The Intrepid Designer

Ink Art - affordable, contemporary and LOCAL!

Ink’s limited edition designer canvases are affordable pieces of art that will add contemporary style to any interior. The block mounted canvases are designed and manufactured in Cape Town, South Africa, and are available in a large range of designs so that there is something to suit everyone’s taste – and colour scheme.

Most of the ranges have been specifically designed so that you can hang a few prints together, mixing and matching for added impact.  And the great thing about block-mounted canvas is that you can rotate it any way you like to obtain different results.
 

Ink can also create customized designs for companies wanting to order a large number of prints that suit their unique sense of style or décor requirements.

Contact Ink for more information and catalogue.

Discovering Mielie and their Mielie Peeps

Mielie was born in 2002 around Adri Schutz's dining room table and since then has grown to a family of fifty proud South Africans. Their mission is to design and produce innovative, export-quality hand-crafted products using reclaimed materials - with the aim of creating employment and restoring dignity and financial independence to South Africans.

       

Going for Green

As far as is possible all products are hand-made, and they are committed to using locally produced materials. The fabric of the Mielie range is reclaimed, and their finishes (cotton thread, needles, genuine leather handles etc) are locally produced. Mielie strips - from which the bags and other products are woven - are a byproduct from cotton mills. Once a week they buy them by the kilogram from local factories. Because the shades vary every week and seasonally - like a box of chocolates, they never know quite what they will get. Their solution is to work with broad colourways - i.e. lagoon = dark blue to aqua, emerald to bottle green. This guarantees every bag is unique!

At Mielie, they believe in spreading the love, and have established a foundation to do just this.

With their growing involvement in the lives of Mielie weavers, they have become increasingly aware of the challenges they face. Alongside Mielie’s aim of creating sustainable employment and beautiful products, they hope to have a positive impact into their communities.

Their dream is to establish a foundation to manage donations, as well as raise funds for various projects they identify in and around Cape Town.

For more information on how you can help spread the love, or if you have any ideas or information to share, please contact Mielie on [email protected] 

PS It's initiatives like these that make me proud to be South African, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I see successful community upliftment programs.

Mielie blog

Mielie web page

3D Deco and 3D Dome manifest geodesic fabric architecture

It is here and it's now - the real McCoy! 3D Dome, powered by Pacific Domes, has perfected the function and beauty of portable geodesic domes, bringing 3D Dome to the SA events market.

Combining the sacred geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller with 3D Dome's progressively designed covers gives birth to this futuristic and synergetic structure. It is a perfectly created environment which is pleasing and natural to the eye and the human body since these structures have the same structure as living molecule in our bodies.

3D Domes provide a unique environment for every use, offering a modular concept for any event or exhibition. All elements of a 3D Dome can be perfectly combined with each other, from connection tunnels between the structures to Deco and AV.

This offers maximum flexibility in the realisation of individual and innovative event ideas - Mobility and Versatility, Interior Freedom, Portability, Climate Control, Energy Efficiency - “the strongest, lightest and most efficient means of enclosing space, yet known to man" states Buckminster Fuller.

Domes are nature's perfect structure which provides a unique environment for any use, also creating state-of-the-art venues for events, expo stands launches etc. anywhere and everywhere. 

Mobility and Versatility

All membranes come with circular doorways offering more flexibility. Every doorway can be connected to another through the 3D Deco developed waterproof tunnel system which allows a combination of several domes to create a domescape. Window openings can take many varying applications such as PVC airing vents or a climate control tubes.

Interior Freedom

The entire dome interior is open to your creativity! Our geodesic dome frames are freestanding with no support poles to obstruct your valuable floor plan!

Structurally Sound

The steel tubing framework is extremely strong and can handle any wind or rain loads. Not only is the dome aerodynamic, but it has a dynamic center of gravity that stands strong against wind.

Anchoring the Frame

Your dome frame comes with the appropriate anchors to secure it to the ground.

