three lines and a fold

365 knitting clock by Siren Elise Wilhelmsen -Inspiration - SYD 004

2011-06-27T21:00:00.001+10:00

photo by Miriam Lehnart

The 365 Knitting Clock by Siren Elise Wilhelmsen is another knitting nancy based object, and it is completely different to superblues life size sitting sculpture. Siren, a Norwegian product designer, residing in Berlin, designed this clock, measuring time through the length of the knitting. Each day one round is knitted and at the end of the year a two meter long scarf has been created. Knitting for the patient but also a very poetic way of measuring time.

photo by Miriam Lehnart

I love the idea and it also makes a little shiver run down my spine. Maybe your time is up if you miss putting in a new ball of yarn at the end of the year? It reminds me of the story of the Norns- the legendary beings spinning the thread of the fate of human kind.

Mehr Zeit - more time (photo by Miriam Lehnart)

Inspiration BS003 – look-alikes

2011-06-15T05:48:00.002+10:00

While i had my daily look through some design blogs i came across the lamp fishermen by the Swedish architects TAF. It caught my attention because it immediately brought up a lot of varying associations reaching from dodgy fish restaurants to nice holidays at the baltic sea coast, where you can sometimes find these glass balls used by fishermen to keep the tips of their nets above the water. When i started thinking about this and how such a simple design can bring up so many stories i wondered about other designs that i had seen and remembered because of a similar link to other objects.

image by TAF Arkitektkontor

Another designer that imediatly came to my head was Julia Reischel who was a lovely flatmate of mine in Rotterdam. Her lamp Jack also got a maritime look-alike: the buoy. But it does not only takes the shape as an inspiration but also uses the tilting movement of a buoy as a mechanism to swich on and dim the light.

image by Julia Reischel

A different take on the subject was made by Mieke Meijer from Vij5 designers who did not

make a product resembling some other object but created a material that carries the aesthetics of wood and takes the ecological value even further. Her newspaper wood is made of old newspaper that is glued together and sanded to reveal the lines that are such a distinctive attribute associated with wood. It can be used almost like wood, to build furniture or anything else that is thought of.

image by Vij5

Three lines and a fold travels 001 - Buchstabenmuseum Berlin

2011-06-07T20:23:00.000+10:00

I am back from my three week holiday in Germany. Three weeks of beautiful spring weather, hanging out with my most favourite Architects, lots of long chats with coffee and wine and a little bit of much missed European culture.

I spent a fair bit of time in Berlin and I finally managed to visit the Buchstabenmuseum and saw their collection of letters.
It is located in the 'Berlin Caree' building close to Alexanderplatz. This old shopping mall is a very unlikely building for a museum. Its full of slightly trashy GDR nostalgia shops including a a supermarket selling ex GDR products. The supermarket was frequented by quite a few pensioners, who looked like straight out of 'Goodbye Lenin' - bizarre.

The museum itself is located in what looks like a former tanning salon. The smallish rooms are crammed full with letters leaning against walls or piled up on the floor. They seem strangely obsolete and useless.

So many Ss, what to do with them?

Berliners might know the iconic 'Zierfische' sign, formerly advertising a fish shop at Frankfurter Tor was dismantled a while ago. It found its new home here as well as the ' Hauptbahnhof' sign formerly mounted on what is now called Ostbahnhof.

Giant Knitting Nancy by Superblue - Inspiration - SYD 003

2011-05-03T07:59:00.001+10:00

One of my 2011 New Year's resolutions (well, the only one, to be honest) was to learn how to knit. I never learned this craft as a child. I remember my mum trying to show me how but refusing to go on teaching me because I did not take it serious enough. Sorry Mum! How could I not take knitting seriously? I did however have a knitting nancy and made long cords - but can't remember what I used them for.

Years later, on a different continent I was looking for a knitting nancy, because I wanted to make some I-cord necklaces (I-cord is the cord that you make with a knitting nancy if you take your knitting seriously! And using a knitting nancy is called french knitting - tres chic!).

