Designblog

When browsing the exciting digital world that is the library catalogue I came across a title containing the evocative, mystic word… vorticism. Conjuring up images of covert religious sects full of sinister hooded eidolons walloping around subterranean crypts. Muttering arcane, paeanistic assertions filled with astonishing amounts of radiant, completely redundant verbosity. These esoteric figures adulated to the apotheosis of the vortex.

Not completely to my surprise it was nothing of the sort. It turned out to be something rather less inclined to cliché’s and more inclined to paintings.

cat. nr: 705.8 cor-1

keyword: develope envelope

While I was looking for the book, which could give me some materials about identity, I found, that there are not that many books about photography in our library. So, I decided to stop on this History book, which includes photos from 19th-20th century. I have chosen a portrait genre. But I found that it’s difficult to talk about this topic objectively, showing just a few examples. The idea was to show changes in society, that led to the changes in photography also. Not only technical innovations had influence on it. I can say that now we have a good material, good inheritance, that we can use in our work. And, of course, our present time has it’s own identity, interesting, what kind of changes it will leave after.

book no: 761-WAR-1

keyword: identity

we are humans…

humans who are creating…

creation is an human action…

humans who are destructing…

destruction is an human action…

creation and destruction

thats human, thats us…

-twom- I

keyword: playground

“Vorm van sculptuur” is on mine opinion a sculpture about sculptress like Marenne Welten, Anne Auloos, Inge van ‘t Klooster, Mia Trompenaars , Melanie de Vroom and Marenne Welten.
It’s a collection of small books form each artist.
Based on what i am seeing from the inside and outside of these small books,
i would say that they are showing fragments, details, sketches of the works.

The most interesting picture of the work of Anne Ausloos is for me one of her paper works from 2009. The reason why this photograph is so interesting to me, is because it brings questions and the form is funny.
what does the object represent? is it solid, is it edible, is it a sandwich?

if i talk about Inge van t’ Klooster i am talking about the most not attractive works of the whole group. i am basing this sentence on my taste and not on the quality of the work. the reason why i don’t find it attractive is because the massiveness and the darkness of the work. The Virtual work that she made with Martin Riebeek called “Between you&me” is interesting to me because it’s an outside platform for digital art. I think that this is a funny way to involve people in art. You could say that it’s performence art.

Anne Ausloos, 2009

Inge van t’ Klooster and Martin Riebeek

cat nr:726.8

keyword: best

If there’s one thing that is always important it is safety. Trust me I know. If there is one thing that is taken for granted it is safety. trust me, I know. but does anybody ever listen. No! I’m too old to make any sense in this modern world and heavy iron locks are not enough in a digital age as ours. trust me, I know…

cat. nr. 777.1-era-1

keyword: wisdom

Tattoo’s have been a trend for centuries. For some people it can even become an obsession.

Why would you choose to have a tattoo and what would you be interested in to have scratched into your skin permanently for the rest of your life? That are the questions you should ask yourself before you go to the shop and have a tattoo.

Some people choose to have a tribal, some an oriental drawing all over their back, but why do they choose that and what does it add to them as a person?

For example, a friend of mine has a tribal which he got when he was 16years old. Now he is 27 and he doesn’t like it anymore. So why did he have it actually? Because of the fashionable trend at that time? Or thought he would be cool? I don’t know, but what I do know now is why I had my tatoo. At first I just liked the image but now it has a meaning to me. I choose to have a chinese dragon and I have it on my chest. To me it means that sometimes I have to spit some fire.

I think most of the times a tattoo could emphassis the karakter and individuality of a person, even when it’s something that’s not even meaningful to them. This is why I choose this book.

Cat nr: 7464

keyword: individuality

For this book, I need to cheat. I will add a tag to my previous entries. Maybe like every book, this one is also a time related book.
The images in this book are trying to give you a certain feeling of action and adventure in the 1970’s. You, standing in a bar, always playing with your metal balls. Sometimes you are a cowboy, killing Indians. Other times an astronaut looking for new worlds in outer space.
I didn’t read any text, but I think to people have really interesting stories to tell you about how it is in the pinball business.
You should read them.

