Sotheby

While reading a design blog, I saw that Sotheby, an art auction site, was auctioning off over 1,200 works from their Polaroid collection. Looks like the bad economy has hit another enterprise.

I just discovered Sotheby and don’t really know much about them, but the work they had was beautiful! Photographers include Ansel Adams, Chuck Close, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. The fact that I only recognized a few names matters very little, now I have more photographers to explore. Here are a few of my favourites.

Lucas Samaras

Chuck Close

William Wegman

David Hockney

Design Edge

Today was quite the busy day. I packed my things to head back to Kitchener for the week ( I live in my hometown Woodstock on the weekends and work at Conestoga in the week), went to my boss's wedding shower then headed to Toronto. Once I got to Toronto I wandered around with my Mom until we found the Eaton Center to pass the time before the big event. What event you ask, the award gala for the Design Edge Regional Awards.

I entered my chicken project from class at the start of second semester. A few months later I found out I was a finalist and today I was announced as the winner in the student category for South-Western Ontario. It was very exciting, and I'm glad I was able to go to the awards ceremony (Thanks Mom and Dad).

While I was very nervous to market myself I did manage to talk to a couple people. I met two interns, one from LG and one from FujiFilm who introduced themselves to me and a marketing manager who I met through them. The marketing manager was very nice and encouraged me to introduce myself to the publisher of Design Edge, while I was very nervous, I eventually did it and it wasn't so bad. Later on I saw Jen, a Conestoga grad, and met her colleague and boss from Hagon Design. I also met the Editor in Chief of Design Edge, it was exciting to hear about all the things they have to offer for designers.

Overall my first networking experience was a success. I'm glad I was able to go and can now say I'm glad people pushed me to introduce myself.

Trash Galore

After a visit from a co-worker on maternity leave, I wondered what my parents decided when I was a baby, Huggies or hemp. I was surprised when my parents said they did all cloth diapers. While mine may not have been made of hemp fabric, many modern mothers are choosing sustainable fabrics such as hemp for their babies’ cloth diapers.

While the throw away diapers seemed like a great idea at the time, it was soon realized that all the garbage had to be put somewhere. The most recent estimates say that depending on the brand of diaper, it will take 200 to 500 years for diapers to decompose. It certainly won’ t be in my lifetime.

While this may seem unrelated to design, it is in a way. There was once a designer who said, I’m tired of cleaning diapers, there must be a better way. And while it may be more convenient, disposable diapers have created a huge amount of unnecessary garbage. Designers often ignore what will happen to their work after the consumer is done with it. It’s hard to meet budgets and environmental standards, but as the world continues to evolve, it is obvious that the afterlife of products will now come up more often. I hope that when I get out into the working world, I’ll be able to stick to my ideals and produce work that looks great and isn’t creating it’s own personal hole in the ozone layer.

Crafter MGee

Following yet another link from the Daily Heller, I was checking out oxstudio, a collective from Italy when I found proof that I am not the only one with old lady pastimes. This pillow was handmade by a freelance illustrator who understands how traditional can be cool.

Off to Spain

This summer I am planning a trip to Spain just before I start my final year of Graphic Design. During the stress of the school year I decided I needed a break from everything and started to plan a pilgrimage/hike that I had heard about in Spain. As time went on I researched more in depth and found out that the starting location of my hike, Bilbao, has a Guggenheim Museum.

In grade eleven and twelve I took art classes, my teacher loved art history and was so excited for us to see the real work when we went to New York on a school trip. One of the museums we visited was the Guggenheim. Up until I started researching Spain I didn’t realize there was more than one Guggenheim. The thing I found most memorable about the Guggenheim was the structure of the building. After Frank Lloyd Wright built the New York Museum, they continued the tradition of hiring prominent architects to design the museums. Guggenheim Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas (now closed) was designed by Rem Koolhaas, the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will again be designed by Frank Gehry and the new Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania will be designed by Pritzker prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid. With such a reputation for hiring major architects to design bold buildings, it is questionable whether the buildings or art inside are more famous.

Here are some images of what the Guggenheim Museums around the world look like. I can't wait to visit the Bilbao location.

New York City

Lithuania (awaiting construction)

Venice

Bilbao

Berlin

Abu Dhabi (awaiting construction)

FFFOUND

When looking for inspiration, trying to get myself out of a creative lull or taking a break, I often turn to FFFOUND. While I pass by most of the images fairly quickly, there is always something that catches my eye. I have taken to saving these images for later perusal, who knows when I will recall something I saw and want to use it as reference for a project.

Today I saw an interesting photographic series called Transparency by Khristian Mendoza; here are a couple of my favourites.

Photography Find

While reading Applied Arts I came across the name Lucas Oleniuk, I looked him up on Google and found a few interesting things about him. Lucas Oleniuk is a photographer who works for The Toronto Star, covering all types of news stories. Along with covering over 500 new stories, he makes videos commenting on the big issues using still frames.

One of the most interesting stories Olenuik covered was the deterioration of Haiti after the earthquake. Check out his gallery of photos here, and one other I found here. They capture devastation in a most beautiful way.