos that upgrade dumb domestic devices, appliances and fittings into a network of sentient, connected tools were abundant.
Belkin’s WeMo, a trailblazer of the DIY Internet of Things, produces a family of future-fitting adaptors for a range of interests and engagement levels. We particularly liked their Maker device, which in collaboration with IFTTT (If This Then That) can be hacked, tinkered and programmed for a range of uses. We predict that low investment, simple systems like WeMo will start to make themselves more at home in consumer’s lives over the next few years.
We’d also commend Belkin’s WeMo for carefully curating their stand to frame the products in a clear, compelling and consumer friendly way, supported by universal and everyday use case scenarios. An asset that is often lacking on the CES floor.
Sengled
Wifi is now almost as essential to our daily lives as eating and sleeping. Hitting a blackspot can be one of the most frustrating experiences of any constantly connected internet addict.
Sengled, a Chinese lighting innovator, showcased a range of intelligent illumination products. Boost, our favourite, seamlessly integrates a wifi booster into the bulb to eradicate patchy connection and alongside an outdoor version, expand range into the garden.
3DSystems & Hershey
3D printers made a big splash last year and whilst the number of exhibitors grew at this year’s show, consumer relevant applications still seem limited for this nascent technology.
However, 3DSystems in partnership with Hershey unveiled a sweet treat for chocoholics looking for uniquely delicate shapes and structures. The printer cleverly cools the molten chocolate as it builds to retain optimum taste and structural integrity. Creation of form without manufacturing process constraints provides everyone with a wider array of creative opportunity, from FMCG brands looking to create novel brand signatures to experimental home chefs looking for their next showstopper. The exploration and availability of alternative substrates is what could make 3D printing reach a tipping point.
Mercedes Benz
Alongside the Internet of Things, Autonomous Automobiles were big news as even more motor manufacturers integrated tech into their vehicles at CES this year. Whilst brands like Audi concentrated on the proof of concept by piloting a self-drive A7 from San Francisco to the Vegas convention centre, Mercedes chose to explore the passenger experience of autonomous automotion in 2030. Signaling the importance of tech across a range of adjacent industries, it is also interesting to note Mercedes chose to unveil the F 015 at CES before displaying it at the Detroit Motor Show.
Featuring a more social seating configuration and immersive, interactive interior panels, the vehicle imagined their vision for a future driven by “luxury in motion”. Whilst we questioned some of the features such as a reluctance to remove the steering wheel once and for all and the maintenance of an overall car form and semantic, it was refreshing and exciting to see a major manufacture offer a more progressive viewpoint on the future of mobility.
POC, Volvo and Ericsson
Collaborations between tech giants and adjacent product companies produced some interesting results at CES this year. One of our favourites is a team effort from Ericsson, POC helmets and Volvo cars aimed at improving road safety for drivers and cyclists.
Using smart sensors and Ericsson’s cloud connections to calculate proximity, drivers and cyclists are alerted if they are on a collision trajectory; the driver receives an alert on their infotainment system whilst the cyclist feels a vibration and heads-up warning lights illuminate. This project highlights the emerging need for cross-functional collaboration as tech becomes more pervasive in adjacent categories and we think the solution demonstrates a practical, valuable and tangible use case scenario for the Internet of Things.
PetCube
Eureka Park is the place to find energetic and inspirational young startups. Here, the brave and the bold sit cheek-by-jowl with the bizarre and bonkers.
One of our favourite finds is the PetCube, a device that allows busy animal lovers to interact with their pets remotely, like FaceTime for pets with added functionality. Alongside a camera and speaker to view and communicate with pets at home, a laser beam projection can be controlled via smartphone so owners can playfully interact even when they’re away. Owners can share their camera feed too so others in the PetCube community can also pet-sit Tibbles and Rex.
FlyKly
The FlyKly is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign and whilst it received a lot of press on funding completion, CES is often a great place to see innovations in the flesh.
We were impressed with the hub’s sleek, minimal aesthetic that blends in unobtrusively to a range of styles. Its promise to make “every city flat” via assisted pedalling which reaches speeds of up to 25k/h was the icing on the cake for us after the indulgences of Christmas and Vegas.