Sharpe PINBALL! Hamilton
cat.no. hami 1

keyword: time

After first book with works of illustrators i tried to find some book which is focus more on describe the contents then on story telling. “Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005” by Phil Baines is about that. Rich with stunning illustrations and filled with detail of individual titles, designers and even the changing size and shape of famous Penguin logo itself, this book shows how covers become design classics. That what i like the most is very simple, but in the same time very fitting covers design. Book filled with inspiring images, Penguin by Design demonstrates just how difficult it is not to judge a book by its cover.

cat.no. 758.1-bai-1

keyword: illustration

The choice of projects, which are presented in this book is very various and reaches almost any kind of design. Many international designers are introduced with their latest works.
A lot of the projects are highly conceptual and touch the blurry spaces in between design and art.
I found the title “design and the elastic mind” very appealing in opposite to the cover, which is rather scary.
Therefore I posted a picture of Elio Caccavale’s project “Utility Pets”.
He is concerning himself with the various effects, that inter-species organ transplantation might have in our lives in the not-so-distant future.
The tools he invented, presented on the picture, are supposed to generate an intense contact/relationship in between the donor (in this case the pig) and the receiver.
From the upper left to the lower right:

– Smoke Eater- Toy Comunicator- Memento Service- Comforting Device

cat.no. 772.9-ant-

keyword: overview

Walking down the alleys in search of an appealing set of words proved itself being quite misleading, design-wise. Leaving me with the absurd yet strongly totemic ‘Independent animal west coast gives’.

I like to complain about the library’s limited scope. Tell about leaving the small glass room, heading to central Amsterdam’s libraries and bookshops, consciously neglecting a couple of very nice surprises, all of which I found sitting on the Z chair facing the catalogue computer.

When in doubt, turn to a search engine.

Independent, 2 entries: 705.8-cat-184 and 707.8-sie-1.
Animal, 6 entries: 702.4-jet-1, 593.0-muy-2b, 593.0-ell-2 (not to be found), 772.9-bra-1, -war-9 and 772.9-cat-59.
West Coast: No entries.
Give, 2 entries: 772.9-lam-1 and 777.6-cat-291.

Fitting within the given design field are two sober monograph-esque books: Lindfors: Rational animal: Selected projects from Stefan Lindfors’ first 15 years as an artist and Given: jewellery by Warwick Freeman, plus two more thematic publications: Domestic animals: The neoprimitive style and Perception and lightning as formgivers for architecture.

Of all the attempts to make these four books one—reference/number compilation, chance, arbitrary choice, sophistic attempts to relate one to textile design or sign language—the one I find most exciting on this Thursday night is graphic compilation. I’m humbly trying to keep in mind the cover of Wire’s On Returning, a clever mix-up of the band’s three first album covers Stuart Bailey coined as a rare artefact of valid graphic design (or something alike) in a semi-old (#11) Dot Dot Dot issue.

cat.nr: 772.9-bra-1 + 772.9-lam-1 + 772.9-cat-59 + 777.6-cat-291

keyword: independent

Building up a colourful construction with one piece of wire.

It looks like its done with a lot of patience, but is going really fast.

The act becomes automatic. Out of nothing a patch seems to appear

from one side of the wood constructed loom.

Patterns with different shapes and colours, like the map of Africa.

Every country has it’s own unique technique and style of weaving.

They have all found their own creative way of constructing looms

that help them in this seemingly tedious process.

To see those beautiful constructions

find this book of Venice Lamb at the Rietveld Library.

cat. no: 779.1

keyword: culture

In my previous post I talked about “City Signs and Lights”, about the design of a modern city landscape, attracting customers. City signs are in an ongoing competition for attention. In this post I want to focus on the interaction between the consumer (the flaneur) and the environment. I would like to shift between two cases: the architecture of The Strip in Las Vegas and the passages in Paris, in the first half of the 20th century.

The passage is a covered shopping gallery. The culture philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote about early consumer culture in Paris in his text “Passagen” (1930). He describes the citizen as a flaneur, not as someone who is exposing him/herself, but someone who is exposed to the attractive lights in the shopping gallery. The flaneur is a person who walks through the city without a specific goal. He/She gets into an ecstacy, going from one attraction to the other. The city unrolls as a landscape to the eye of the flaneur, but at the same time, locks him in. Benjamin calls this new city environment a “Fantasmagory”, the city becomes a dreamworld where different rules apply than in reality.

” If there is one place where colours are allowed to clash, it would be the Passage; a red-green comb is hardly noticed here ”

(W. Benjamin, Passagen, 1930)

I believe that Las Vegas is a great example of a modern day Fantasmagory. The city is almost entirely made out of neon signs. After the second world war, Las Vegas was growing extraordinarily fast. The consequence was a speed-up of competition along the Strip (the central road through Vegas). The actual buildings are all more or less the same: low, but a large ground level surface. This has to do with the climate and economical reasons. The outside of the building needs to stand out, both during the day and night. The result is a total mash-up of different styles, quotes, hightened symbolism, eclecticism, all in neon lights.