I first tried to find one online, with very little success. See, in German Nancy is called Liesl (Strickliesl to be precise), and 'knitting liesl' does not get you many useful hits on the interweb search machines. Once I found out I was looking for Nancy (and not Liesl) it turned out any old Spotlight is selling what I was looking for and I ended up buying this rather ugly example of a nancy.

On my quest to make 2011 the year I learned to knit, I picked up a VOGUEknitting magazine the other week and came across this:

The Giant Knitting Nancy

image by Superblue

"Knitting + architecture in a public space? That's for me!", I thought. You can't get much more serious with your knitting than that! Superblue, a London based design practice, created the Giant Knitting Nancy in collaboration with Sculptor Dan Preston, and Jewellery Designer Holly Packer for the London Festival of Architecture in 2010.

image by Superblue

The seating sculpture was created by everyone who wanted to participate. It consist of the ever growing i-cord knitted 'on site', inflatable balls, that can be used as seats, are inserted into the knitted tube. Located in Jubilee Park in the middle of Canary Warf it attracted a lot of lunch time office workers (above). Knit your own park bench, then enjoy a sunny summer's lunch with others. They took the nancy to the beach as well - looks like even more fun. I would love to find a knitting nancy on one of Sydneys many beaches.

image by Superblue

Check out their web page or facebook page for more great projects. It looks like superblue are having lots of fun at work - I am a little bit jealous.

If you want to know more about knitting nancies, have a look at this comprehensive post by Wayne Smith on every knitting nancy known to man. While you are at it check out Waynes main page for everything from lightsabers to growing your own chocolate. (Sorry this is bit random)

DIY Easter Card - From the Workshop SYD003

2011-04-20T21:11:00.001+10:00

The illustrations in today's post are from a DIY card I designed for the ABCD meetup goodie bag a few weeks ago.
ABCD meetup is a designer, crafter and blogger networking event organized by the lovely Lisa of the red thread and Steph of Bondville. It was a fun evening and I met a lot of interesting and creative Ladies.
On this note:
Enjoy the extra long weekend (Australians get an extra public holiday on Tuesday, yey!) and

Pegge Hopper - Inspiration - SYD002

2011-04-14T13:17:00.000+10:00

Pegge Hopper for Rinascente 1962

A friend of mine lend me some of her Japanese grafik design books a while ago. Their titles are translated into quirky English and read 'Stamp Tour in the World' or ' Book Design of Graphic Designers in the world'. All the writing is in Japanese, so not much for me to read, but a lot of eye candy.
While Flicking through them the work of Pegge Hopper caught my eye. I had never heard of her before.
Pegge grew up and studied in the Usa. In the 60ies, she moved to Italy for two years and worked for La Rinascente, an Italian department Store. She designed a series of advertising posters for the company.
I love the bunny rabbit cum easter egg above. It looks like it has been torn out of paper and put together like a collage. The shapes are simple and bold in colour. She manages to paint a picture and tell a storey with very few lines.

Pegge Hopper Maternita baby for Rinascente

Pegge Hopper later moved to Hawaii, where she lives until today. She became well known for her paintings of island women. These paintings are more detailed than her graphic work for Rinascente but they still are dominated by bold and simple shapes of single colour. Check out her website for more images. You can buy prints of her work in her online shop.

From the Workshop - Designgipfel Münster -BS003

2011-04-08T22:16:00.000+10:00

Just a quick reminder, the Designgipfel is open this weekend and it is wonderful weather!

Inspiration BS002 – Armelle Caron

2011-04-08T22:12:00.000+10:00

Armelle Caron - Anagrammes graphiques de plans de villes - Istanbul

Today I would like to show you a work by the french artist Armelle Caron. These beautiful maps of metropolis around the world caught my attention. It is simply facinating to see these mega structures broken down into their simple geometric forms which are then organized by shape and size into a catalog.