Audi
As hybrid, electric and alternative fuelled vehicles gain prominence in the consumer conscience, it was interesting to see Audi developing technology to create consumer appeal around sustainable options.
Their wireless charging pad is designed to be fitted on the owner’s driveway and automatically aligns with undercar charging connectors when parked to simplify the recharging process. As wireless charging seeks to revolutionise personal electronic devices, the broader applications will be interesting to keep an eye on.
LG
In recent years, CES has become the place to showcase the latest in screen technology. The trend for thinner sets, bigger screens and better resolution over the last few years did not abate in 2015, but this time, we spotted a more interesting revolution emerging in the AV category.
Tucked away in a darkened room on LG’s stand, it was the collection of Minibeam projectors that really excited us. The range of tiny HD projectors come with built-in battery, TV-tuner and USB slot for streaming media. With an astounding pixel quality for such small devices and practical, compelling features, we hope to see consumers take to the possibilities of portable projection and the opportunity to recreate a cinema feel wherever and whenever.
Lyteshot
Immersive Gaming in the Real World
The appetite for immersive gaming, which began to grow with Oculus Rift in 2013, continued to excite show-goers in 2015. Whilst the queues to demo the latest Crescent Bay headset snaked around the showground, we headed to Epson’s stand to find an interesting alternative to virtual gaming immersion.
Lyteshot, who launched on Kickstarter in January, have been working with Epson’s Moverio heads-up glasses and a range of their own designed hardware to create the tools to equip live action gamers with the advantages of digital augmentation. A little like a roaming version of laser quest, gamers are tagged with targets and kitted out with weapons whilst their smart glasses display information about navigation and opponent proximity. One of the hardware features we really liked was the ability for gamers to personalise their weapons with 3D printed attachments. Appendages can be easily interchanged depending on preference, character or game theme. It’s a great use for 3D printing and really taps in to this consumer’s appetite for customisation.
Our top picks from the show precede a forthcoming full report by Seymourpowell due for release shortly. For more information about this or Seymourpowell, please contact our PR team.
This blog post was written by senior design researcher Chloe Coulson.
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Last month Matthew Cockerill, associate design director at Seymourpowell, spoke at the Herald Design Forum 2014. The annual design event took place on the 26 - 27th November in Seoul, South Korea. The opening address was by Hong Jung-Wook, Chairman of Herald Corporation and Chung Hongwon, Prime Minister of Republic of Korea.
The focus of the event was on the universality of design. The forum served as an opportunity to reflect upon both the economic and social impacts that design has. The forum also promoted discussions about how sustainability is manifested within the design industry. Speakers at the event discussed the question ‘How can designers design products or services that not only look beautiful, but deliver added value that can change the world?’
Matthew believes the answer lies in designing with the end in mind. In this way the design of products is optimised not only for manufacturing and usability but for the end of their life, be it recycling or disposal. This would allow us to move from the current take, make, waste industrial economy to a more sustainable circular economy where the leakage of valuable finite resource are retained rather than simply going to landfill or being incinerated.
One example Matthew showcased was a smartphone by Fairphone that puts social and environmental values first, supporting reparability, conflict free minerals and fair factory conditions.
Matthew also discussed the importance the role the consumer plays in driving sustainable design up the agenda. Matthew said, “For future consumers like Generation Z, products and services that are damaging to the environment are frowned upon. Their attitudes will accelerate the need for an alternative to our take, make and waste system and this will change the way we design products and services. This is going to have a fundamental impact on how we do business, it’s complex and often challenging, but this generation isn’t going to wait for us, so we’d better be ready.”
Other speakers at the event included architect Rem Koolhass, advertiser Alexander Schil and Joon paik of Changjo Architects.
Find out more about the event here: bit.ly/1zxifjR
For more information please contact our PR team.
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As the festive season falls upon us, thoughts turn to that big Christmas meal. For many, this can bring pleasure and pain in equal measure, for sustainability-minded folk we also begin thinking about food waste. Merely glancing at the figures for food wasted at Christmas is enough to put anyone off their dinner.
