It’s official! The new edition of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 is now available, featuring totally new content and plenty of great features. Order your copy now for only £12 and we will dispatch it to you wherever you are in the world.

LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 gives a fresh insight into the city’s contemporary and vintage retailers, as well as design galleries, museums and bookshops. All 140 new and established hotspots are compiled and reviewed by design commentator Max Fraser.

Shops are categorised by neighbourhood and accompanied by detailed maps – plus walking tours written by local tastemakers including Sheridan Coakley, Tom Dixon and Kit Kemp – to help navigate the best that the city has to offer.

You’ll find restaurant, bar and cafe recommendations, selected as much for their design credentials as for the quality of food and service.

And we’ve commissioned 10 short essays by local experts including Naomi Cleaver, Hugh Pearman, Benjamin Hubert and Libby Sellers, each discussing an aspect of the industry, be it designing, producing, selling, communicating, collecting, even discarding design.

The 2012-2013 edition also introduces 4×4, a new 16-page supplement featuring the top furniture, lighting and accessories designs available in London design stores. The survey does your homework for you, evaluating the designs based on quality and longevity.

The 208-page LONDON DESIGN GUIDE is a snapshot of the design scene today, a celebration of creativity and a practical tool for Londoners and tourists alike. There’s no better incentive for exploring the wealth of design in the capital.

It’s “a must-read” according to the New York Times.

Publisher: Spotlight Press

Editor: Max Fraser

Book designer: Richard Ardagh Studio

Cover designer: Peter Crawley 

We’re giving away 5 signed copies of ‘Dezeen Book of Ideas’ – a celebration of amazing ideas by the world’s best creative brains. The book features over 100 buildings, interiors and products selected from the pages of influential design website Dezeen. Enter our competition to win a copy! Entry deadline: midday, Tuesday 20th September 2011.

Edited by Dezeen founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, Dezeen Book of Ideas provides a compelling snapshot of cutting-edge creativity across every discipline. The book represents the vitality of both the website and the contemporary architecture and design scene today.

The projects included in the book have been selected from the thousands of projects published on the Dezeen website. The book is lavishly illustrated – each entry has been completely rewritten and is accompanied by a full-colour photograph.

From mobile phones powered by fizzy drinks to cars made of fabric to houses with slides instead of staircases, Dezeen Book of Ideas represents a refreshing new approach to design publishing. The book is published by Spotlight Press, the same company that publishes LONDON DESIGN GUIDE.

COMPETITION: This competition is now closed.

Congratulations to our winners: Ellie Stuart, Anne-Marie Large, John Connor, Linda Wiles, Ruth Tesdale.

Kemistry Gallery has joined forces with Fletcher Studio to host the exhibition Mind Over Matter which celebrates ten years of Alan Fletcher’s publication, The Art of Looking Sideways (Phaidon). Mind Over Matter looks into the making of this celebrated work through original material and notes from Fletcher’s archive.

‘MIND OVER MATTER: Alan Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways’

25th August – 1st October 2011

KEMISTRY GALLERY

43 Charlotte Road, EC2A 3PD (020 7749 2766)

The exhibition documents thirty or so years of attentive curiosity by Alan Fletcher. The gallery displays a personal collection of visual imagery, design articles as well as factual and cultural curiosities and quotations.

Fletcher had a compulsion for collecting useless information and putting it to work. The Art of Looking Sideways is a celebration of this – an accumulation of coincidence, chance and choice.

The book captures the sensory overload of visual culture, while also acting as a primer in visual intelligence. Fletcher reminds us that a strong idea is always at the heart of a great design and that one must constantly reconsider the relationship between thinking and looking, telling and showing.

The late Alan Fletcher belongs to that élite international group of designers who have transcended the conventional boundaries of their craft. He was a member of the now legendary design consultancy Fletcher Forbes Gill, and a founding partner of the international design group Pentagram.

Exhibition posters and copies of the book, The Art of Looking Sideways will be available for purchase at Kemistry Gallery throughout the exhibition.

We’re giving away 5 signed copies of ‘London Buildings: An Architectural Tour’ by Robin Farquhar and Hannah Dipper (published by Batsford). Enter our competition to win a copy! (This competition is now closed).

Created by the founders of People Will Always Need Plates, this new title offers outstanding graphic illustrations of London’s architectural icons appearing for the first time in book form.

Farquhar and Dipper began their business with a focus on the buildings that they love, namely Modernist examples from the 1930s as well as now-iconic concrete structures of the 1950s, -60s and -70s.Their unique and colourful illustrations have been used before by the company on a successful range of plates, mugs and other objects.

Covering a range of architectural styles, well-known buildings such as the Barbican, Battersea Power Station and Sir Christopher Wren’s 1675 Greenwich Royal Observatory feature in the book, as well as the 1920s modernist masterpiece – the Isokon Building – and Brutalist icons, the controversial Trellick Tower and the Royal National Theatre.

