collaboration

Having primed retailers with Simon Doonan‘s wintry whimsybombs of posable manikins and blue tulle, Paypal has debuted a mobile payments system for small businesses that operate in the real world, not just the e-commerce ether. PayPal Here is an app and thumb-sized credit card reader for use on any iPhone (Android version coming soon), and the company tapped Yves Behar‘s fuseproject to mastermind the roll-out, from strategy and identity to user interface and packaging. “Most payment transactions are disconnected and confusing, with Paypal Here we sought to create an ecosystem where all elements are clear, simple, consistent, and a pleasure to use,” says Behar, whose team developed the arrowish Here logo as a symbol for easy payment that straddles the physical and virtual worlds. It carries through to the swiper. “The offset surface layer on the card reader easily identifies the credit card swiping track for the user,” explains Behar of the two-tone blue device, which fits on a smartphone and ships in a corrugated triangular box. “The front triangle is also an innovative drop-down lock that prevents swivel or pivot when one swipes a card.”

Ed Ruscha has a way with words and a sharp eye for typefaces (the sleek and squared-off sans-serif that appears frequently in his paintings is “Boy Scout Utility Modern,” his own creation). He delivers thoughtful insights in a distinguished voice that shimmers with the broken short vowels and gentle cadence of his Oklahoma upbringing. Turns out he also makes a great fashion model. That’s Ruscha in the spring-summer 2012 lookbook for Band of Outsiders, Scott Sternberg‘s beloved Los Angeles-based label. The photos, shot on vintage Polaroid film, show the artist hanging around his L.A. studio: he juggles paintbrushes in a chambray shirt, studies a copy of Acrylic Painting for Dummies, dons a cherry-red anorak to attack a Sudoku puzzle, samples the contents of a ramshackle refrigerator, and points westward, to the future, where there will be a dog and a motorcycle for everyone. It’s enough to make us want to string together Ruscha’s exotic textual feats into a song that tells the world how much we want to hang out with him. Oh, wait, someone already did that. Hit it, Richard Bell and David G.A. Stephenson:

It’s a project of firsts: Marc Newson’s first crack at camera design, Pentax’s plunge into design world collaborations, and the first time a Pentax product will be sold at retail outlets other than camera stores. Behold, the Pentax K-01, a 16-megapixel digital SLR hybrid that uses sleek interchangeable lenses (the world’s thinnest, according to the company). Envisioned with “clean and simple lines that create an elegant graphical composition,” the new model was developed in line with Newson’s design themes to be “timeless, trusty, and touchable,” which translates to features such as original-design push buttons and control levers, a mode dial and power switch in his beloved machined aluminum, and a rubberized grip. Newson’s touch extends to the product logo, camera strap, and start-up screen.

“The inspiration behind this design, like many projects that I work on, is simply the desire to create something which as a consumer, I myself would like to own or would like to purchase,” says the designer, who describes the K-01 as “not gimmicky at all.” The camera has already sold out at Colette in Paris, where its release was feted by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Dior jewelry designer Victoire de Castellane at a bash hosted by Olympia le Tan. Take one for a test drive at A+R, which is hosting a “Shoot+See” event this Saturday, March 17, at its Venice, California store. And click below to watch Newson lovingly fondle the “compact and trim” body of the K-01 as he answers questions about its development.
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As if we needed another reason to guzzle Diet Coke (pay no attention to that 4-MEI in the caramel color!), fashion designer and oldest living enfant terrible Jean-Paul Gaultier has been appointed creative director of the brand. Unfortunately, his position is limited to Europe, land of “Coca Light,” where he’ll design a selection of cans and bottles (limited-edition, bien sur) as well as add his signature flair to online content, retail concepts, and ad campaigns. “The bottles have the shape of a woman’s body, so it was great fun to ‘dress’ them,” said Gaultier in a statement issued by the Coca-Cola company announcing the collaboration. “The Diet Coke motif is so beautiful I had to design around this. The finishing touch was to apply my logo to the bottle, like applying a fragile stamp—making it something special you want to touch.” The “Night and Day”-themed bottles debut in stores across the pond next month, but Diet Coke has already debuted a trio of videos chronicling Gaultier’s adventures as “The Serial Designer” (we suspect something was lost in translation with that title). Modish marionettes and tiny cans of Diet Coke are involved. Voila:

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The countdown to the London Olympics is on, and even if you can’t get on board with the Jem and the Holograms-flavored logo or those aerodynamic cyclops mascots, you’re bound to find something of interest in the city’s ever-growing slate of cultural happenings. More than 1,000 performances and events are planned for the London 2012 Festival, which runs from June 21 through September 9, including a floating opera co-created by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, pop-up Shakespeare performances, and new public artworks as part of Frieze Projects East. But we think the big news is “Britain Creates 2012,” which is matching up British fashion designers with top contemporary artists to create one-off works that will be exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in July (planning is underway for additional “physical and virtual events” that will showcase the commissions).

Backed by the British Fashion Council/Bazaar Fashion Arts Foundation in partnership with the Mayor of London, the project has just announced the dynamic duos: Hussein Chalayan is working with Gavin Turk, Jonathan Saunders with Jess Flood-Paddock, Mary Katrantzou with Mark Titchner, and Paul Smith with Charming Baker. Meanwhile, Giles Deacon has been matched with Jeremy Deller, who is also at work on “Sacrilege,” a major new public artwork that will be situated in a variety of outdoor spaces in London this summer. “I am going to make a festive sacrilegious sculpture for the public’s delectation!” promises the Turner Prize winner.

