Rik Abel

Is undesign the new design trend? Folks such as Garret Dimon and Tom Coates have redesigned their blogs to be über-minimal, leaving me feeling somewhat overdressed, so to speak. It’s not entirely accurate to say that they are ‘undesigned’ since clearly a lot of thought has gone into reducing the unnecessary and achieving maximum simplicity. Subtraction is monochrome (until you hover over links) and looks great. I like this trend - design striving toward transparency.   A paring away of merely decorative elements. But at the same time, a certain boldness from the use of BIG headlines and pictures. And BIG buttons.

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The Biomega website has relaunched and now features some new bikes, including the ultra-fat tired Brooklyn BMX. I still want the Copenhagen, however. Shaft drive, 7-speed SRAM internal hub gearing, disc brakes, removeable pedals, very very beautiful. I test-rode an older model while in Toronto and it was excellent - the shaft drive is apparently 98% efficient and you never again have to worry about greasy trouser cuffs, chains rusting and falling off, and derailleurs getting jammed. I predict we’re going to see a whole lot more shaft-driven bicycles cropping up in the near future.

UK dealers are Selfridges and the Maharishi shop in Covent Garden. No idea as to the price yet, but the bike I rode in Toronto was $1700 CAN, which is about £700GBP. However, since bikes are generally cheaper in Canada (boo!) don’t be surprised if it comes to a bit more.

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Yesterday afternoon I went the see the Brilliant exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which certainly lives up to its name. I was quite entranced by the beauty, ingenuity and intelligence of the designs on display. The recent development of new light sources such as white LEDs and electrolumiscence has led to some really exciting new ways of thinking about lighting. My favourites included the LED table and bench by Ingo Maurer, which embeds tiny white LEDs between sheets of glass whose current is supplied via an invisible conducting film, with the result they appear to be ‘magically’ twinkling with no obvious power source and Rachel Wingfield’s “Digital Dawn” window blind, which incorporates electroluminscent dyes and photo sensor technology to create a beautiful, dynamically reactive artifact - the lower the ambient light, the more of the design becomes illuminated. I wandered around with a huge smile on my face and resolved there and then that I would try to design some lighting fixtures/lampshades/LED jewelry. (I have this idea for a perspex/clear plastic bracelet which incorporates white LEDs powered by a faraday coil - so the more you agitate it, the brighter it lights up - ideal for clubwear, eh?) How hard can it be? All I need is to think stuff up and then get my friends with technical and electronics expertise to work out if said stuff is feasible and then build it for me…

In one of those happy coincidences, last night I stumbled across designboom.com, which offers online product design courses. This year’s courses are all on…Lighting design. Yay! Much as I love web design, I’ve lately been feeling the urge to make stuff - you know, actual physical artifacts. Another inspiring aspect of the exhibition is the way that many designers these days are using everyday found objects to prototype their designs - one lampshade was made entirely from polystyrene drinking cups and another from a cylindrical cage with polystyrene sticks pushed through it - stuff you could buy at the hardware store for a few pounds. According the the accompanying book I bought, this is quite a theme among cutting edges designers, who feel duty bound to confront the issues of mass-production and recycling. I must say that I feel quite inspired to create!

Oh, I nearly forgot the best moment of the weekend - at the exhibition there were several items on sale, one of which was a carrier bag with a chandelier printed on it - the carrier bag acted as the lampshade, with the addition of a cardboard disc to keep it a safe distance from the lamp. An elderly American couple were examining it and the wife said to the girl behind the counter “What do you get with this bag?” to which the girl replied “Nothing, the bag is the thing”. After a puzzled look for a few seconds, the lady exclaimed “Oh my, the bag’s the thing? The BAG is the THING!” Her husband laughed and said “Hey honey, sounds like you found the secret of the universe….the BAG is the THING!” It was a very postmodern moment. Heh.

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