The pair are just as eager to celebrate the unsung architectural heroes as much as the well-loved, famous ones so have also included new images of 30 St Mary Axe, Butler’s Wharf and the Commonwealth institute. Each image is accompanied by text summing up why the authors love the building they depict. The foreword is written by LDG editor, Max Fraser.

COMPETITION: This competition is now closed. Thank you to all of those who entered.

Congratulations to our five winners: Carla Seppe, Jennifer Taylor, Sarah Anguish, Belinda Hendry, Carolina Johnson.

We’re giving away 5 signed copies of “The Design Work of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby” – the first monograph celebrating the work of this leading British design duo (published by Rizzoli). Enter our competition to win a copy! (entry deadline: 1st June 2011)

The award winning studio, founded in 1996, is headed by two of the most innovative industrial designers Britain has to offer, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. Distinguished by clean, modern lines, BarberOsgerby works across a wide range of disciplines to create everything from furniture and products to consumer electronics and architecture.  The duo make their mark with technical craftsmanship, formal vigor, and inspired use of colour.

In permanent museum collections worldwide, BarberOsgerby’s work includes iconic designs like the best-selling Tab Lamp for Flos (2008) and the recent Tip Ton chair for Vitra (2011).

With a portfolio ranging from accessible work to custom one-off pieces, their work has been produced by manufacturers and clients such as Cappellini, Swarovski, Stella McCartney, and Coca-Cola.

The book presents images of the pair’s iconic designs and the inspiration behind them, as well as concept sketches and technical drawings revealing the true craftsmanship involved. The publication is organised thematically with an emphasis on materials and process and includes essays written by some of the industries biggest names: Deyan Sudjic (Design Museum), Zoe Ryan (Arts Institute of Chicago) and Simon Andrews (Christies).

COMPETITION: To win one of the 5 signed copies of “THE DESIGN WORK OF EDWARD BARBER AND JAY OSGERBY” (worth £45), simply email your name and delivery address to competitions@londondesignguide.com with ‘BarberOsgerby’ in the subject line.

Five winners will be chosen at random and notified by email on 1st June. The competition is open to readers from any country and books will be dispatched to the delivery address you supply.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. Congratulations to our winners: Oliver Rix, Patricia Chavez, Scott Berry, Nathan Morse, Ross Kimball.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has opened a stand alone, off-site bookshop – V&A Reading Rooms – which also incorporates a wine bar, enabling customers to read and shop with a glass in hand.

V&A READING ROOMS

8 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2HF (020 7225 0594)

The Reading Rooms stock a changing range of over 1,000 book titles covering the topics of fashion, design, architecture, photography, graphics and art as well as biographies, fiction and history.

Out of print, vintage and early editions are also for sale, as well as the V&A’s own list of over 120 art and design books.

The space is small and intimate, retaining the original architectural features of high ceilings, fine cornices and bay windows. David Collins Studio advised the V&A on the interior design with Lucy Woodward creating the graphics in response to the V&A brand.

Behind the menu is Duncan Ackery who has put together an edited range of wines and delicious snacks, which have all been chosen for easy consumption while reading.

The V&A Reading Rooms are open daily, from midday until 10pm.

It’s Christmas time and here LDG editor Max Fraser brings you his selection of gifts for the holiday season. As always, we would encourage you to buy well made items with lasting appeal to try to reduce the waste that comes with the merriment and excess. Enjoy!

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Every year in my family, someone buys a new Christmas tree decoration to add to a mish-mash of existing baubles and figurines, each one bringing back memories of a specific year. I find most baubles to be tacky and over-decorated, so I was delighted to discover this mouth-blown and hand engraved glass creation, which somehow encapsulates 2010: fragile and transparent.

Glass baubles by Judith Seng and Alex Valder. £41 from placesandspaces, Clapham (page 154 in LONDON DESIGN GUIDE)

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Candles help add to the atmosphere of Christmas day. These slender glass candlesticks will add an elegant glint to your dining table as you tuck into a feast. A stemware collection by the same designer is also available if you want the entire look.

Tilo range by Anna Torfs. Starting from £130 from Vessel, Notting Hill (page 33 in LDG)

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If, like some members of my family, you are prone to breaking glass then perhaps this etched brass candle holder might be a good option. The detailed pattern unleashes a mass of intricate shadows when lit. There is a similar pendant lampshade version also available.

Etch candle holder by Tom Dixon. £30 from Tom Dixon, Ladbroke Grove (page 32 in LDG)

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OK, back to glass. Well, chunky Quartz crystal actually. These glasses are part of a series designed by Max Lamb for historic crystal company J. & L. Lobmeyr. Lamb wanted to explore the optical effect of faceted crystal, creating a series of 23 cylindrical glasses cut with an increasing number of facets, from 3 to 34. The versions shown above were cut with 6 facets to create thick-walled crystal glassware.