Portability

3D Dome frames pack down into small bundles that are easy to ship and handle! The membrane consists of a double sided PVC coating with or without black out. 3D Deco can guarantee an outer skin that is 100% water tight in every tiny detail.?Lycra Branded cover can be stretched over any of 3D Deco's membranes. A wide variety of flooring can be provided upon request from our reliable partners.

Heating and Cooling

3D Domes can be heated or cooled in the same way as a conventional marquee. Our domes in summer are 10-15 C cooler that outside temperature due to a low pressure zone that happens inside the dome just by opening a few windows in the right places. Domes can also come with insulation for the really cold days.

Energy Efficiency

"Only an energy-efficient, resource-efficient design could work for everyone," - R. Buckminster Fuller. There are two reasons domes are energy efficient. The ambient airflow inside the dome is continuous, with no stagnant corners, requiring less energy to circulate air and maintain even temperatures. The energy required to heat and cool a dome is approximately 30% less than a conventional building. The second is the high volume-to-surface-area ratio, requiring less building materials to enclose more space.

Experienced partners in 3D Projections and Audio Technology, climate control and interior planning can be included in the entire planning process in order to realise any product, expo or event world.

Source: http://www.3ddeco.co.za/

Issued by: 3D Deco

Barber shop - design research

   

My next project is a barber shop interior installation....a modern day short back and sides with a shave for good measure! Out of curiosity I looked up the Barber pole origin.

The origin of the red and white barber pole is associated with the service of bloodletting, and was historically a representation of bloody bandages wrapped around a pole.During medieval times, barbers performed surgery on customers as well as tooth extractions. The original pole had a brass basin at the top (representing the vessel in which leeches were kept) and bottom (representing the basin which received the blood). The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during the procedure to encourage blood flow.

Nice....feeling quite creative now!

Best Marketing Colors for 2010

 

What colours will be used in the design world for marketing in 2010?

Your brand creates an emotion?

The question is, is it the right emotion to positively influence your audience? 

The following information will give you some insight as to which colours may work best to achieve your marketing goals through visual communication. Here’s a list of frequently used colours and what emotions are generally associated with them:

WHITE

– White is associated with innocence, purity, peace and contentment. It’s considered clean and sterile. It’s cool and refreshing. White can have a calming, stabilizing influence.

BLACK

– Black is the ultimate power colour. It suggests strength, potency, authority, boldness, seriousness, stability and elegance. It’s distinguished and classic, great for creating drama. Black has more weight than other colours. Too much can be ominous.

GREY or SILVER

– Grey can be associated with conservative qualities and considered traditional. Business-wise, it symbolizes high tech and suggests authority, practicality, earnestness and creativity.

GOLD

– Gold suggests wealth. It’s considered to be very classy.

BLUE

–Blue is the favourite colour of many businesses. It suggests sanctuary and fiscal responsibility. It inspires confidence. It is the most popular and second most powerful colour. Darker shades are authoritative. Dark and bright blues represent trust, security, faithfulness and dignity. Paler shades can imply freshness and cleanliness, although they can imply weakness.

RED

– Red stimulates many kinds of appetites. Red commands attention, alerts us and creates a sense of urgency. It’s considered the sexiest of all colours. Red symbolizes heat, fire, blood, love, warmth, power, excitement, energy, strength, passion, vitality, risk, danger and aggressiveness. Financially, it’s associated with debt.

YELLOW

– Yellow is the sunshine hue and is a spiritual colour. Yellow represents a warning, but it can also bring happiness and warmth. The most preferred yellows are the creamy and warm ones. Bright yellow can be irritable to the eye in large quantities. Yellow speeds metabolism. It’s often used to highlight or draw attention.

GREEN

– Green, people associate green with the colour of money, as well as nature. Olive greens are associated with health and freshness — a good choice for environmental concerns. Green suggests fertility, freedom, healing and tranquillity. Green represents jealousy. Businesses use it to communicate status and wealth. Green is a calming, refreshing colour that is very easy on the eyes.

