Online video magazine – Crane TV – has made a short film about the Joy of Living charity exhibition, which is being organised by LDG editor Max Fraser. See interviews with Max, as well as designers Hannah Martin, Tom Dixon and Giles Miller.

Watch the video by clicking on the image below:

Video supplied courtesy of Crane TV.

Joy of Living aims to raise £50,000 for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. To buy an artwork online, visit the dedicated Joy of Living website (artworks released online on 15th March 2011). To make a donation to Maggie’s, click on this JustGiving link.

Thank you.

The Wapping Project, the east London gallery, restaurant and performance space is hosting ‘Chorus’, an immersive kinetic experience light and sound installation by United Visual Artists.

CHORUS, 15th June – 18th July 2010

THE WAPPING PROJECT

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, London E1W 3SG (020 7680 2080)

Installed in the Wapping Project’s Boiler House, a dark and cavernous industrial space, Chorus is simultaneously a physical and ephemeral experience consisting of an array of motor-assisted pendulums, suspended from the roof. Mounted on each of the pendulums are a light and a speaker. Together these pendulums form a single instrument that explores the relationship between performance, sculpture and installation.

Chorus was originally commissioned in March 2009 by Opera North Projects in association with The Culture Company to celebrate the reopening of the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds (pictured top). Chorus is effectively a musical instrument on a grand scale; an instrument in which the special location of each sound is a critical part of the composition.

Each light pendulum emits its own unique musical score that together forms a perfect ensemble of light and sound. Conceived by the British collective United Visual Artists, whose work spans permanent architectural installation, live performance and responsive installation, Chorus has been reworked within the Wapping Project.

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The pictures above show the installation in Durham Cathedral for Artichoke’s Lumiere event in November 2009. Click here to watch a video of that installation.

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.

At LDG, we are putting this call out to our readers to strengthen The Robin Hood Tax campaign, which calls for all of the main UK political parties to support the introduction of a financial transactions tax on the banks.

The tax would make a significant contribution to preventing cuts in public services, tackle climate change and reduce global poverty. It could raise hundreds of billions of pounds annually for domestic and international projects.

In this short video, titled The Banker, actor Bill Nighy explains what its all about.

On Thursday 15th April 2010, the No Brainer poster – as commissioned by East London-based arts movement Mutate Britain – was unveiled on the front of Cordy House on Curtain Road in London’s Shoreditch. The 12m x 18m poster was created by Dr D, an anonymous street artist who is famed for altering commercial and political advertising to make powerful cultural comments.

Here is a time lapse video of the poster paste up:

The campaign has the headline support of actors Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Noel Clarke (Dr Who), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter), and Joe Dempsie (Chris Miles in the E4 show Skins) all of whom were present at the poster unveiling and who have appeared in the campaign videos (watch The Banker 2).

A raft of other celebrities have got behind the campaign, including Sienna Miller, Emma Thompson, Lemar, and Sir Ben Kingsley.

Commenting on the campaign, Bill Nighy said, “Since we launched the campaign in early Feb, hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are supporting a Robin Hood Tax on the banks’ financial transactions. We urge our political leaders to listen to them and endorse the introduction of the tax.”

He continues, “The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny levy that could make the difference to many people in the UK and abroad, that will cost us personally nothing.”

Sign up here to show your support of The Robin Hood Tax.

At last, the Design Museum is recognising the achievements of legendary German designer Dieter Rams by staging his first definitive UK retrospective. Rams defined an elegant, legible, and rigorous visual design language which has informed the work of countless designers today.

‘LESS AND MORE – The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams’  

18th November 2009 – 7th March 2010

DESIGN MUSEUM

Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD (020 7940 8790)

For 40 years, from 1955-1995, Dieter Rams designed and oversaw the design of over 500 products for the German electronics manufacturer Braun, as well as furniture for Vitsoe. Audio equipment, calculators, shavers and shelving systems are just some of the products created by Rams, each item holds a special place in the history of industrial and furniture design and has established Rams as one of the most influential designers of the late 20th Century.

The exhibition examines how Dieter Rams’ design ethos inspired and challenged perceptions of domestic design and assesses his lasting influence on today’s design landscape. Archive footage, models, sketches and prototypes are displayed alongside specially commissioned interviews with Rams’ contemporaries, which include Jonathan Ive (Apple), Jasper Morrison, Sam Hecht (Industrial Facility), and Naoto Fukasawa. 

Heavily influenced by the Bauhaus and Ulm School of Art in Germany, Dieter Rams pioneered a design spirit which embraced modernity and placed functionality above everything else, resulting in designs that were free of decoration, simple in function and embodied a cohesive sense of order.

Dieter Rams identified his own ‘Ten Principles’ of good design, which, amongst others stated that good design should be innovative, aesthetic, durable, and useful:

Good design is innovative.

Good design makes a product useful.

Good design is aesthetic.

Good design helps us to understand a product.

Good design is unobtrusive.

Good design is honest.

Good design is durable.

Good design is consequent to the last detail.

Good design is concerned with the environment.

Good design is as little design as possible.

We can’t help thinking that many of today’s designers could be reminded of these simple principles before adding yet more stuff to our material landscape.

EDITOR’S COMMENTS:

This exhibition really reminds us of the 20th Century notion of ‘good design,’ which was principally concerned with functionality, efficiency, and material honesty. Recently, the design world has become carried away with the idea of entertainment in design, which often manifests as over-the-top, materially-excessive, somewhat frivolous ’functional’ objects – sensationalist designs that scream for our attention.

Rams’ work was real problem-solving design at its finest and was packaged ready for the consumer to understand and enjoy. No fanfare.

Walking around this exhibition, I was struck by how remarkably calm I felt. Other visitors seemed calm too and somewhat grateful and refreshed.

The designers in the room – presumably both practicing and studying – seemed humbled by the experience as they became realigned with the ingredients and attributes of truly great design.

It seems fitting that this exhibition is staged at a time when the world is trying to heal the wounds created by excess and greed. We can all learn a lot from this.

In 2008, I produced a short video asking leading figures from the design community in London: what is your idea of good design? On the whole, the consensus came remarkably close to Dieter Rams’ ten principles. Watch the video here and keep an eye out for the orange squeezer produced at Braun during Rams’ tenure!

Journalist and author Laura Houseley interviewed LDG editor Max Fraser at Tent London during the London Design Festival 2009. Fraser describes the content and motivations behind the guide and explains why London is such a vibrant design capital.

Video courtesy of Detnk.com