bikes and things

Erik Spiekermann on the ideal office in terms of layout, which he sketches out so beautifully. He comes at it from the idea of a design studio but could equally apply to many other types of office or creative spaces. Highly convincing as a diagram as well as capturing the human traits of designers and office workers with the aim of trying to get them to communicate more – he’s pretty entertaining too.

A bit more about Spiekermann. From creative.arte.tv

Erik Spiekermann is one of the most known designer and typographer. After leaving university without a degree (in art history), he worked for different design offices in London and finally started his own design agency Metadesign in Berlin with Florian Fischer and Dieter Heil. Together with offices in London, San Franzisco and Zurich, Metadesign was responsible for Adobe, Apple, Audi and Volkswagen, as well as for the Berlin Transport Services BVG, and for the corporate identiy of the capital city. In 1990 Spiekermann founded together with his wife Joan and the British designer Neville Brody, the Fontfoundry Fontshop International. He established the FontFont Bibliothek Spiekermann where he published the well known fonts FF Meta, FF Unit, FF Info as well as many others. In 2000 Spiekermann left Metadesign and is today responsible for Bosch, Otto Bock and the ZDF with his office EdenSpiekermann in Berlin and Amsterdam. For From Sketch Erik Spiekermann draws his concept of a perfect communicative office.

via Lawrence

Yesterday we ventured up to the V&A on the slowest bus in the world from Peckham to a tiny room absolutely rammed to the gills with work, and then stuffed with lots and lots of people. Some great work but just no time to think or contemplate or even make connections between the work at different stages. Just queue for the next case and hope you got a good spot or could see round someone’s head. I couldn’t help think it would have been far better at a larger venue like the Design Museum with some space around it.

Some fascinating pieces and ideas across all levels but it seemed to fall down as the scale grew for me. I can’t really make any other judgment as it was so hideous to visit – maybe I’ll buy the book from Amazon and digest in my own time.

And some cones made into a canopy.

So incredibly cute but also completely cuts through any of the associations many of us have with these icons or logos. Probably seen in their simplest terms.

With Associates have completed their November update to their redesign-our-site-once-a-month thing. The end result is great as usual but also sad to see our efforts for October go.

However the thing that’s far more interesting to me is the behind the scenes or process that goes into it. A fairly ambitious 4 hours was set to do the whole thing and again was recorded with a timelapse which fittingly is four minutes long.

And here’s a few more images from their Flickr set.

All images © With Associates.

For a long while I stopped buying CDs, books and journals. I don’t know why I stopped, maybe I felt a bit burnt out from my Diploma at Portsmouth or maybe I’d just lost interest. Anyway I’ve started buying books again each month. I kind of think this has something to do with getting interested in Architectural Photography. As well as looking at the Architecture I’m constantly scanning the images to see how they have been done, who the Photographer is etc. I set aside a little money maybe £50 – £60 and then buy a few nice books. Emma also has started doing this, she buys four novels a month and aims to read one a week. She calls hers “Brain Food”, I call mine “Eye Candy”. This month I kind of blew my budget a bit but never mind.

So the books in order are (top left clockwise)…

Happenstance by David Solomons
Underground by David Solomons. Both are available to buy here.
A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman
Henk Snoek: Architectural Photography
Stanton Williams: Volume

, originally uploaded by Dyntr.

Last Thursday I went to the UK showing of Objectified at the Curzon in Chelsea. Unfortunately Emma was ill so I went with Neil in the end. Great film about design with some real characters in there.

The questions session with Jonathon Ive at the end was superb though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so many iPhones in one location though!