BROWN

– Brown is associated with nature and the earth. Dark browns represent wood or leather. Brown and shades of cream are associated with warmth and cosiness. Brown suggests richness, politeness, helpfulness and effectiveness. It is solid, credible, mature and reliable. Light brown implies genuineness.

ORANGE

–Orange is associated with vibrancy and the tropics, as well as warmth and contentment. It can instil a sense of fun and excitement. It implies health. It suggests pleasure, cheer, endurance, generosity and ambition. It can make an expensive product seem more affordable. It appeals to a wide range of people, both male and female.

PINK

– Pink is considered to be a very feminine colour. It represents gentleness, romance, well being and innocence.

PURPLE

–Purple represents royalty and luxury. In darker shades, it’s considered a wealthy colour. It suggests spirituality and sophistication. In paler shades, such as lavender, it’s feminine and romantic.

When choosing your colour choices for your next graphic design project, make sure you consider your marketing goals and the emotion you want your audience to experience.

Source:http://proteusdesignstudio.com

 

Coffee makes my world go round....it's how I blog-roll!

I am up this morning at an earlier than usual time.  I am drinking my first cup of coffee and can’t help but realize how much I love coffee.  I beleive like most people that too much of anything can be bad for you, but I wanted to generate this list of ten known health benefits:

 

• Coffee use can lower Parkinson’s risk

• Coffee can lower diabetes risk

• Drinking 4 or more cups of coffee a day may help prevent gout

• Coffee may protect against bladder cancer

• Coffee may lower your risk of cavities

• Coffee can reduce the risk of chronic liver disease

• Coffee jump-starts short-term memory

• Coffee treats asthma

• Coffee can prevent the development of colon cancer

• Coffee can treat headaches

Lastly, I feel coffee makes us more creative.  Have a fun and productive day folks!

Karin Miller: I wear my mask for warmth

Karin Miller is back with more gorgeous, eccentric and playfully confronting work. In this exhibition she opens a new discussion about sexuality and gender too. 

From April 22 at Focus Contemporary’s new gallery at 67 Loop Street, Cape Town, tel: +27 21 4225996 

The artist combines traditional artwork skills and photography with modern technology, creating a fusion of past and present, personal and public. She has developed a unique style that exudes a rich eclecticism, playfulness, quirky humour and a post-modern element of neo-baroque. often gathered around a central female figure, each facet of the image is carefully chosen and placed to form unexpected combinations and compositions.

“Sometimes” she explains, “I spend days looking for a haunting face in an old photograph, or a beautiful pattern in an antique print.” Her tactic is to transform the everyday into something captivating. With meticulous attention to detail, she can convey theatrical flamboyance with splashes of parody. Her work often subtly expresses a uniquely South African ambience.

Karin Miller was born in Pretoria in 1957. From an early age, she spent hours drawing, cutting and pasting images to create new impressions and new worlds. She trained as a graphic designer at the Tshwane University of Technology and spent many years working in this field. Karin later studied Fine Arts at Unisa, and eventually moved into the digital art-making field.

Karin Miller’s work speaks of a new South Africa, where the past is not forgotten, but revisited. She creates her very own vision of a new African renaissance.

Karen Miller: I wear my mask for warmth Opens 22 April 2010

Focus Contemporary’s new gallery 67 Loop Street, Cape Town Telephone: +27 21 4225996

Email: [email protected] www.focuscontemporary.co.za

Source: BacktoSA

Talking Garbage...

What does an interior designer with a passion for craft do to combine her need to help others and save the planet? For Winnie McHenry, the answer lay in junk.

Winnie’s journey began when she founded Crafty Corner, a web initiative to inspire and empower crafters. While this fulfilled part of her vision, she knew that many of those she wished to help, being unemployed and even destitute, had access to neither the internet nor even basic materials. It was in her efforts to recycle that she found her inspiration, and Upcycle was born. The effects of her vision are both far reaching and inspiring.

