Zandra Rhodes goes digital

You can access VADS From our Electronic Library   by selecting the Database A-Z section and clicking ‘V’ for VADS

Researchers and students from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) have worked alongside Zandra Rhodes to prepare, photograph, and catalogue 500 dresses and garments selected from the designer’s private archive at her studio in London, including pieces worn by icons such as Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diana Ross.

The project has also created contextual learning materials which explore Zandra Rhodes' creative processes and production techniques, through video interviews, video tutorials, and drawings available at: zandrarhodes.ucreative.ac.uk. Here also you can see video interviews with Zandra Rhodes about the inspiration behind key, favourite garments selected by the designer. There are also  video tutorials in which the designer and her specialist studio team demonstrate some of the techniques involved in creating a handmade Zandra Rhodes couture piece. In addition, there is a unique, comprehensive, and previously unseen series of fashion drawings from the 'Zandra Rhodes Style Bibles.'

Zandra Rhodes trained at one of UCA's founder colleges, the Medway College of Design, and is among the most famous names in British fashion over the last fifty years . Her er work includes the design of haute couture for clients such as Elizabeth Taylor, Freddie Mercury, and Diana, Princess of Wales.

See the press release on the UCA website at:

http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/news/2013/march/joanna-lumley

See the project in action in the ITV news report at:

http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2012-07-09/zandras-iconic-outfits-out-of-the-closet/

To find out more about how the digital collection was created, see the project blog at:

http://zandrarhodesarchive.wordpress.com

Decorating with Old Masters

Dutch art director Christian Borstlap created this film for the new Rijksmuseum project Rijksstudio. The film includes 211 artworks from the museum's online collection.

Video: Part of a Bigger Plan
Music: 'Dreaming' by Allo, Darlin

The Rijksmuseum uses Rijksstudio to make more than 125,000 objects from the collection digitally accessible, free of charge. You can zoom in, share them, and ‘like’ them. You can also create collections of your own, using your favourite images and details. Not only that, but the Rijksmuseum is also inviting you to use these images to create beautiful products. At this resolution, a single detail is still sharp enough to decorate a car.

 

This page shows some examples of other people’s creations and offers links to websites that supply various forms of printing on demand. Using them you could order wallpaper , decorate a scooter, have a vinyl foil for your phone, all of them featuring works of art from the Rijksmuseum

Getty Research Institute on Facebook

The Getty Research Institute is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts. They now have a Facebook page.

Why not 'Like' them? There are all sorts of snippets there already.

Here’s two of them!

Coveted by Venetian noblewomen and creative inspiration for Parisian lingerie-makers, these 16th-century needlework pattern books are among the rarest of early modern printed books to survive intact.

The new 2013-2014 Scholars Program research theme, “Connecting Seas: Cultural andArtistic Exchange,” explores how bodies of water, far from being barriers, have served as a rich and complex interchange in the visual arts. 
Previous Scholar Projects are linked on this page

 

Conserving an Icon: Traces of Time in The Beanery by Kienholz

After in-depth examination, one of the most popular works in the Stedelijk Museum collection, The Beanery (1965) by Edward Kienholz, will be fully restored for the first time by the museum staff working in its new facilities.

As the installation comprises a variety of materials – for instance, the artist coated the entire installation in a synthetic liquid resin – this will be a complex operation. In anticipation of the grand reopening on September 23, the Stedelijk is preparing and restoring a number of its best-loved artworks.

A short video about this project is available on ARTUBE videos about Art and Design the online video channel for art and design contributed to by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, M HKA in Antwerp, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, De Pont in Tilburg and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The videos will generally be produced by these museums themselves,  and include  interviews with  artists , designers, and makers. Fiction and experimentation are also included, for example in the Boijmans TV series and in a number of unusual animation and remix films.

A Materials Library for the 21st Century

This video, by The Economist, features Andrew Dent, vice-president of Material ConneXion,sharing his thoughts on the evolution of material science.
Material ConneXion's online archive and material libraries, based in seven cities world-wide, feature over 6,500 of the world’s most cutting-edge materials all of them commercially available for use.
Andrew Dent believes Material ConneXion will help bridge the gap between science and design as we move from the “synthetic century” into a “biological century”, where intelligent, nature-inspired materials consume less resources and less energy.
 An international panel of experts review 50 to 60 new materials for the library every month, adding  only the best.
The archive is organized in eight categories (see below)  comprising the largest selection of sustainable materials and the only Cradle to Cradle materials library in the world:
the 8 categories: Polymers, Ceramics, Glass, Metals, Cement-based materials, Natural Materials, Carbon-based materials, Processes
An online Materials Database is available at a price to Universities (not available at Cardiff Met).

