Design

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Design

Temperature Textiles Translate Climate Crisis Data into Colorful, Graphic Knits

All images © Raw Color

Creating tangible records of weather patterns has been a long-running practice for crafters and designers interested in visually documenting the effects of the climate crisis over time. Daniera ter Haar and Christoph Brach, of the Eindhoven, The Netherlands-based studio Raw Color, join this endeavor with their new collection of knitted goods that embed data about temperature changes, the sea’s rising levels, and emissions directly within their products’ patterns.

In each design, the duo translates data from the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, into colorful, line graphics that represent four possible outcomes for the world through the year 2100. The titular Temperature Textiles rely on warm shades, sea level uses cool blues, purples, and greens, and emissions a combination of the two to visualize the changes.

Raw Color shares more specifics about the data behind Temperature Textiles on its site, where you can also shop the collection of flat and double knits. Follow the studio on Instagram to keep up with its latest designs. (via Design Milk)

Design Food

Have Your Bread and Read By It Too: PAMPSHADE Turns Leftover Loaves into Offbeat Lamps

All images © PAMPSHADE

Yukiko Morita works against the grain with her collection of bread-based home goods. The baker-turned-designer launched PAMPSHADE back in 2016 after nearly a decade of experimenting with the doughy material, and today, the brand creates a variety of quirky, functional objects, including croissant nightlights, baguette chandeliers, and naan timepieces that appear to be the leavened counterpart to Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks.

Each design utilizes leftover pastries and loaves sourced from nearby retailers that are then treated with antiseptic and a mildew-deterrent and hollowed out to fit an LED light. “By purchasing the unsold bread, the bakeries are happy, and it leads to a sustainable creative activity,” she tells Creative Boom. “Within the scope of normal use, (the lamps) can be used semi-permanently. However, be careful not to break them!”

Head to the PAMPSHADE site to pick up a crusty ciabatta or slice of toast, and follow the latest upcycled designs on Instagram.

Art Design

Aiming to Make Art More Accessible and Diverse, Apostrophe Puzzles Releases Artist-Designed Jigsaws

Liz Flores. All images © Apostrophe Puzzles, shared with permission

Apostrophe Puzzles is at the nexus of art and accessibility. Founder Mandi Masden launched the Brooklyn-based company in 2019 with the goal of making the works usually confined to galleries, museums, and the collections of wealthy patrons more affordable to average consumers. “I am really aiming to utilize puzzles to bridge the gap of accessibility to fine art and to make art collecting something everyone can participate in,” she explains.

The company, which borrows its name from the punctuation indicating either possession or omission, collaborates exclusively with contemporary artists of color to design 1,000-piece jigsaws featuring their works. In the last two years, it’s released two collections, with the most recent including Liz Flores’s colorful, abstract bodies, the powerfully posed women at the center of Tim Okamura’s portraits (previously), and Ronald Jackson’s masked figures.

Many of the jigsaws, which are printed on 100% recycled boards with non-toxic ink, have sold out their initial runs, a testament to Apostrophe’s mission. “We believe in the importance and necessity of diverse representation in both the puzzle and art world and hope that our collections help change the face of art consumerism,” the company said. Each purchase directly supports the creators— “We are currently at 12% for all artists and hope to continue to increase that number as we grow,” Masden shares—and a portion also is donated to the company’s nonprofit partner, ProjectArt, a tuition-free program offering art classes and residencies in partnership with public libraries.

Apostrophe plans to release four new puzzles annually, and you can purchase available designs and start collecting them all by heading to its shop.

Tim Okamura

Ronald Jackson

Tim Okamura

Liz Flores

Marianne Angeli Rodriguez

Vinita Karim

Design

These Wiggly ‘Nervous Chairs’ by Wilkinson & Rivera Channel Our Collective Anxiety

All images by Zelie Lockhart, courtesy of Wilkinson & Rivera, shared with permission

If home is a feeling, then the wriggling furniture collection by husband-and-wife Grant Wilkinson and Teresa Rivera are apt representatives of our collective anxieties. The design duo opts for squiggles rather than clean, straight lines in their collection of wooden pieces— the internet dubbed them “nervous chairs” —that appear to quake with uneasiness. Curved legs and arms offer base structure and coiled rungs back support in the ever-growing line of products by their eponymous brand, which is known for putting updated spins on classic pieces. Rivera shares:

Our tastes can be pretty contemporary but we’re fascinated by traditional techniques. We try to incorporate them in each piece: for the Windsor, it’s steam-bending the backrest. For La Silla, we weave the caned seats by hand. For our latest piece, the Welsh Stick Chairs, we included hand-carved barley twists.

Wilkinson and Rivera, who are based in Walthamstow, East London, will launch a few new designs in the next few months, which you can watch for on Instagram, and shop their current collection through The Future Perfect.

Design

Brezhnevka Night Lights and Planters Recreate Soviet-Era Housing as Functional Goods

All images courtesy of Nikita Anokhin

St. Petersburg-based designer Nikita Anokhin references the industrial, streamlined architecture that populated much of Soviet-era Russia in his functional home goods. Based on the iconic Brezhnevka complexes, Anokhin’s plywood and concrete lamps are comprised of multiple stories of conformist features, including angular balconies and rows of tall windows. Each contains tiny, multi-colored LED lights that illuminate the individual apartments and reveal miniature domestic scenes unfolding within. Similarly bulky and constructivist, the small, concrete planters are based on Khrushchevka and the round buildings on Nezhinskaya Street in Moscow.

Shop available pieces on Anokhin’s Etsy and follow new releases on Instagram.

Design

Typeface Studies by Designer Craig Ward Recreate Fonts and Iconic Logos in LEGO

All images © Craig Ward, shared with permission

LEGO are the (literal) building blocks behind an array of creative endeavors—we’ve featured dozens on Colossal over the years from Ekow Nimako’s elaborate world-building series to Jumpei Mitsui’s sculptural recreation of Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”—and are put to another inventive use in Craig Ward’s ongoing Brik Font project.

While playing with his children last fall, the New York-based designer realized the plastic pieces could be an interesting analog complement to the brand identities he spends his days working on. “I’ve always enjoyed the restrictions of modular type design, and I’m surprised it took me this long to put the two things together,” he tells Colossal. He then began shaping the bricks into ubiquitous typefaces like Helvetica and Garamond and physical renditions of digital relics.

This sparked a full-scale project involving dozens of typographic studies: a scroll through the Brik Font Instagram reveals single letters, throwback video game logos, and references to anti-aliased words like the pixelated “ok” shown above. The project already has led to collaborations with Apple and a knitwear brand, and Ward is in the process of preparing a book on the idea. He’s also released printables on Etsy and prints on Society6. (via Kottke)