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 

LONDON DESIGN GUIDE is proud to announce its very first award. To support the current JOY OF LIVING charity exhibition at Somerset House, we’ve put forward £1,500 towards two awards for the artworks that best respond to the exhibition title.

On Monday 14th March 2011, the first award was judged by a jury comprising Claire Catterall (curator, Somerset House); Marcus Fairs (founder, Dezeen); Lynda Relph-Knight (editor, Design Week) and Charles Jencks (co-founder, Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres).

Chaired by LDG editor Max Fraser, the judges spent several hours assessing all of the artworks in the Joy of Living exhibition (for more information about this fundraising project for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, click here).

After much deliberation, and plenty of conflicting opinions, a decision was reached by majority vote. We are delighted to announce the winner of the jury award is:

027: One for Sorrow… by Sam Johnson (pictured above).

Caption: My mother lost her battle with cancer in 1990. I was 14. During her illness I became very superstitious, avoiding anything that might bestow bad luck on her illness. The hospice where she died was surrounded by woods where there were always magpies. I now see these beautiful birds as a symbol of freedom and the end of her suffering.

Sam Johnson has been informed that he has won the £1,000 award and has gratefully accepted it. It’s worth pointing out that the designers of the artworks featured in the exhibition are anonymous – the names will only be released to the public when the exhibition has closed on Monday 21st March. Sam Johnson’s artwork is the only one that has been publicly revealed.

The second award is for £500 and will be decided by you. Be sure to visit the exhibition at Somerset House before 21st March and vote for the artwork that you think best represents the title: Joy of Living.

In the words of award judge and Maggie’s co-founder Charles Jencks, “This exhibition has created a new genre for ‘cancer art.’” We hope you’ll agree!

JOY OF LIVING is a charity project that unites over 100 leading lights in the design community to galvanise support for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. LONDON DESIGN GUIDE editor, Max Fraser, has set the challenge to new and established UK designers to create a desirable artwork that expresses the joy of living - all starting from a simple sheet of A4 graph paper. BUY YOUR FAVOURITE ARTWORK ONLINE or visit the exhibition.

JOY OF LIVING, 15th-21st March 2011

SOMERSET HOUSE

Great Arch lobby, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA (entrance via Embankment)

The signed works are exhibited and on sale in London’s Somerset House. The project aims to raise £50,000 for Maggie’s, a charity that helps people to build a life beyond cancer, helping to manage the impact of a diagnosis of cancer and to live with hope and determination.

Max Fraser explains, “After a very personal, emotional journey as I supported my mother through her 6-year battle with cancer, I vowed to contribute in some way to mankind’s fight against this disease. Maggie’s recognises that building an atmosphere of calm and celebrating a good quality of life are immensely beneficial to patients, and I know that my mother would have benefited so positively from its services.”

Charity founder Maggie Keswick Jencks once said, “Above all what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying,” and this statement has inspired the design challenge and the Joy of Living project.

A stellar list of UK design talent including Terence Conran, Tom Dixon, Barber Osgerby, Sebastian Bergne, John Pawson, Tomoko Azumi, Daniel Eatock, Fredrikson Stallard, Moritz Waldemeyer, Rob Ryan, Stuart Haygarth, Michael Marriott, Hannah Martin and Troika have contributed unique artworks that embody the Joy of Living theme.

Because democratic values are at the core of Maggie’s philosophy, each artwork is priced at £250, whether by a household name or a rising star. What’s more, the name of the designer will not be revealed until the piece is purchased, making sure that supporters buy a piece to which they have a true emotional response.

If you would like to donate to this project to raise vital money for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, please visit the project’s secure online donation page on the Just Giving website: http://www.justgiving.com/joyofliving

LONDON DESIGN GUIDE will be giving a £1000 award to the designer who best responds to the Joy of Living title in their artwork, as chosen by an esteemed jury. The winner will be announced on 15th March 2011 on this website.

There is also a £500 award chosen by the public, so be sure to visit the exhibition to have an input!