NewYork, Bangkok, Beijing, Cologne, Daegu, Istanbul, Milan, Seoul, Shanghai all have physical Material Connexions libraries

Feature articles from Matter magazine (published quarterly by Material Connexions) are available to read online . Each edition of the  journal  follows a specific  theme  like the special issues on  'Wellness' and 'Technology' and  all contain a wealth of information and images relating to innovative materials and their uses.

Thomas Heatherwick: the Cauldron and a Retrospective

The English designer takes Steve Rose through his retrospective show Heatherwick Studio: Designing the Extraordinary, which runs at London's V&A until 30 September

Thomas Heatherwick is a designer architect from London and the man behind the Olympic Cauldron.

 The cauldron was lit on 27 July at the end of the end of the Olympics opening ceremony, which was directed by Danny Boyle.
The design of the cauldron had been one of the most closely-guarded secrets of the opening ceremony. When the competing delegations arrived in London, they each received a copper petal, inscribed with the name of their country and the words ‘XXX Olympiad London 2012’. They carried these petals into the stadium during the opening ceremony before laying them down on the cauldron. When all the petals had been laid down, the seven torchbearers each ignited a single tiny flame within one of the copper petals on the ground, triggering the ignition of all 204 petals. The Cauldron’s long, stainless-steel stems then rose towards each other and converged to form one single flame.
Lots more on Heatherwick here
The cauldron being lit here

symbols on the skin

 

Jean Paul Gaultier spring/summer 2012 Source: WGSN

Tattoos used to be for soldiers, sailors, bikers and criminals but now we read that  the prime minister's wife has a dolphin on her ankle. One fifth of British adults are now 'inked', according to a survey and celebrities are covered in them. Wayne Rooney has Just Enough Education to Perform (the title of a Stereophonics album), his wife Coleen's name and a Celtic motif on his right arm, a flag of St George and "English and Proud" on his left, and a pair of clasped palms and angel wings across his back. Angelina Jolie has the coordinates of her children's birthplaces, "Know your rights" in English and Latin, a tiger, a quantity of quotations and a black cross, plus the names of her two divorced husbands (now covered over with new tattoos).

For many their  tattoos are a statement of their  individuality,  they have tattoos to mark important events, people and feelings- a visual record of their ongoing journey through their  lives. Be warned though, 23% of British adults say they now regret the their tattoos (we all make mistakes in life and permanent reminders of them on the skin are bound to be unhelpful).

By the late 1800s, 90% of those serving in the British navy were tattooed and sailing iconography is still influential – particularly with the trend for retro "romantic" tattoos. An anchor could mean crossing the equator, the soul of a dead sailor or symbolise hope, now,  rather than having a particular meaning, the anchor has also become an icon of tattooing – like the broken heart and the swallow.

 This Guardian article recovers from lost memory the symbolism behind the more classic images. Did you know the teardrop could signify you'd murdered someone? Or that Samantha Cameron's dolphin could signify prosperity but also represent duality – a creature of the water, and a breather of air-two worlds at once....

Staff and students at Cardiff Met can find images and articles about tattoos in WGSN our fabulous new fashion database which can be accessed from the Electronic Library. Use JSTOR to find out more about their history.

Poster Competition

This year’s National Student Survey (NSS) poster competition offers students the chance to showcase their work and spend time working  with design professionals. Prizes are

1. National recognition as the winning poster is used to advertise the NSS across every university in the country and is targeted at the over 300,000 students eligible to complete the survey.
2. A day working with the firm responsible for running the NSS, Ipsos MORI, to further develop and adapt the poster, getting it ready for use in the promotional campaign.
3. A one week, expenses-paid work placement with leading London design firm Hat-Trick.

The competition is open to all current students at a higher education or further education institution.

Completed designs (three allowed) , along with a completed submission form must be received here by 5 October 2012 by Midnight. Full details about the competition including the design brief on this page

Entries will be judged by a panel of representatives from NUS, HEFCE, HEFCW, and Ipsos MORI. The winning entrant will be notified by 29 October 2012. Last years winners

Worth Global Style Network

Cardiff Met Library has a new and exciting electronic resource. It is called Worth Global Style Network, the resource that predicts and tracks new trends in fashion, textiles and related areas such as youth culture, marketing, branding and packaging. Rich in images both still and moving, you can view worldwide catwalk shows, see what’s in the high street shops right now or read what fabrics are likely to be appearing in two year’s time. Special features, news items and trend forecasting for colour, fashion and materials make this resource valuable for fashion, and textiles students but also definitely of potential interest for media studies students,  illustrators, graphic designers, product designers, interior designers and anyone interested in fashion and textiles and their world of image and fantasy, theatricality and display, invention and style. Available only to Cardiff Met staff and students it is part of the Electronic Library. Here is a link to it. Help and advice on this and all our other databases and resources available at Llandaff Library from Catherine Drake and at Howard Gardens Library from Jenny Godfrey.

