Product Designs: It's Nice That

BSG's WOOD.b bike

I was looking for a good selection of Product design images and came across It's Nice That.

"Founded in 2007, It’s Nice That is a publishing platform that encompasses several different online, print and events offerings as part of its mission of championing creativity across the art and design world".

The website, updated daily with at least nine new articles has an international readership of around 350,000 unique users a month. They publish a quarterly magazine Printed Pages and The Annual which rounds up some 150 of the most interesting projects to feature on the site in a single year. Their events programme includes annual creative symposium Here and monthly Nicer Tuesdays talks.

First Broadcast is their audio visual site for hosting original content, Company of Parrots a shop for specially-commissioned products and This At There is a dedicated arts and design exhibition listings guide to London. The Jobsboard connects employers and jobseekers in the creative industries.

enjoy great contemporary designs under the following categories

Advertising

Animation

Architecture

Art

Events

Exhibition

Fashion

Film

Furniture Design

Graphic Design

Illustration

Interactive

Miscellaneous

Music

Photography

Product Design

Publication

Sculpture

Set Design

Web

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

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.

The Little Slide Dress

This Bank Holiday weekend everyone is dressing up in red white and blue or so the shops would have it….here’s an alternative  piece of fancy dress, one that appeals to me .

At Victoria University  of Wellington in the School of Design, that's in  New Zealand ! they run a module as part of their Wearable Technology course which they call 'FIREFLIES AND LIGHTNING BUGS' . In this project students create a wearable garment or accessory that lights up / blinks / glows / pulsates / radiates. They do this using the Arduino Lilypadmicrocontroller which is designed specifically for use with fabrics.

After learning the basics of electronics and Arduino programming students must conceive and realise ‘a functioning wearable with embedded, reactive light component’. As an erstwhile slide librarian I like this one by Emily Steel which she calls the Little Slide Dress and describes here:

The Little Slide Dress ….draws inspiration from classic movies and the ‘magic of film’ to create a wearable piece of technology and art. ….With film we only see what really is going on once the lights go out. For this to work there needs to be a balance of projected and ambient light something the Little Slide Dress tries to emulate. The dress is constructed out of individual slide film images that are backed with LED’s. An Arduino Lilypad connected to a light sensor controls the brightness of the LED’s. The sensor reads the how much ambient light there is and uses this value to determine if the LED’s will be off or on. When there is lots of light the LED’s are off and it looks like a shiny black dress with small hints that something else is going on. Once the sensor determines there is the right amount of light for LED’s to be seen in their full brightness it turns them on. When the dress is on the lights slowly pulse and the images on the dress come alive.

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".

The Kyoto Costume Institute

The Kyoto Costume Institute has created a database of the items in its Collection called the KCI Digital Archives and this link  presents a taste of the content with image and text for approx. 200 objects from their collection, arranged in chronological order. The design of the timeline of costume from the 18th century to the present and the quality of the images are both superb. I've seen a lot of websites and a lot of image databases-this one is small but perfectly formed.

And if you can get to Kyoto and the Costume Institute there you would be able to view the complete digital archives  in the KCI Study Room under a fee-paying, reservation-only basis. Providing support for the work of designers and researchers, text and visuals are available for all 12,000 items (costume, underwear, accessories, etc.) in the collection.

The website also provides access to interesting full text journal articles written by curators at the Kyoto Costume Institute

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

Textile Trends

Two free resources offering insight into future trends in textiles

Cosmoworlds 
COSMOWORLDS provides access to information for the international trade community. Contains  trade data, international fashion week and trade show dates as well as information on global trends and lifestyle events

Textile Source blog
A blog created by Textile Source which is an international directory of fabric suppliers, textile companies  textile designers, plus chemical, machinery, fiber, yarn, finishing, printing and dyeing companies involved in the textile supply chain

Fashion Doll Guide (yes it's Barbie)

This work should not go unacknowledged. Suzanne Prochaska the website owner says "My goal is to provide a comprehensive resource to vintage Barbie dolls, clothing, accessories and other collectible fashion dolls, beginning with Barbie's debut in 1959".
http://blog.fashion-doll-guide.com/