by Mike Stilkey

The American artist, Mike Stilkey, has come up with a whole new possibility for the use of books. Making use of a mixture of paint, coloured pencil and varnish, Mr. Stilkey creates charming portraits – with a shadowy personality à la Tim Burton – utilizing hundreds of books as his original canvases.

Check the results of this curious technic and get to know the work of this inventive artist who has demystified the good old saying that “one can not judge a book by its cover”. (mais…)

Spring Wood by Carolien Laro

Searching for the limits of wood, a young Dutch designer has made the most of the interplay between rigidity and flexibility to conceive a lovely range of stools with flexible seats created by cutting slits into their solid wood tops.

Carolien Laro – a graduated student at the Arts Academy St. Joost and Amsterdam Wood and Furniture College – has invested hundreds of hours to develop the Spring Wood collection, which includes a three-seater bench and three stools, one on wheels, one without and another with folded steel legs, all with pliable wooden seats. (mais…)

Outdoor Sculpture by Tom Fruin

The NewYork-based artist, Tom Fruin, has intrigued and presented the inhabitants of Copenhagen with his Kolonihavehus. The sculpture placed in the plaza of the Royal Danish Library, in the capital of Denmark, has the appearance of a friendly and colorful stained-glass house, yet it also evokes thoughts of churches as well as inspires the sensation of a design à la Charles Rennie Mackintosh. (mais…)

by Mikhail Stawsky

Seeking a comfortable, harmless for the eyes and discreet way of reading at night or in a place with poor illumination without disturbing others, the Russian designer, Mikhail Stawsky, came up with this clever idea.

The Book Light is a conceptual bookmark made from a solid translucent plastic body with integrated LEDs. The reader can set the illumination intensity using touch controls. Furthermore, the ingenious device is rechargeable, fulfilling then the endless pleasure of reading. (mais…)

by Antrepo

As stated by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – German architect widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of Modern architecture – “less is more”. Guided by minimalism, Mies created an influential 20^th century style, founded on extreme clarity and simplicity.

Following his footsteps, the multi-disciplinary design consultancy, Antrepo, has come up with this interesting experiment called Minimalist Effect in the Maximalist Market, which consists in developing conceptual packaging design for well-known supermarket products by stripping back the existing graphics in stages. The main idea is to ask readers to choose which of the stages they prefer. (mais…)

by Studioprototype

Run by partners Sofia Limpari and Neal Shah, Studioprototype is a Greek and English speaking architectural design practice based in Greece that, according to the duo of designers, focuses on producing intelligent solutions of high quality in a bespoke, adventurous and responsive manner.

That’s exactly what they managed to achieve in the renovation of this charming thirty-five square meter shop, which is part of a chain of family-run bakeries called “Elektra”, located in a strategic corner plot on a main pedestrian high street of Edessa, Greece. (mais…)

Jan Lenica’s Posters

Jan Lenica (January 4^th 1928, Poznań, Poland – October 5^th 2001, Berlin) was a Polish graphic designer and cartoonist. Graduate of the Architecture Faculty at the Warsaw Polytechnic, Lenica was specialized in poster, graphic design, book illustration, stage design and from 1957 on he became a collaborator on the early animation films of his compatriot and film director, Walerian Borowczyk. Author of the term Polish School of Poster, he lectured at the Harvard University in 1974 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin from 1986 until 1994. (mais…)