Check out another fashion database we have for a month's trial until the end of May. It is called The Vogue Archive and comprises all the pages of all the American Vogue US edition from 1892-present as a  fully searchable database. Let Catherine or myself know what you think of it. Here is the link. Again this will only work for logged in staff and students of Cardiff Met.

Open Educational Resources at UAL and MIT

There are many free resources on the Internet, we know this;  the ones known as  Open  Educational Resources: (OER's) comprise educational material that can be freely used by anyone without any copyright restrictions. An OER can be anything from a streamed video like this one showing the sand casting process to this link to an entire course on Anthropology

The sandcasting video, is from Process Arts, managed by Chris Follows at University of the Arts London (UAL)  c.follows@arts.ac.uk

Process Arts  focuses on "making" in art and design . This  site shows  insights into the acts of making and encourages users to share knowledge and experience online. You can  go there to explore  traditional and contemporary creative technical processes , and see work and the processes involved in its making online through  video, text, image and sound .

sample stills sequence

here are the most viewed items from Process Arts. Look to the right of the page for a full list of Resources

Interesting courses including bibliographies, online texts and images etc  are available from the MIT site where the Anthropology course linked above was taken from. Courses include many other subject areas of interest such as media studies, history, literature, music and theatre arts, women's and gender studies. MIT is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose mission  is "to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century".

Materials are Poetic: Mtrl

holographic glass

In order to reach out to the design community, ASM, a US-based Materials Information Society, has set up /MTRL. Chris Lefteri Design was commissioned to provide a range of materials from the ASM collection, complete with extensive information and images, as a free on-line material database . So far, the database consists of 250 materials presented in a way that specifically targets designers and their needs.

I've seen many image databases in my time and  this one is a real find and especially useful as all our courses at Cardiff become  increasingly concerned with the physical  experiences of Materials and Making.

Mtrl is great fun and at the same time hugely informative. It is  crammed with well organised images and facts about materials and their properties. Here you can choose to search for images and information about materials by their 'form' (eg firm, powder, resin) 'personality' (eg dynamic , extreme, honest ), different types of ceramic, glass, plastic etc etc etc. It includes a section listing an unbelievable amount of 'additives and ingredients' (Floam anyone?).

Lightben transparent honeycomb core panel

It is  a lot more entrancing and unusual than you might expect of a materials database and is  at the same time of immense practical use. The database offers links from each type of material in the database to suppliers and also  gives  its eco standing (biodegradable/recyclable/renewable?)), its key features, all physical features,  its price range, major applications for use and  engineering properties. A veritable  alchemists shopping list..........

Road safety advert

I'm going through all the emails I received whilst I was away in the summer. I subscribe to the marvellous Kindling-the Do lectures newsletter which provides as they put it 'the best stuff from last week. The most inspiring articles, ideas, videos, talks etc. We edit them down. So you don’t have to'.

One of the items from the  newsletter in early July was this Youtube video . All material © 2010 Sarah Alexander/Daniel Cox/Sussex Safer Roads.
An exceptionally effective advertisement ,  it makes me want to put a seat belt on right now even though I'm stationary in a computer chair. It has been viewed over 14 million times-now that is a successful design product!

I've mentioned The Do lectures before. They provide a variety of inspirational talks, their strapline is  

Attending the Do Lectures is very costly, but they are available for free online.
This one is about doing things the long hard stupid way

Steve Jobs- two different viewpoints

I am back after a  long absence but the blog will now be updated regularly as before-spread the word and keep reading!!

BBC 2 screened a documentary on 14th December entitled ' Steve Jobs: Million Dollar Hippy' "a long-haired college dropout with infinite ambition, and an inspirational perfectionist with a bully's temper. A man of contradictions, he fused a Californian counterculture attitude and a mastery of the art of hype with explosive advances in computer technology.
Insiders including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the chairman who ousted Jobs from the company he founded, and Jobs' chief of software, tell extraordinary stories of the rise, fall and rise again of Apple with Steve Jobs at its helm.
With Stephen Fry, world wide web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and branding guru Rita Clifton, Evan Davis decodes the formula that took Apple from suburban garage to global supremacy."