The stats suggest we waste the equivalent of 2M turkeys and 74M mince pies at Christmas; whilst 5 million Christmas pudding’s go unconsumed each year. On top of that, 35% of people admit to throwing away more food at Christmas and last year the average cost of a turkey dinner neared £120 per household. With all this waste and excess, Christmas food consumption is ripe for a rethink – and as designers, we’re always looking at making this sort of thing better.
Designing out Christmas food waste
Interest in food waste has spiralled in recent times, with a number of impactful campaigns (Love Food Hate Waste, Inglorious Fruit & Veg), programs (FareShare) and enterprises (Rubies in the Rubble, Community Shop) emerging. All fabulous stuff, though much of this focuses on ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions, once food waste has been created, accepting inefficiency and wastage then: delivering better collection and recycling infrastructure, adding clarity on use-by dates, redistributing wasted food to the needy, creating value from wasted food, etc.
We need to actively engage people on food waste reduction or elimination during, not after the process, when they are purchasing, preparing and consuming food in real time. We need solutions that tackle Christmas food waste more systemically – designing-out waste from the start. And ideally we need to maintain an element of today’s Christmas spirit, without enormous personal sacrifice, or else people simply won’t choose it.
Getting real on Christmas dinner
On further examination, the Christmas meal itself is full of obstacles and inefficiencies that allow food waste to occur. It is a meal you only cook once a year, plus you will most likely be making for more people than normal. Cook book and online recipes are usually set for a family of four, not easily adaptable to increased guest numbers, making planning unnecessarily clumsy and again potentially wasting food. For instance, vegetables ordered online come in pre-determined quantities with no consideration for your meal size. Even those managing to cook a decent Christmas meal will then face the tricky challenge of turning leftovers into edible treats. Your taste buds may not stretch to that second turkey sandwich and your hard-fought Christmas dinner ends up in the bin.
Clearly over-ordering, poor preparation and your leftover limits lead directly to food being wasted, but on top of that, the planning and prep fill you with anything but the Christmas spirit, as you shop for the meal in a busy, stressful supermarket. All this sounds designed to deliberately catch you out; so surely there’s a better way?
To resolve all this, we created a service concept that tackles food waste and eases your shopping and cooking experience; delivering a waste and hassle-free Christmas meal.
Introducing the ‘Waste-Free Christmas Dinner Maker’ (WFCDM)
The service starts with a web app allowing you to design Christmas dinner to your taste and needs, wasting less from the get-go. If like many of us you are not into Brussels sprouts, simply remove them from the virtual plate so the app automatically updates quantities of other vegetables, maintaining a healthy dietary balance on your plate too. The WFCDM app allows you to adjust guest numbers then automatically updates your shopping list accordingly. You can also change ingredients ordering to factor in what you already have in the cupboards. The exact amounts needed for your Christmas meal are then ordered online and delivered in a reusable hamper to your door or available to be picked up at a convenient store.
To help you prepare a stress free and delicious meal the WFCDM app guides you through the cooking process step-by-step, again ensuring a waste-less dish. The app’s ‘timeline’ ensures you know exactly when to prepare what, so you can relax and enjoy time with friends and family on the big day.
Still have leftovers? The app helps you make the most of these too. It can select the foods you have left then it recommends a perfect meal for your remaining ingredients, again ordering and delivering small quantities of missing items – like herbs for that turkey curry or ice cream to go with leftover Christmas pudd – helping you extend your culinary experience to a great Boxing Day leftover dish.
The Christmas meal re-imagined
Of course this isn’t a real service, it’s a concept we dreamt up for Christmas food waste – a kind of ‘Ghost of Christmas Future’. Crucially this doesn’t use any new technology or services that aren’t in existence today, plus doesn’t demand a huge sacrifice or dietary change that many seem unwilling to change – to have a real impact. Its simply requires things being reconfigured to tackle food waste.