Besides allowing her home to be used as a workshop, showroom, shop, and as a receiving point for anything from the tiniest unwanted beads to the bulkiest electronic waste, Winnie freely shares her knowledge, expertise, creativity and stunning, unique designs, allowing what are now 47 entrepreneurs – two of whom run lucrative, full time mosaic businesses – to create and sell their own creations. It is also to these people that Winnie turns when she has orders of her own to fill, which further assists them and stimulates local economy.

Environmentally conscious companies like Cell C, Nedbank and ARUP have ordered Winnie’s upcycled creations – for use as corporate gifts or to commemorate fun events such as Valentine’s Day. Others assist with donations; the local Booysens’ Hotel provides glass bottles and Mirrordoor all its mirror offcuts, saving themselves the cost of having it removed and dumped at landfill sites (mirror is not recyclable), while SA Blood Services in Gauteng has launched a pilot project where members of the public can drop off small recyclables such us buttons, bows, ribbons and more. A fun initiative allows children to learn about and actively participate in recycling; take them along to drop off your junk and they receive a free Upcycle craft kit. These gorgeous kits also make fantastic gifts for children of all ages.

By its very nature, Upcycle is a local, largely community-based project, but Winnie would love to help others set up similar initiatives countrywide. Also planned is an upgrade to her websites, with each crafter having a dedicated page highlighting their creations. But her vision doesn’t stop there. She dreams of one day having a dedicated space incorporating a workshop, a shop and a gallery to help market the work of local entrepreneurs, proving junk talk can make a difference.

Find Winnie at the monthly Green Market in Pretoria, visit www.upcycle.co.za, or call 011 782 0351

From Barrydale to Washington

Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama and Mrs Obama acquired two chandeliers for their new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Apart from the fact that they paid for them personally rather than using the White House budget, two things set them apart; they come all the way from the tiny Overberg town of Barrydale, and they’re made almost entirely from ‘junk’.

Magpie Design Studio, essentially an art collective run from an old double storey building in the heart of town, started operations in 1998. Six years ago they moved to Barrydale where they promptly set up recycling bins on the veranda and invited the public to drop off recyclable materials. While they have historically used a lot of repurposed materials in their creations, it was in Barrydale that their materials base shifted to the PET bottles, glass, plastic, tins and paper dropped off by the community to make their artistic creations.

Their multi award-winning work represents their belief that their approach makes a difference to the environment and brings about a new aesthetic aligned to the ethics of the ever-increasing numbers of consumers concerned with their personal carbon footprints. As a result more and more of their clients are turning to energy efficient lighting and changing other lifestyle habits to have a lower impact on resources.

Magpie’s design team tries to use the best lighting solutions for creative designs that speak to the ethics and aesthetic desires of a growing, sophisticated clientele. They are best known for their chandeliers and lighting installations although they do produce other furniture items and accessories.

The two pieces bought by the Obamas – the La Riche Ella and the Princess (pictured) – are regency inspired and lean towards a classical interpretation of a chandelier, but they also create a number of unique designs for sale in their own gallery, as well as offering a bespoke service, creating installations for private homes, restaurants and offices worldwide.

Shane says, “Chandeliers are extrapolations of people’s ideals. A great deal is said about the person who owns a chandelier as it represents much of the best of what they idealise and see as representing an object of beauty in addition to it being a practical piece that lights a room.” He adds that the Obama’s purchase paves the way for a new aesthetic, where an appreciation for what is, is valued more than what it is made of; it’s more to do with what the object represents or symbolises.

The business includes a strong social responsibility aspect – the Rooi Doppies Project, www.rooidoppiesproject.moonfruit.com – that includes the development of a craft project to help locals generate income, rather than just being employed. They are trained to reproduce designs either marketed as stand alone pieces or as components of larger, more elaborate installations. Magpie also offers technical support to NGOs in the district that focus on health, human rights and social development.

