The Architectural Foundation COAM in Madrid has organised an exhibition of one-off Verner Panton chairs, reinterpreted by a selection of Spanish designers and artists. The show, 10 Autores + 10 Sillas Panton, will close on October 7 with an auction of the pieces, reworked by Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, Alberto Corazón, Álvarez Sala y Rubio Carvajal, Angel Schlesser,  Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Javier Mariscal, Manuel Serrano, Ouka-Leele, Pedro Feduchi, and Tuñón y Mansilla.

Showroom VITRA
C/ Marqués de Villamejor nº 5 – Madrid
Tel. 91 426 45 60 –  www.vitra.com

A few days ago I went to the presentation of Designpedia.net, a recently launched online encyclopaedia on Spanish Design. Designpedia is an open project based on the Wiki concept and under a Creative Commons license, which will grow thanks to the contribution of its users. Its remit is Spanish graphic and product design, although it welcomes interdisciplinary links across a variety of design fields, and its focus on Spanish design does not imply a strict territorial delimitation.

During the early stages of the project, an editorial committee will ensure the quality and relevance of the content, and it is hoped that as the project gains momentum, it will move closer to functioning as a wiki system that is self-edited and self-curated.

Spanish design has a considerable historical trajectory, a diverse institutional network and an active, energetic professional and cultural context. It desperately needs projects that can consolidate all that, and the focus provided by Designpedia is very timely, so I’m hoping this one will take off.  It’s been put together by knowledgeable and enthusiastic people. It also has a great interface, is very user-friendly, and google-friendly.  And I’m in it. So what more can I say to convince you? Go have a look, and if you can, contribute.

Designpedia.net is a project of the Fundación Signes.

OBJECTIFIED, the new documentary by Gary Hustwit will have its official and only screening in Spain, next Thursday 4th of June in Barcelona. I wrote about this film in an earlier post, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it.
From the press release:

OBJECTIFIED is the new feature-length documentary by acclaimed HELVETICA director, Gary Hustwit. The film is about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. Smart Design is featured in the film, along with many other top designers and firms such as IDEO, Dieter Rams and Jonathan Ive from Apple. If you are a designer or you have an interest in design, this movie is a must see. Furthermore, this will be a great occasion for the Barcelona design community to get together.

The film has been getting critic’s praise and audience’s applause as it has traveled the world in the last couple of months. You can get a little sneak peek by watching the trailer for the film here.

Don’t miss out on your only chance to attend the Spanish screening of this documentary.  You can buy tickets at the door on the day of the screening but limited seats are going fast you can buy them in advance here.

The screening will take place June 4th at Cines Alexandra, Rambla Catalunya 90 at 8pm. After the movie enjoy a talk with the film director, Gary Hustwit, meet Smart Design’s VP of Industrial Design and have a beer compliments of Moritz. There will be also an after-party later that night, to be announced at the screening.

The Osborne group has announced that it will stop using the black bull as its corporate logo. The Sevilla-based group wants to signal its shift from being mostly a brandy and sherry producer to its current emphasis on products such as water, fruit juices and Iberico ham. It has commissioned a new corporate logo from a Madrid design studio, which is still under wraps and will be launched later this year.

While the fearsome 14-meter high bulls will remain dotted around the Spanish countryside, they will be even further divested from meaning. One more nail in the coffin for this iconic piece of Spanish advertising design, created in 1956 by Manuel Prieto of the Azor agency. The first bull, 7 meters high and made of wood, went up near Madrid in November of 1957. From the early 1960s the bulls were made of metal sheet and were 14 meters high. By the 1970s there were more than 500 bulls across Spanish territories, not just on the Iberian Peninsula but also in the Canary Islands, the Balearics and North Africa.

In 1988, new national transport legislation makes publicity billboards that are visible from the roads illegal, and the word Osborne that was written in red across the existing bulls is removed. By 1994 the Spanish government wants to bring them all down, but many autonomous communities, municipalities and pressure groups fight to save them. In 1998, the Supreme Court grants them mercy, stating that the Osborne bulls have moved beyond their original advertising meaning, having become part of the landscape and a Spanish cultural icon.

The Osborne bull has also left an interesting trail of political associations. As an icon of Spanishness it has been taken over by the conservative right, and prompted the design of  an alternative animal national icon by Catalan nationalists, in the shape of the Catalan donkey. No Heritage listing in sight for that one!

It was also used by Spanish soldiers posted in Irak, both on the national flag and to decorate the barracks.

There are currently 97 bulls left. And now that they are one of the great stories of Spanish graphic design, declared objects of National Heritage, film icons (in Bigas Luna’s 1992 Jamón, Jamón, the bull shares screen time with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz),  Osborne wants to give them up, because they link the group too closely to its past as a sherry wine producer. Would Nike give up the swoosh? Would Macintosh give up the Apple? And all for the sake of branding bottled water and fruit juice?