Faced with the excesses and indulgence of the festive season, Oliver Cromwell famously, and unsuccessfully, tried to ban Christmas, which has always felt quite ‘bah-humbug’ at a time of celebration and giving. A much better route, in our opinion, would be to tackle Christmas food waste more creatively, injecting some new and innovative thinking into this most traditional of periods.
For more information please contact our PR team.
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Seymourpowell is pleased to announce the Axe/Lynx Icon 2 has won a WorldStar packaging award in the health and beauty section. Icon 2 was eligible to enter the global packaging award as a result of recently winning two Starpack gold’s.
The judging session took place on November 19th in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Representatives from 17 packaging associations judged the entries, all of which are members of the World Packaging Organisation. There were 264 packaging projects judged from 37 countries.
Launched earlier this year, Axe Icon2 takes Unilever’s Axe/Lynx brand into the future, with a more premium feel and new standards in user engagement, delivered by innovative aerosol shaping technology and design ingenuity.
Axe/Lynx Icon 2 from Seymourpowell on Vimeo.
When not in use, the button on ‘Icon2′ is flush with the top, and the action is locked (so it won’t go off inadvertently in your bag). Twisting the top engages a sophisticated ‘mechanical ballet’ of movement, which lifts the button up and then inclines it backwards into the ready to use position. As the button rises, it reveals a flash of colour specific to the variant.
This ‘mechanical ballet’ is not only very practical, but also intriguing – on the one hand effectively locking the spray and, on the other counter-intuitively lifting up the button in order to it press down. This action gives the product a sense of fascination, delight, playfulness and emotional engagement, which are at the heart of the Axe brand.
For more information please contact our PR team.
The expansion of Seymourpowell’s 3D brand design team has created the opportunity for two roles within the team.
The ideal candidate should have experience of creating and developing product or packaging design concepts, working as part of a team, as well as working independently. We are looking for individuals who can generate and clearly communicate inspiring ideas, from excellent sketch work through to the development of their designs in CAD.
If you have a degree in Product Design, great sketching abilities and an appreciation of the nature of brands and branding, then why not get in touch by sending your CV and portfolio to recruitment@seymourpowell.com.
Please attach your portfolios as a .pdf attachments, no larger than 10mb.
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
Due to the volume of response we receive, we are only in a position to contact successful candidates.
View the full job spec here.
Senior Role in 3D Brand Design
The expansion of the 3DB Department has created the opportunity for a senior role within the team.
The ideal candidate must have a proven track record of running projects, managing project teams and external suppliers as well as liaising directly with clients. They will have experience of creating and developing packaging design concepts, as part of a team and working independently.
We are looking for individuals who can generate and clearly communicate inspiring ideas, from sketch work through to the development of designs in CAD.
If youl hold a degree in Product Design with considerable consultancy or in-house design team experience, and have a portfolio that demonstrates excellent understanding of structural design thinking and implementation, then send your CV and portfolio to recruitment@seymourpowell.com.
Please attach your portfolios as a .pdf attachments, no larger than 10mb.
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
Due to the volume of response we receive, we are only in a position to contact successful candidates.
View the full job spec here.
Opening the new Derby office; Seymourpowell’s transport designers (l-r) Nick Sandham, Andy Sykes, Richard Seale and Jeremy White.
Seymourpowell is pleased to announce that it has opened a specialist office for rail design and development in Derby, the heart of the rail industry.
Known for its rich rail heritage and major contribution to rail nationally and internationally, Seymourpowell strategically picked Derby to be the home of its specialist studio for the major role the rail industry plays in the city’s economy. It is a global leader in railway engineering and manufacturing, home to a number of rail-related companies, and this move coincides with the 175th anniversary of the beginning of Derby’s rail industry.
Seymourpowell comes to Derby to expand its transport-design offering, particularly in the rail sector, building on its efforts to shape the future of passenger transport. Seymourpowell believes the future of passenger transport will be flexible and multi-disciplinary – a Meta-Product combining hardware, software and service to deliver a better experience and a better business.
Derby-born Andy Sykes will head-up the new studio as Lead Rail Designer; “Seymourpowell is renowned in the design industry for creating insightful, innovative products, and Derby is globally renowned for its excellence in railway engineering and technology.
