Well, firstly it was very exciting to see the confessions of a design geek logo up on the wall of Brompton Design District HQ, 4 Cromwell Place, alongside the other media partners and sponsors – in pretty good company too!
I have always loved Brompton Design District – there is a really thriving creative scene here, with lots of independent businesses who pull together to put on a show at times like London Design Festival. Here are my top picks…
I absolutely loved Vera Chapter Two, the brainchild of Kirsty Minns & Érika Muller – it’s exactly the sort of cross-disciplinary fertilisation of ideas that gets me really excited. A selection of designers were asked to create a response to the photograph above – a selection of creative writers were then asked to respond to their designs.
The result was a room full of objects, stories and poems that, whilst each being unique to their creator had a commonality that held them all together as a group. It was a really exciting installation and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next year!
Being someone who loves hand printing and social media in equal measure, I was bound to enjoy Out of Print. An app on a iPad randomly combined news headlines to create a nonsensical poster slogan, which was than hand printed and hung up to dry, creating the installation as the week went on.
Some of the resulting posters were unintentionally hilarious, but what was really interesting was the contrast between the method used to create the very earliest form of newspapers and today’s digital overload of live news streams.
And finally, just around the corner at 1 North Terrace is the new home of Squint. Lisa Whatmough’s colourful creations look fantastic en masse in this cavernous space.
The downstairs houses an exhibition space, in which I spotted this incredible drawing by Claudine O’Sullivan. It contrasts the terror of its subject matter with a colour palette that looks like it could have been created from a child’s pencil case.
I also loved seeing the guts of this chair – I love seeing how things are made and this cross-section offers and fantastic insight to what’s going on underneath the patchwork.
And of course, that’s not even to mention Skandium, Mint or the V&A…
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- out and about :: designjunction (LDF12)
- out and about :: designersblock (LDF12)
- out and about :: london design festival in pictures (part four)
- out and about :: london design festival in pictures (part three)