I got caught not only by the simple graphics but also by the insights that suddenly were so simple to get. Half of New York for example consists of small rectangles one like the other, Montpelier has so little streets and Istanbul seems to have absolutely no system of organization but then the occurring shapes somehow look alike.

Once i was intruiged by the maps i kept looking into her work and discovered a strange universe of fairytale like graphics, always in a very simple style sticking to one kind of a line, monochomatic but very surreal.

Armelle Caron - oiseaux en cage and aphrodite

Project Selvedge Competition - Vote for me, please!

2011-04-01T07:42:00.000+11:00

I entered the Project Selvedge Competition by Michael Miller and Spoonflower a while ago. The task was to design a fabric for baby boys and the winner of the competition will design a commissioned Michael Miller fabric collection. More than 900 designers entered the competition and yesterday the semi finalists where announced and my design is part of it! How exciting!
The finalists will be chosen by vote. Voting is open until the 7th of April
If you like my design please vote for me here!

From the Workshop - Penny Black Stamp No 1 -SYD002

2011-03-29T07:47:00.000+11:00

I told you earlier, that the second round of Penny Black Project has started. The first stamp was due this Saturday. The task was to create a 2 cent stamp with feature colour red. I submitted the 2 cent Koala stamp above. Check out the other entries on the Penny Black Project Blog

My favourite so far is the three dimensional collage by Jillian Hodgson.

I have also been busy on a few other things. I entered the Project Selvedge competion and I designed a litttle something for the goodie bag for the ABCD Meetup in Sydney later this week. I will tell you more about this soon.

Inspiration BS001 – things organized neatly

2011-03-26T03:31:00.000+11:00

overheated by Marcel van Heist

Did you here about this wonderful collection of images already?

things organized neatly is a truly poetic project where people can submit images of little collections, disassembled objects, everyday items or anything else that is organized and arranged to form little still lives. They often tell small stories of incidents like this one where Marcel van Heist took a picture of some small parts that seem to be a broken bit of his coffee machine. I love this picture because it tells me this story of him, who obviously likes his coffee and seems to have been very touched by the breaking down of his machine, so he started to make this little commemoration of it.

Or this picture here by Dan Bejar were he kept getting copies of his apartment key done. One after the other until in the end he was left with a key completely useless because of a recurring mistake in the process that kept getting bigger from copy to copy. This picture stuck to my mind because it is not only visually appealing, reminding me of landscapes, site models and even historic images of mechanical parts, but also tells a whole story about information and originality in a very simple and inspiring way.

the visual topography of a generation gap by Dan Bejar

From the Workshop BS002 – Designgipfel

2011-03-21T23:22:00.003+11:00

After the nice experiences with design markets around Christmas I will try one around Easter as well.

Designgipfel is a small marked in Münster/Germany organized by Katherina Lindenblatt and Anna Anastasova and it will take place on the 9^th and 10^th of April. We will be selling products from our line chunk on the desk and there will be a possibility to order your own customized catcher shelf.
While browsing through the list of participants I dicovered the wonderful printed t shirts by Silberfischer and the funky foldable slippers by designshot that i am very curious to discover in real live myself!
Hope to see you there!

Inspiration SYD001 - The Noun Project

2011-03-11T07:50:00.000+11:00

Have you heard about The Noun Project?

It's a hopefully growing library of free symbols, beautifully designed and simple graphics. I had a good browse today and initially just wanted to show you a selection of the symbols I liked, but then I started to have some fun with them. You can download the symbols and easily put them into illustrator. I downloaded a whole heap of them, arranging them to tell little stories.


A nostalgic Hello! to the home country. South German Brezel und Bier yumm!

and a woodland camping scene.

Most of the symbols that make up the two images are designed by The Noun Project crew. Some of them are in the public domain and where originally designed by the US National Park Service amongst others.

I had to stop myself from downloading more. Maybe I could use them to create a short comic strip. There are a lot of medicine related images, maybe an episode of emergency room? What do you think?