We’re delighted that LONDON DESIGN GUIDE has been included in Design Week‘s annual round-up of the “people making a difference in design,” which was released today (28th January 2010).

In a section dedicated to Self-Publishing, LDG editor and publisher Max Fraser is credited alongside other newly-formed publishers.

Thank you Design Week! Others included in the supplement are BBC; Yves Behar; D&AD; Design Council; Design Museum; Rodney Fitch; Antony Gormley; Anish Kapoor; HRH The Duke of Edinburgh; Jamie Oliver; Dieter Rams; Penguin Books; Selfridges; V&A etc etc…

Its January 2010 and the start of a new decade. It seems only right that at this milestone, we all consider what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong. In this LDG extract, editor Max Fraser confronts our insatiable appetite to consume and calls for change.

THE STATE OF STUFF

In today’s materialist culture we have become addicted to the constant allure of the ‘new.’ Max Fraser argues that now is the time to change our game.

Over the past decade or so we have lived well beyond our means, propped up by easy access to credit and an attitude that we can have what we want, when we want it. Today we wallow in a culture of uncontested consumerism. As Richard Girling wrote in his book Greed: ‘We acquire, accumulate, and consume so far in excess of “need” that the word itself has fudged its meaning.’*

Girling has a point. We belong to a generation that has never had to go without, and along the way we have created an invisible monster  that feeds off our over-indulgence and wastefulness. It looms on the horizon of Western consciousness, yet we live with the belief that we are somehow immune to the problems it conceals.

The current recession has brought some designers to the consensus that now is the time to address our culture of aimless consumption in the hope of restoring a marketplace with a healthier and more sustainable outlook than before.

As it stands the design industry seems to blindly produce more ‘stuff’, clambering at every opportunity to capture our attention amid a sea of homogeneous and derivative products. It is by no means the only industry that simultaneously creates desire and fuels disposability; in general, the vast majority of ‘stuff’ is only adequately designed and manufactured and capitalises on its own planned obsolescence. We recognise this – the burden on the planet is discussed endlessly – yet until it smacks us in the face, calls for change are likely to go unheard. In the main, we are hypocrites; we know we need to reduce but we feel doubtful that as individuals we can make any difference.

Could we ever move away from consumption altogether? I hear you ask: Why would he, the editor and publisher of an annual guide that ultimately encourages consumption, suggest such a thing?

True, this thinking is naive and short sighted. Trade is engrained in our culture. Our finely tuned production cycle should be credited for providing us with an ever-important source of income – which, in turn, helps keep society’s wheels in motion. Production should not be considered a 21st-century scourge; innovation and technology offer infinite possibilities to a forward-thinking society.

It is also important to recognise that human nature is at its finest when creating. It gives us a sense of purpose. Throughout history our country has spawned pioneers we can thank for everything we value as great. These innovators deserve kudos, not the imitators who follow in their wake. However, as Richard Girling rightfully warns: ‘We salute excellence, but excellence is seldom born of modesty, and still less of moderation.’**

More than ever before, society needs to embrace moderation and readdress the reality of our ‘needs’. But only when we seriously question why we have mountains of stuff cluttering our shelves (as well as our minds and, ultimately, the rubbish tips) will we be able to start changing our consumption patterns. It is time to move away from the concept of disposability and promote quality and longevity, repair and reuse. Consumption is fine, as long as we buy better quality products less often and place value on emotional resonance. The future should be seen as rich with opportunity, but conditional on a move away from today’s self-destructive trajectory. Along the way we need to excite and empower one another and sidestep those who hesitate.

As things stand today, I get the feeling we are just treading water, waiting for others to make the first move. An army of creative entrepreneurs is eager to advance, but seems held back by risk-averse corporations and government. As our history tells it, however, it is during the hard times that human beings have best responded to new challenges. There is every reason why now is the time for change.

* Richard Girling, Greed. Why We Can’t Help Ourselves (2009), p.64

** Richard Girling, Greed. Why We Can’t Help Ourselves (2009), p.83

This extract was taken from pages 158+159 of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2010.