Quartz Series by Max Lamb. £130 (small); £155 (medium); £188 (tall) from Projectory at Phillips de Pury & Company (Saatchi Gallery location)

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If you enjoy a dash of lemon juice with your smoked salmon, try out this futuristic-looking new citrus squeezer. This creation is produced by Alessi, the same company that makes the iconic Juicy Salif lemon squeezer by Philippe Starck (which doesn’t function very well!). Thankfully, and by Starck’s own admission, this one works extremely well!

mysqueeze citrus juicer by Roland Kreiter. £33, available exclusively online from mydeco.com or from Alessi, Mayfair (page 52 in LDG)

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Add some colour to the table with this selection of cheerful steel bowls (gloss on the inside, matt on the outside), originally designed in 1953 by Danish civil engineer, Herbert Krenchel. Excitingly, the iconic design has been reissued in 2010 by Danish brand Normann Copenhagen.

Selection of Krenit bowls by Herbert Krenchel. £12-97 (depending on size) from Skandium, Brompton & Marylebone (pages 20 & 42 in LDG). If you’re searching for a highly-collectible vintage original, visit Rocket Gallery, Shoreditch (page 135 in LDG)

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Of course, Christmas is the time to crack open just about anything that is wet and alcoholic. Here’s a bottle opener that will endure such heavy use, made from cast iron by skilled Japanese craftsmen.

Large bottle opener by Nobuho Miya. £13 from twentytwentyone, Islington (page 119 in LDG)

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A Christmas meal isn’t complete without the crack of some crackers. That said, most of them conceal a useless gift destined for landfill. Not so with these crackers from leading online stationery store, Present & Correct, which are made from graph paper in Devon and contain a few little treasures that you will likely want to keep!

Christmas crackers by Present & Correct. £10 from Present & Correct Pop-In Shop, Clerkenwell or from Present & Correct online shop.

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Over the Christmas period, it is more than likely you’ll get a surprise visit from friends or relatives. So, pull up one of these finely-crafted British-made stools which can double up as a wee side table/drinks perch when not being sat upon.

Stool One (oak) by Another Country. £145 from Another Country or The Temporium, Brompton (9-19th December 2010). Additionally, a limited-edition of 100 solid ash stools has been produced in collaboration with Monocle for £175.

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Of course, if anyone outstays their welcome, show them the door… and these simple coat hooks which they probably failed to notice on arrival!

Ceramic and cork knobs by Jasper Morrison. £9, £14, £21 for ceramic and £8, £10, £12 for cork from Jasper Morrison Shop (page 131 in LDG). Also can be used as handles on furniture. The shop is also open on Saturdays in December.

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During any Christmas down-time, while most people can be found reading a good novel, I’m guilty of using the time to scrub up on my design knowledge. Yeah, cool man. So here is a beast of a book delving into the nuts and bolts of the Eames Office, written and designed over 13 years by ex-employee Marilyn Neuhart and husband John. After this weighty accomplishment, we’ll finally be able to draw a line under the Eames legacy.

The Story of Eames Furniture by Marilyn & John Neuhart. £140 from The Lollipop Shoppe, Spitalfields or directly from the publisher, Gestalten. If you have a spare 16 minutes, be sure to watch this fantastic video about the book.

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Before you sit down to read, it’s important that you have a good light. Here’s a beauty – an architect lamp designed in 1921 by Bernard-Albin Gras and recently reissued. The construction of the lamp, hand made in France, is free from screws or welded joints. There are various versions available but this one is my favourite.

Lampe Gras 207 by Bernard-Albin Gras. £380 from SCP, Shoreditch and Westbourne Grove (pages 136 and 31 in LDG)

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For those of you with children, you probably have to tolerate heaps of ugly plastic toys in your home. Well, American designer David Weeks has designed a series of wooden animals that happily fall into the ‘kidult’ category. Beautifully hand made, each limb is fully flexible and simply held together with elastic. My favourite is Hanno the gorilla.

Hanno the Gorilla by David Weeks. £59 from Aram Store, Covent Garden (page 76 in LDG)

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And on to the New Year. I like to start each year with a fresh new notebook to jot down ideas and future plans. You never know when you will have a lightbulb moment, so it’s best to invest in a good looking book for any public appearances. Crucially, this one has unlined pages (that’s just how I like it), with a Japanese screen printed cover and red linen spine.

Large hand bound notebook. £26 from Darkroom, Bloomsbury. Other colours and sizes are available.

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Finally, a little note to jolt your conscience. A staggering amount of landfill waste is generated each year from excessive packaging as well as unwanted Christmas gifts. We would encourage you to carefully consider the person you are buying for (so that they receive what they actually want), avoid unnecessary packaging, and make a concerted effort to buy into quality items that will last. There, we said it.