Pinhole Photography Competition at Myrtle Street Studio

2011-03-10T21:08:00.001+11:00

Pinhole Coulour Photography 'Vibrant Ornage Dahlia' in silverslipper's etsy shop

Who would have thought, 24th of April 2011 is World Pinhole Photography Day!

As part of this, Myrtle Street Studio in Brisbane is hosting a Pinhole Photography Competition.

Pinhole cameras are simple cameras that don't have a lens. You can easily make your own. Have a look at this tutorial here.

There are two categories in the Competition, Landscape and Object and there will also be a People's Choice Award. The competition is open to Australian and International participants. Email your images until the 14th of March, they will be printed and exhibited at Myrtle Street Studio form the 9th of March

Find all the details at Myrtle Street Studio

Check out the flickr pinholers group for inspiration

From the Workshop- Penny Black II- SYD001

2011-02-16T13:23:00.001+11:00

Last year I took part in the Penny Black Project, organized by Joanna of 'little ephemera empire'. She sent out a task every 6 weeks to design a postage stamp. In December the stamps were exhibited at Myrtle Street Studio in Brisbane. And Jay Dee (the Gallery's owner) printed some of them as a limited edition on her letterpress printing press.

My 3Umbrellas, Thongs and BBQ print from Penny Black Project 1

Australian Animals will be a fun theme for this round. Native Animals are one of the most fascinating things to discover in a foreign country. I have spent hours watching kangaroos or echidnas that we stumbled upon. Coming back from a weekend away being all exited about the ECHIDNA!!! I had spotted on the beach only got a lame reaction: 'Oh yeah? They are very common.' I had my revenge on said friend when he came back from a trip to Europe being all excited about having seen a SQUIRREL! Oh, well they are very common, and actually we had one living in the tree in front of our house, in Berlin,in Prenzlauer Berg, can't say that about the Echidna, can you?

I still have some Australian natives in my 'stash' of little drawings. I have used them on a grow chart for my nice. I might pull them out some other time.

For now I will start illustrating one of the most popular natives, the good old koala. Here is one that I spotted a while ago in a koala sanctuary. They are pretty lazy and sleep most of the time. In fact they move around so little that the sanctuary keepers put signs below the trees that have koalas in them, so we could see them better. So cute and fuzzy!

Oh and please don't pat them on the bum. Or smoke around them. Or smoke them.

I'll try to stick to this advice, and show you more, as the illustration emerges.

From the Workshop – chunk on the desk - BS/001

2011-02-13T23:07:00.000+11:00

In our column From the Workshop we would like to introduce you to our products, works and ideas.

First I would like to show you the line of products called Chunk on the Desk. These were my very first products that made it into a small serial production, and have been on the market for just over one year now.

It all started during my diploma, when I was working on a conceptual scheme for a primary school using cast concrete models as a very helpful design tool. During one of the long winter nights I spent in my studio at the university it hit me that Christmas was approaching and I had no presents yet. I took what was available and started casting a pencil tray to give away as a Christmas present.

This was the start of a product line that now consists of several different items. Based on a seven centimetres grid they can be combined in multiple ways forming silhouettes that remind me of cityscapes, industrial buildings or even the harsh alpine mountains.

Welcome

2011-01-31T21:16:00.000+11:00

Hello, our names are Lena and Manu.

We met more than a decade ago at architecture school in Berlin were

we shared many long nights at Uni and became good friends. Love tore us apart and we now live on opposite sides of the world. Lena in Braunschweig, Germany and Manu in Sydney, Australia.

Lena now makes a living designing furniture and everyday objects with her company. Manu works as an architect by day and spends a lot of her free time drawing illustrations and printing them by hand.

We thought it would be a good idea to start a blog together. A blog to share the things we do and the things we love with you, and also to nurture our friendship a little bit.

We will be adjusting this blog during the next few weeks so don’t be surprised if things keep moving around