Surtido* presenta la exposición Surtido de Revolución; una muestra de los resultados del primer workshop de la plataforma, en íntima colaboración con el taller de cerámica Apparatu.

*La plataforma efímera e independiente para los jóvenes diseñadores del país

Inauguración 6 de mayo 19:30, Espai Rubik – c. Planeta, 5

todos los detalles acerca de la expo aquí.

La cuarta noche de Pecha Kucha se celebrará en uno de los lugares más auténticos y creativos de Barcelona, el Palo Alto de Poblenou. Gracias a la Fundación Palo Alto, celebraremos el Vol.4 en su Nave XYZ el día 6 de Febrero. Apertura de puertas 19.30. Inicio de las ponencias 20.20.

Mercedes Quevedo, illustrator
Guim Valls Teruel, Electric Bicycle World Tour
Cristina González Gabarró, photographer
Xavier Font Sola, structural engineer
Patricio Abreu, Vaho recycled design
Niall O Flynn, industrial designer
Ignasi Pérez Arnal, sustainable architect
Marcus Willcock, designer & researcher
Stijn Ossevoort, fashion designer
Bailo + Rull, ADD Arquitectura

Pecha Kucha Vol.4
Palo Alto, Calle Pellaires 30-38, Poblenou
Metro: Selva de Mar (L4)
Apertura puertas: 19.30h
Inicio: 20.20h
Cierre: 23h
Foro limitado, ven pronto!
Entrada: 5€ (incluye 1 bebida)

It’s a bit late but, Reactable Systems are running a competition to design an identity for themselves and the reactable. It would be great if more designers in Spain got to hear about this.

Well, the deadline is January 11th, so yeah, it’s a bit late!

Still, it’s worth giving this a shout-out, if only to get you to check out the Reactable project, which is truly magnificent and has gathered a long list of awards, including the Ars Electronica Prix and two D&AD prizes in 2008. It’s an exciting interaction design project that brings together engineers, computer scientists and musicians, based at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

In 2007,  Gary Hustwit directed Helvetica, a small budget, feature-length documentary about the 50-year old typeface. A niche film with an undeniably nerdy topic, Helvetica soon became a global phenomenon. One of the film’s greatest achievements was the way in which it managed to convey both Helvetica’s extraordinary designer status and its truly impressive universal success as possibly the most ubiquitous and generic typeface in common use.

Now Hustwit is at work on stuff. Moving from graphics to objects, his next project, due to premiere in Spring of 2009, is aptly called Objectified. Here’s how the Objectified website describes the project:

Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

And here’s the trailer:

Objectified looks set to become another runaway success with the design crowd, but the trailer really makes me wonder whether it will manage to provide us with any interesting views on our everyday relationship with things – with generic things. The beauty of Helvetica was that through the passionate and obsessive following of one font, the film took us deep into what most of us experience daily as no-design-land, the land of cinema tickets, road signs, TV news – just life, no designer tag. Objectified seems more concerned with designers and their creative process, a hardly innovative approach to the world of objects that yields little real insight into the average human relationship with manufactured goods, but lots of talk about ‘good design’ and ‘user needs’. But I might be mistaken. I really hope I am. I guess I just didn’t like the trailer. That’s funny, because I thought I did.

Saturday 15 November 2008
7:30pm to 11pm
Ticket: 5 euros (includes drink)
IAAC (Institut d’arquitectura avançada de Catalunya)
C/Pujades 102 baixos, Poble Nou. 08005, Barcelona
Metro: Línea 4 (Bogatell ó Llacuna)

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/barcelona

After the success of Vol.1 and Vol.2, Pecha Kucha Night Barcelona returns, this time taking place at the IAAC (Institut d’arquitectura avançada de Catalunya). Participants will include the design studio 2creativo, the architect Ethel Baraona, sustainable design consultant Leonora Oppenheim and graphic designer and illustrator Miguel Ángel Moya.

The first Pecha Kucha Night in Barcelona took place in July at the Edificio Fórum and was followed by a second evening in September at the Maremagnum.

Volume 2 of Pecha-Kucha Night is taking place in Barcelona on 26 September. Since it was first held in Tokyo in 2003, Pecha-Kucha has gone viral and now regularly takes place in over 150 cities worldwide, offering a great platform for designers and creative professionals to showcase their work and meet each other.

Following the set format of this global phenomenon, participants will make short presentations, speaking to 20 images of their work, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up, followed by two hours of intensive networking, drink in hand. Next Friday there will be presentations by industrial designer Ernest Perera, gastronomist Juan Ortega, web designer Gavin Dudeney, and design studio Brosmind, among others.

The event is bilingual, taking place in Spanish and English.

Friday 26 September 2008
8pm to 11pm
Ticket: 5 euros (includes drink)
Maremagnum, Barcelona
Metro: Línea 3 (Drassanes)