The arts desk an online arts reviews website has published a trenchant reaction to the programme by Jasper Rees in the wake of the BBC documentary.

Enjoy both and think about what Apple means to you (and the world).

Bright Ideas Lighting

Inhabitat (a weblog forum for emerging trends in architectural interior and product design), in partnership with Philips Lighting recently ran a competition called Bright Ideas Lighting. The idea of the competition was to showcase the potential of LED lighting. They were looking for examples of inspiring eco-friendly lamps that make smart use of materials, and are designed to work with low-energy LED replacement bulbs like Philips AmbientLED. (Since LED bulbs are low heat, this was an opportunity to get creative with other materials that might be off-limits with traditional incandescent bulbs). The panel of expert judges selected 20 finalists based upon aesthetics, creativity, sustainability, practicality, and commercial viability. Readers then voted for the winner.

The winner, designer Edward Chew,  cut box drink cartons into hundreds of strips and folded them into pieces to create his Tetra Pak lamp . Along with its retro looks and attractiveness it is also a creative example of upcycled design and craftsmanship – it was even assembled without the use of any adhesives!

Read about the competion and the other winners here

The Arts Desk

Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan, a commission for the Monumenta series at the Paris Grand Palais

Here's a great newletter to keep you up with a wide range of items on what's new and good in the media and the arts . Here you will find theatre and film reviews, features on matters of interest such as  'Is Classical music relevant?'or a list of this year's Festivals , and CD, DVD and book reviews and interviews with people from the arts and a comprehensive listing of whats on in cinemas, theatres, galleries and concert halls. Sign up and get a weekly round up of all this in your inbox. As well as seeing  the very latest in the arts you can also view the archives of the newsletter. To subscribe look for the box on the right hand side of this page halfway down

Festival of Britain 60 year anniversary

The National Archives Image Library has created a little image collection to celebrate the 60 year anniversary of The Festival of Britain . The Festival of Britain took place from May 3rd-September 30th 1951 to celebrate the British contribution to civilisation, past, present and future in the fields of art, technology and science and to encourage a looking forward after the horrors, privations and losses of the Second World War.
The National Archives Image Library contains other interesting image sets  including ones for Crime, Design, Mining and Maps.

Shawn Lovell metalwork sculptor/designer

I have spotted some very gorgeous one off pieces of furniture from Californian based artist Shawn Lovell. The tree and birds nest bed and the scroll fireplace screen are my favourites.

Shawn specializes in making one-of-kind and commissioned work both commercial and residential using both traditional and modern forging techniques. Her work has ranged from large scale railings, gates, and arbors to fire screens and surrounds, lighting, furniture, hardware and much more.

If you are interested in reading about Blacksmithing in the UK then (if you are a registered UWIC staff or student member)-go to the Learning Portal>Electronic Library>Databases> select Design and Applied Arts Index and search for blacksmithing :UK. Your search results will bring up references to 8 journal articles (mostly from Crafts Magazine) . Howard Gardens has back copies of Crafts Magazine going back to 1973.

Three new electronic journals

The library has subscribed to three new E-journals

·     Design and Culture

      'Design and Culture probes design's relation to other academic disciplines, including marketing, management, cultural studies, anthropology, material culture, geography, visual culture and political economy'.  

      

·     Design Journal

      'The Design Journal is an international refereed journal covering all aspects of design'.

.    Fashion Practice

      'Fashion Practice is the first peer-reviewed academic journal to cover the full range of contemporary design and  manufacture within the context of the fashion industry'.

UWIC staff and students can access these journals from
Learning Portal>Electronic Library>Journals A-Z

Product information for architecture and construction

Just added to the Subject Guide for Architecture and Construction on the UWIC Learning portal (for staff  and students at UWIC only) are links to two websites offering free product information for architects and the construction industry.
These are the websites (everyone can view these)

• RIBA Product Selector offers a  database with information about building products , NBS specification information and RIBA CPD providers with free access to product catalogues, technical documents and contact information of 10261 UK manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, trade associations and construction service providers.
• Barbour Product Search  offers an extensive and up-to-date database of manufacturer and product profiles, with images, case studies, technical data and catalogues.

Ecobuild-the future of design,construction and the built environment

Ecobuild is the world’s largest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment. Starting today and running until 3 March the conference features more than 600 speakers, 1300 exhibitors, 130 seminars and a packed programme of live demonstrations. If you can't make it to this free event (it's at the ExCeL exhibition and conference centre at the heart of the new Green Enterprise District in London’s Docklands) you can still explore the website and read the  Ecobuild blog on which  a panel of leading thinkers and doers, from around the industry share their views on the latest news and events every week.