“As we develop and strengthen our rail design capabilities, where better to be based than at the beating heart of the British railway? It’s a great match, and we couldn’t be more excited about what we can achieve here!”
Seymourpowell has a long track record of research, innovation and design to production in all spheres of transportation, from personal to mass transit solutions. Seymourpowell’s experience in rail design stretches back to 1990, working with British Rail on the InterCity 250 project, and includes the Class 222 ‘Meridian’ built by Bombardier. Since then the company has worked with rolling stock manufacturers, leasing companies and train operators on new build and refurbishment rail projects.
Jeremy White – Head of Transportation, Seymourpowell – “This expansion is a real sign of our intent and our passion to improve the future of rail travel. Our Derby office will be fully integrated with our wider team of designers, researchers and engineers in our London headquarters. By investing in Derby we can be more efficient and more cost effective for our railway clients.”
Seymourpowell has taken an office facility at the new £4.4m Sadler Bridge Studios on Bold Lane in Derby. Sadler Bridge Studios form part of the wider Connect Derby scheme, which sees a number of Derby City Council’s workspaces come together to support new enterprise in the city.
Ann Bhatti, Connect Derby business centres manager, added: “We are delighted to have attracted a company of the calibre of Seymourpowell to Sadler Bridge Studios and of course, are pleased to welcome Andy Sykes back to Derby.
“The Studios opened for business in June and are already 66% let, which is a tremendous vote of confidence in Sadler Bridge Studios and the wider Connect scheme, which is also going from strength to strength.”
For more information please contact our PR team.
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As technology gets smarter at unprecedented rates, businesses are starting to employ an automated labour force, so what role will the human play in the future world of work?
The industrial revolution took the grunt out of work with steam powered machines replacing muscle. Now advanced automation is threatening to remove the human cog from cognitive tasks. This is what MIT professors, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson identify as the Second Machine Age, and warn this time it’s not just the traditional manual workers at risk, but the swathes of white collar and service workers too.
The unstoppable speed of technological innovation has seen dreams such as driverless vehicles (thought impossible just a decade ago) already realised. Google’s self-driving car leads the way having already traversed the streets of San Francisco, Mercedes unveiled an autonomous truck planned to be road worthy within a decade and last week Transport for London revealed its designs for driverless trains due to run on part of the network by the mid 2020s.
What does this mean for cabbies, truckers and train drivers? Technology, the golden enabler which has allowed services like Uber to flourish and eat the lunch of traditional taxis, is now threatening to cut out the middle man altogether. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has already hinted towards his aspirations for a driverless future fleet.
Kiva Systems create intelligent robotic ‘employees’ capable of navigating, tracking and picking stock in the complex and ever changing environment of a warehouse – a job thought, until recently, too complex for a robot’s capabilities. The possibility of an army of automated workers appealed to Amazon, who now own Kiva Systems, and their CEO Jeff Bezos has hopes to scale his automated workforce from 1,000 to 10,000 by the end of the year.
It’s not just manual skills that technology is excelling in. As scanning and imaging technology improves, even highly qualified workers from legal aids to lab technicians may lose out to the speed reading and microscopic viewing capabilities of computers. IBM’s cognitive supercomputer Watson has already beaten human participants on American quiz show Jeopardy (all from learnt knowledge, no googling) and is now swoting his way through all digitised medical knowledge in an attempt to be able to diagnose patients as well as, if not better than, a human doctor.
Whilst machines offer a glimmer of hope in freeing us from the drudgery and grind of repetitive tasks, our careers help to give us a sense of purpose and productivity. Will we see a wave of new Luddites rise up to avenge on tech’s achilles heel; pouring coffee into self serve checkouts, jamming photocopiers with paperclips, terrorising electronics with bouts of waterboarding? History will tell us this is perhaps not the most pragmatic response and that ultimately, the bots can’t be stopped. If humans want to prosper in future work, they will have to do what they’ve done best so far: adapt.