(Photos: UnBeige and Courtesy David Stark Design)

David Stark has applied his artist’s eye and bricoleur’s ingenuity to the retail scene with Wood Shop, a temporary takeover of fellow RISD alum Nina Freudenberger‘s Haus Interior in New York. As you may recall from our recent interview with the event designer, his “surprise ambush” has filled the cozy homegoods emporium with limited-edition goodies inspired by a woodworker’s studio, from hand-crocheted saw pillows and rugged Carhartt-brown canvas placemats to a tool box worth of delicate gold pendants and hand-turned poplar vases that suggest a collaboration between Giorgio Morandi and Bob Vila. The woodstravaganza lasts through Monday, February 27.

The idea for Wood Shop stemmed from a previous project for which Stark and his team created an entire house out of SmartPly, which provided a cheeky backdrop for showcasing the client company’s new collection of homegoods. “Some of the things that we made for that were so fun that we thought, wow, these could be great products,” said Stark the other day, as he guided us through Wood Shop and ended up in front of a delicious-looking dessert, made entirely of SmartPly. “The cake really came out of that kind of thing. I have a weird sense of humor, so if I walked into a store, that would be the first thing I would be drawn toward.”

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If you aren’t living in Chicago at the moment, there’s a good chance you might have missed the city’s first major design scandal of the year. First, the City Clerk’s office announced a winner for the annual contest, open only to students, to design the next year’s city sticker (a “city sticker,” for those outside of Chicago, is a sticker you have to buy every year for $75, on top of your registration, that allows you to park on city streets, even at meters, without getting a ticket). The 2012-2013 sticker seemed like those before it: an innocuous, hand-drawn, rough-around-the-edges affair. However, worries started circulating that maybe there were hidden gang signs being flashed therein. So the City Clerk, Susana Mendoza, decided to pull the win away from the 15-year-old who designed it, promising to pay the $1000 bond prize money herself to lessen the blow, and bumped the runner-up to first place. Then, of course, the runner-up decided she didn’t want to win like that, and asked that her illustration not be used. So here we are today, with the City Clerk’s office announcing that it “has decided to design the 2012-2013 vehicle registration sticker in house.” All of that explained, it seems to us that this perfect storm is why crowd sourced, open invitation design competitions, no matter how adorable and child-enlightening they might seem, have the potential of backfiring in a very public way. And how much of the city’s money could have been spared if they’d just gone in-house or hired-out in the first place? Of course, the whole thing could have been worse, like in Vermont.

New York Fashion Week is in full swing, and on Friday morning, Kate Spade presented a Paris-infused fall 2012 collection dappled with polka dots and painterly prints, all smartly styled by Brad “Pop of Color” Goreski. “I’m kind of the Kate Spade girl but a boy,” he says. “I connect very well with the clothes and the aesthetic.” Meanwhile, Deborah Lloyd‘s ever-sharper, retro-chic brand is also busy rolling out cheeky spring offerings, a tribute to Australian textile designer Florence Broadhurst (1899-1977; we like to imagine her palling around with a young Edna Everage and going by the nickname “FloBro”), with the help of a boldly patterned bus-cum-pop-up shop. The collection is part of a larger collaboration with Helen and David Lennie‘s Signature Prints, which controls the Broadhurst design library. In addition to handbags, shift dresses, and Tretorn sneakers in her mod-nouveau Japanese Floral pattern, Kate Spade has debuted homegoods awash in graphic FloBro patterns. Now on offer at the brand’s just-launched Florence Broadhurst Decor Shop are eye-catching cushion covers, old-school luggage, china, and, of course, wallpaper. Bedding and other items incorporating Broadhurst prints will be added in the months ahead.

“The magazine isn’t the by-product of external pressure. I wasn’t all like, ‘F— Bon Appétit; I’m starting my own food magazine.’ I like Bon Appétit. It was an opportunity to work with friends at McSweeney’s, a chance to try my hand at a new format, and a chance to showcase and support some writers and artists we know. The first audience I think about is us: Can we make something we don’t hate? Then it’s my friends: Can I create something they will think is cool even though they have to listen to me bitch all the time? Then it’s people out in the world. And my secret hope is that a certain aspect of the magazine leads them down an unexpected alley—reading more Junichiro Tanizaki, or chasing down a Bill Orcutt record, or seeking out Kay & Ray’s potato chips.

I think Dave is incapable of stopping himself from following ideas that interest him. He doesn’t have a brand he’s worried about; he’s not worried about a message; he’s not interested in trying to create something that’s going to be a blockbuster. Failure is an option, but only when you’ve done something that says, ‘This is the most honest thing we can put out there.’ So that allows us to make it as weird as we want because we believe in what we’re doing.”

-Writer Peter Meehan on Lucky Peach, the quarterly journal he created with New York chef David Chang (Momofoku), in an interview with Charlotte Druckman that appears in this month’s issue of WSJ. magazine.

The Serpentine Gallery, who have learned to master the art of generating buzz about one annual project nearly year round at this point, announcing their pick for who will design the next one just as the one before it is fading from memory, have decided to up the ante even more so this year. They’ve just announced that this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a temporary structure set up in London’s Hyde Park, will be designed by a reunited Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. The two had previously collaborated on Beijing’s celebrated “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium ahead of the last Olympics in 2008. Weiwei’s gradual coming out against the project over labor and human rights issues was, for those not already in the art world, their first encounter with the artist Weiwei, whose outspoken views and clashes with the Chinese government have made him one of the most well-known and powerful artists today. With the Olympics coming to London in just a few months, and Weiwei now forced to work on projects from his virtual house arrest in Beijing, whatever the two parties come up with is sure to generate some nice press and an increased general interest for the Serpentine. Here’s a bit from the press release about what it’s going to look like:

This year’s Pavilion will take visitors beneath the Serpentine’s lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous Pavilions. Eleven columns characterising each past Pavilion and a twelfth column will support a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.