They believe all businesses should behave ethically and that forming relationships with state service providers is essential to help develop the capacity and quality of life of others. Every December 16 sees a ceremonial tree lighting ceremony (the best LED technology is used) with dancing, singing and performing around their Christmas tree installation made of alien wattle and repurposed PET decorations, which are made by children from an NGO called NET VIR PRET.

Shane says it is their way of thanking the village for its support. Aside for the Christmas tree, they host annual exhibitions and parties and showcase new trends with different, fun themes. They are hoping the planned 2010 Masked Ball will draw visitors from near and far. Their creations are evocative and stunning testimonies to what is possible with innovation and inspiration.

Source: Life in Balance

Visit Magpie Design Studio at 27 van Riebeeck Street in Barrydale, call 028 572 1997 or visit Magpie

Rooms On View - Get the 2010 furniture A-list

Good furniture selection is the pivotal make-or-break element in any good interior composition.

As the home’s evolution to become an organic haven and refuge of peace and serenity gathers speed, furniture design has followed suit. Tranquility, harmony and an abundance of natural materials are at the top of the wish-list for 2010’s top furniture trends.

Made by hand

Handcrafted furniture is probably the hottest design trend currently sweeping through the home market. Items that are particularly in demand are ones that are carefully fashioned from natural and unusual materials, and which feature intricate detailing. Home-made accents are back as well – anything that echoes handcrafted or traditional will be hot property this year.

Visual interest is achieved by combining various textures together. Popular combinations include leather and fabric, various fabrics with completely different textures such as silk and calico, wool and suede, and glass and rope for example. The sky is the limit with regards to creating interesting combinations.

Mother Nature rules

For quite some time now, the influence of nature and all things organic has seen a marked influence on the exterior and interior design of our homes.

This year it is no different, but 2010 sees the roll-out of some new and exciting nature-inspired colour palettes. These hues tend to encompass the more vibrant jewel tones, incorporating bold shades of red, green, turquoise and purple, which are perfectly offset by the more neutral shades of brown, beige, sand, grey and black.

It would be best to complement organically inspired furniture with décor accessories that are also made from indigenous materials, such as various natural textiles, reeds, hardwoods, clay and bamboo for example.

Ethnic revival

The influence of today’s multi-cultural society is trickling down to influence the furniture we live with. Never before has the furniture and home décor market been influenced by so many varied ethnic trends – in particular Asia, Africa and South America.

Representative of our global village – it is not uncommon to find pieces of furniture in your neighbourhood from the world over. The trendiest looks today are achieved by artistically blending items from various cultures and places.

Less is more

If any element were to define the essence of furniture trends in 2010, it would be “simple, yet elegant”. Furniture design today centres around comfort and relaxation, and hence the inspiration of a stylishly simplistic and elegantly uncomplicated haven will be at the forefront of furniture design. Clutter is out – selecting well-appointed furniture is in.

Space conservation

Modern homes are getting smaller and smaller, and as such, furniture designs are accommodating this trend by making space conservation centre stage. This is evident in various furniture designs, but probably the most noticeable are the influx of raised beds that create work/play space under the bed, the increased popularity of counter-height dining sets and compact, multi-functional furniture, such as sofa-beds, desk/dining tables, and compactable garden furniture for example.

When we were young

Of late there has been a huge increase in the choice of furniture for kid’s rooms – from baby’s nurseries, rooms for toddlers through to teenagers – today’s little people have a lot to choose from. Gone are the boring bunk-beds of the past – today children’s rooms have been given a whole new dimension, allowing many parents to take a few steps back and bring out their inner child as well.

Old antique styles are currently very much in vogue – the question is, did they ever really go out of fashion? Rich, opulent jewel colours, indulgently decadent fabrics, ostrich feathers, mirrors, chandeliers and crystal are the name of the game here – furniture that imitates the lavishness of days gone by, combined with modern day comforts and streamlined, contemporary designs and materials.

Pictures courtesy of:

Rooms on View: www.roomsonview.co.za.

Source: Property24