The notion of a job for life has long been eroded and we will have to expect and accept a higher instance of career crossroads and periods of retraining throughout our ever extending lifespans. We will also have to hone the skills that give us our competitive advantage such as creativity, originality, craftsmanship and emotional intelligence. Our abilities to express empathy, make creative leaps and connections, experiment with ideas or look at a problem from a new perspective are still (for now) very human attributes.
Offering a humane glimmer of hope, Toyota have begun to replace some of the robots in their Japanese factories with people after several expensive product recalls. Sometimes the application of know-how, experience and craft of the human hand and mind cannot be surpassed in the manufacturing of more delicate components.
However, workers must never rest too comfortably on their Aerons. The onset of an ever smarter army of automatons has tempting economic advantages. Businesses, governments and of course the working masses must carefully consider whether the economic gains outweigh the moral and social implications.
Seymourpowell is pleased to announce details of its redesign of the brand packaging for Bausch + Lomb brand Artelac. The redesign covers five sub-brands in the Dry Eye category, which creates a total range of products to provide different levels of ocular hydration.
The new design repositions the brand making it easier to identify the different types of products in the range, while also creating impact and increased appeal in the self-select, consumer focused market. The branding has evolved from what was previously an unemotional, pharmaceutical brand with little appeal to end users, to one that now ranges as a popular choice for eye care professionals and consumers alike.
Artelac has strong awareness and credibility amongst eye care professionals, however as eye hydration becomes more of a lifestyle need rather than a medical need, there has been a growing trend toward self-selection. Capitalising on this market opportunity, Seymourpowell’s new design concurrently portrays the emotional hydrating qualities of the product while also demonstrating its medical and functional effectiveness as a complete range of products to tackle all causes of dry eyes. The brand now has the ability to straddle two worlds being both a credible pharmaceutical product while simultaneously sitting in the consumer choice category.
Responding to the design brief, Seymourpowell aimed to communicate a degree of efficacy & hydration for the Artelac brand while presenting Bausch + Lomb as well-established and respectable.
A key influence of the brand repositioning was the creation of the Artelac wave to communicate the invigoration and hydration of the product, enforcing Artelac’s brand promise of “freedom from dry eyes.” The introduction of accent colour coding aids navigation through the portfolio end enables understanding of the different products functions.
The use of the wave in the packaging design challenges the sector language of eyes on eye drop packaging and ensures standout in the busy and often confusing self-selection consumer market.
Seymourpowell Managing Director, Brand Packaging, Jonathan Shaw said, “There is a dual aspect to the design which sees it sit effectively between both consumer facing and pharmaceutical products by communicating efficacy and hydration. A highly successful blend of functional reassurance and emotion.”
Bausch + Lomb Marketing Director, OTC, Europe, Africa & Middle East at the time, Guido Aschieri said, “Seymourpowell really understood our desired strategy for Artelac and brought it to life through fresh, invigorating packaging that will penetrate the self-select category. They were great partners throughout the project, delivering an outstanding result.”
By exploiting the unique dual position of Artelac eye drops, Seymourpowell’s brand packaging re-designraises awareness of the problem of dry eyes, and then takes command of the sector with the confident new Artelac brand packaging.
Artelac is launching now in Germany, Switzerland and Austria with wider European roll-out to follow in upcoming months.
For more information contact our PR team.
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Seymourpowell’s head of trends Mariel Brown recently spoke at the 2014 Wearable Technology UX conference at Central St Martins on 22nd September.
The aim of Wearable Technology UX was to understand the evolution of wearables – where we stand today and where we’re going tomorrow. The event took place over two days with a range of expert speakers from Intel, BioBeats, Adidas, Google, Nokia and many more.
Speaking on day one, Mariel shared insights from Seymourpowell’s ‘Gen Z Project’, which is an on going study that explores the shifts in attitudes and behavior of future consumers (those born after 1995).
Exploring wearable innovation from the perspective of tomorrow’s wearable users, Mariel explored the following:
- What are the core values of Gen Z?
- What might their shifting attitudes to health, success, gender and communication mean for the wearable sector?
- Will their generation demand fundamentally different things from wearables?
- What are the service and user experiences that will appeal to their tech savvy minds?