Check out GOOD magazine’s ‘10 favourite innovations for reducing plastic consumer waste.’

MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Mind-Sets is the first solo exhibition of Dutch designer Ineke Hans to be presented in the UK. Staged by The Aram Gallery, the introspective exhibition explores the designer’s working process, thoughts, fascinations, and motives in design.

MIND-SETS BY INEKE HANS, 18th September-31st October 2010

THE ARAM GALLERY

110 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5SG (020 7557 7526)

Curated by Daniel Charny, the exhibition gives an insight into Hans’ interest in materials and techniques, folklore, colour and decoration by mixing of her own designs with objects from her personal collection and references to historical pieces that have influenced her work.

Her latest work for OFFECCT is on show alongside works from recent years for the likes of Arco, Cappellini, Lensvelt and RoyalVKB. The exhibition also offers also a glimpse of Hans’ new designs for Ahrend and van Esch, which will be officially launched in autumn 2010.

An accompanying book, Mind-Sets by Walter Bettens (editor of DAMn Magazine), is available from the gallery.

We’ve teamed up with Frances Lincoln Publishers to give away five signed copies of ‘London Light‘ by photographer Sandra Lousada. A tribute to the city –  Lousada’s book captures her relationship with London in all its movement, light and colour. Enter the competition below for the possibility to win (entry deadline: 8th September 2010).

Sandra Lousada has enjoyed a fruitful career of theatre, portrait, fashion, beauty and advertising photography. She became internationally renowned in these areas but it wasn’t until she reached her sixties, having always worked in 35mm and medium-format film, that she delved into the world of digital photography.

She enrolled in a postgraduate course in digital photography at Central St Martins College of Art & Design and discovered that she had finally found an appropriate medium in her digital camera to capture the London she lived in and so loved. Playing on initial ideas of light and water, she progressed to capture movement, colour and reflections: all of which evoke a deep emotional response.

This response was a reflection of what she sees, feels and breathes in London. The advent of her late husband’s death clearly had an impact on her images, producing what her children called ‘crying images’:

‘In the winter months that followed his death I couldn’t sleep, so I would drive around London in the middle of the night, quite often in strong winds and rain. Every so often something would catch my eye and I’d get out of the car and struggle to see what I had noticed and try to work out how to record it’.

The resulting images of her experience show an alternative side to the bustling city – a slowing down of time from the shadows of a thoughtful insight.

COMPETITION: To win one of 5 signed copies of LONDON LIGHT, simply email your name and delivery address to competitions@londondesignguide.com with ‘London Light’ in the subject line.

Competition closes at midday on Friday 10th September 2010. Five winners will be chosen at random and notified by email on 10th September. The competition is open to readers from any country and books will be dispatched to the delivery address you supply.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. Congratulations to the winners: Yvonne Ferri-Hermann; Katherine Grieve; Lisa Hutchinson; Rebecca Townsend; Emma Day.

Stay informed of future competitions by signing up to our monthly newsletter.

All featured photographs are taken from ‘LONDON LIGHT’ by Sandra Lousada, published at £25 by Frances Lincoln.

For many years, LDG editor Max Fraser has been fascinated by the design of pasta shapes. It would seem he is not alone, as this new book – THE GEOMETRY OF PASTA – is dedicated to the subject, complete with over 100 recipes. Enter our competition to win a signed copy (entry deadline: 14th May 2010).

Pasta is architecture designed for the taste buds. There are said to be over 300 shapes of pasta, each of which has a history, a story to tell, and an affinity with particular foods. Over hundreds of years, these shapes have evolved alongside the flavours of local ingredients in Italy, and the perfect combination can turn an ordinary dish into something really special.

THE GEOMETRY OF PASTA, published by Boxtree, pairs over 100 authentic recipes from leading chef, Jacob Kenedy (co-founder of Soho restaurant Bocca di Lupo), with graphic designer Caz Hildebrand‘s striking black-and-white designs to reveal the science, history and philosophy behind spectacular pasta dishes from all over Italy.

COMPETITION: To win one of 5 signed copies of THE GEOMETRY OF PASTA, simply email your name and delivery address to competitions@londondesignguide.com with ‘Pasta’ in the subject line.

Competition closes at midday on 14th May 2010. Five winners will be chosen at random and notified by email on 14th May. The competition is open to readers from any country and books will be dispatched to the delivery address you supply.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. Congratulations to our five randomly-selected winners: Dorian Koelmans (London); Nick Bond (London); Sara Veloso Custódia da Silva Lança (Portugal); Katie Treggiden (London); Angie Palmer (Hove).

For those who didn’t win, enjoy this free animated recipe!

Stay informed of future competitions by signing up to our monthly newsletter.