In the end, the building itself becomes a sign.

Vegas references:

W. Benjamin, Passagen, 1930

R. Venturi, Learning from Las vegas, 1970

Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990

05-heaven-or-las-vegas

cat. no. 700.6-benj2

keyword: neon

Excavating the library, looking for pyramids, lead me to a late 60´s representation of posters by the graphic design artist Milton Glaser. The choice for this book is solely based on the cover graphics and has no other connection to the first book selected, though it seems that the fascination for pyramids and their monumental quality are shared by many designers regardless of the time or design field.

The size of this book (A3) is  in my opinion very well adapted for displaying these incredible hand drawn posters. Every page is a poster and the more you look into them the more you see.

Bob Dylan poster by Milton Glaser 1966.

cat. nr: 754.1

keyword: pyramid

…While thinking about repetition and about the idea that practically anything could become a pattern by repeating it over and over again, I came to think of industrial design.

Where repetition in a pattern becomes this new image that, in a way, is stronger than the pieces apart. Repetition in products doesn’t really make it stronger. It makes the product less original en less valuable.
Unless you only plan on making a few of the same product, than the product suddenly becomes a collectors item or special edition.

Well, this second book was about industrial design…but also about language. Funny how these two subjects work together. Because through industrial design it becomes possible to have the same products all over the world. So for new products, new words have to be invented. A lot of products are called after their function, at least in Dutch they are. But wouldn’t it be an idea, to have international words for these international products? Ikea is already using this concept, so now people all over the world start having their own strange Swedish vocabulary of really silly words. Does that mean that in ten years every person, from Singapore to Munich would know that a LILLÅKER is the thing you rest your mattress on?

I think this book gives a better solution to this language problem, by just learning the different words.

cat.no. 772.9 cat 50

keyword: repetion

In the earlier times of human kind people built their own homes, grew their own food, made their own clothes and tools. They where self sufficient and the knowledge was passed on from generation to generation. With industrialization and increasing population, this knowledge has been put aside and most of it now lost.

It´s kind of impossible and pretty utopian idea to turn back to these old living habits, especially here in the west,  but maybe we could try to find a balance in our lives between what we can make with our own hands and what still must be done by machines. So before running out to the store we could think twice and see if we really need to buy this item that we need.

The more we can create for ourselves, the greater will our individual freedom and independence be.

cat. no: 710.9-kah-2

keyword: freedom

My search for another fragile subject led me to the book “The Crystal Palace Exhibition, illustrated catalogue”. Again I choose by title. Crystal Palace, what a beautiful combination of something stable and something fragile almost a contradiction. The combination crystal palace is somehow a little impossible as if it would only exist in fairytales.

The book is an old paperback, it used to be brown but on the back it’s been bleached by time and sunlight and has turned into a fifties purple. The pages are yellowed and the book is full of beautiful etchings of art nouveau design, furniture, elegantly ornamented pistols, silverware, and luxurious flower-print fabrics.

Last week I wrote about the book Fragiles, a book about contemporary ceramics and I can see a lot of connections between the two books. The art nouveau designs, just like the contemporary works, has a kind of playfulness in it, the flower ornaments seems almost alive as they intertwine around the legs of the tables and when you look closer at the ornaments soon you will find creatures and fairy tale animals hiding in the patterns. Another thing that I connect to some of the contemporary ceramic is the “more is more motto”. Some of the furniture in the art nouveau book is crammed with decorations, ornaments, cherubs and flowers, just like some of the objects in Fragiles are over the top kitschy. But there is something quite beautiful about this unwillingness to stop when it is enough.

cat. no. 772.1 cat 2

keyword: fragile

1. if you are searching for the best way to walk clumsily with a book, take this one.
2. if you want the best book for architecture of 21 century.
3. if you are searching for a book that is 4 kilos, this is the best choice in the library of the Rietveld Academie.
4. this is the best book if you want one that probably will not fit into your bag.
5. if you want to have a book that is larger than A3 format and if you open it, even larger that A2, then this is the book .
6. if you want to know everything about the architecture of 21st century, this is probably the best book for   it.
7. if you want to carry a book that makes everyone say ” wow, a big one” this is the best choice.
8. if you want to find out more about this book, the best way to do that is to go to the Rietveld library and search . .

cat. no. 715.9

keyword: best