Stay tuned to find out more about our ongoing Project Gen Z.
For further information, please contact our PR team.
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The London Design Festival ran from 13 – 21 September with shows taking place all around the capital to showcase the work of established and emerging designers, craftsmen and creatives. This blog is a trend summary of some of the exhibitions, such as the larger ones at 100% Design, DesignJunction, Tent London and the V&A, as well as a range of smaller galleries and pop-up shows displaying designs from recent graduates, RCA alumni and design collectives from around the world, amongst others.
Here we present key trend and context themes that emerged during LDF. These themes formed part of a larger report we created internally.
Bursting bubbles
Clockwise from top left: Soft Pink by Christina Schou Christensen, Graphite Set by Jakub Kabát, Skin Stools by Studio 9191, Aluminium Chair EA 101-104 by Charles and Ray Eames for Vitra, Seaweed lampshape and mobile by Julia Lohman, Ruby Curve by Milena Kling, 75% Control stool by Dafi Reis Doron
There was a strong presence of objects and furniture with bubbly, overflowing, growing shapes, featuring organic forms and textures. This often gave a sense of living materials that were still growing and expanding, but often being constrained by an external structure or force. The aesthetic evoked a feeling of flesh-like bodies, with textures and materials many times resembling skin.
In a time when the body is under harsh scrutiny, both in terms of body image and ideals, and also through implants, extensions and modifications, it is only natural to see designers, makers and artists exploring the blurring boundaries between what is considered inside and outside our bodies, and challenging notions of what is natural and what is artificial.
Refined geometry
Clockwise from top left: Extra-Ordinary by Fabrica, Runcible by Mathias Hahn, Apex Table by Hunting & Narud, Meanwhile Curiosities by Epiforma, Stone blocks by Max Lamb
Bold geometric shapes have been prominently featured for the last few years in art, design and imagery. This year’s shows exhibited a slightly more sophisticate and minimalistic take on the longstanding Memphis tradition. The strong shapes and bold graphic aesthetic is softened by warm pastels and textures.
Playfulness and modular solutions are at the heart of this theme, satisfying the urge to experiment, customise and personalise objects and the environment around us. When user needs and demands are ever-changing, being able to quickly alter and evolve experiences are key, which is expressed aesthetically and functionally through this trend.
Stitch
Clockwise from top left: Re-Writable by Charles Parford Plant, Fade stool by Catherine Aitken, No right angles in nature by Josh Plough, OMI by Naomi Paul, Tela carafe by Silo Studio for Wrong for Hay
Textile expressions are becoming more noticeable in products and furniture, creating a familiar look and feel. Strings, yarns and textures are translated into functional and aesthetic features that are soft and inviting.
Playing at the intersection of old and new, designers are exploring alternative methods of construction and assemblage that allows for modular systems, easy mending and DIY. It also responds to the call for products to be accessible and understandable to counteract the black boxing of recent years.
Finding time and space
Clockwise from top left: Mythos meditation instruments by Alex Hubbell, From then on installation of time measuring devices by Formafantasma, Starry Light constellation lamp by Anagraphic
These projects are illustrating a reflection on time, presence and awareness of our place in the universe. It is not about measuring and tracking in a precise, scientific fashion, but much more about the subjective understanding and experience of these realms.
The forms are geometrical and materials traditional, reminiscing of antique scientific instruments and long trusted approach to empirical knowledge. This nostalgia can be understood as an expression of uncertainty when people are questioning existing beliefs and exploring new territories.
Experimental process
Clockwise from top left: The Blast ceramics made through controlled explosions by Adam Železný, 3D Weaver printing flexible structures by Oluwaseyi Sosanya, Beyond Woven embroidered textiles by Gemma Kay Waggett, Microballon bowls made by spraying a ceramic mixed with glass balls for lightness and structural rigidity into the mould, by Prokop Chludil
Experimentation in manufacturing processes in craft and smaller production runs sometimes leads to innovations and discoveries on a larger scale. These projects show some of the interesting production methods spotted during the week.
To see more themes from LDF take a look at our Pinterest page.
For more information, please contact our PR Team.
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