Alan Aldridge

The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes

Alan Aldridge - the Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes is the first UK retrospective featuring the works of the celebrated illustrator and graphic designer Alan Aldridge. Dubbed the graphic entertainer in the 1960s and 70s, Aldridge illustrated lyric books for the Beatles, album covers for the Rolling Stones, the Who and Elton John, was Art Director for Penguin, illustrated children’s books such as the much loved The Butterfly Ball and designed adverts and identities for iconic brands such as the House of Blues and the Hard Rock Café. The exhibition is a complete display of complete works as well as sketches, notes, letters and other archival material as well as films; bringing to life the dramatic career of Alan Aldridge.

Patricia Urquiola

Purely Porcelain

Currently on at the Design Museum

One of the most active and exciting designers working today, Spanish born Patricia Urquiola exhibits Landscape, her recent porcelain range for the ceramic manufacturers Rosenthal. From dinnerware to tea sets as well as cutlery and glass, this exquisite design, which took over four years to develop, combines smooth simplicity with richly textured surface pattern.

Patricia Urquiola – Purely Porcelain presents the whole process from concept, through the process of manufacture, to finished product. See the complex, experimental and collaborative stages that transform a vision into a finished usable product.

Experiments in foam paper and plaster before casting.

3rd year

This September I started my final year at Kingston University studying Product and Furniture Design. We started the year with a series of 5 one week projects, each focusing on a slightly different context. We had projects based solely on brands, user needs and manufacturing processes.

For the manufacturing process project we were in groups, and each group given a process. Our process was slip casting. I had limite

d previous knowledge on slip casting, so I found this a really interesting and insightful project. We even attempted to slip cast something ourself- which turned out quite well. We learnt how we could manipulate the clay after being cast, along with many other qualities. Below are some images of slip casting that I really like and inspired me on the project.

This is an image of the jar that we slip cast.

COHDA

I recently attended a lecture series and Richard Liddle, founder of this company was lecturing. I found them really interesting, their approach to design and the issues on sustainability that they are trying to address.

Cohda Design Limited are a UK based urban contemporary product design company with a strong environmental focus. Conforming to various environmental strategies and objec

tives, we create thought-provoking, easy to comprehend, engaging and unique designs that implement and explore new technologies. With an integral presence they aim to break down the pre-conceptions of what ethical, innovative design should be.

URE LIVE

As part of the Designs Council's Design of the Time Festival in October 2007 Cohda presented their event, U.R.E Live. The exhibit took the form of a Recycling Design Factory that created a series of handmade recycled designs direct from waste plastics over a 10-day period. The plastic waste needed to feed the event was brought along to the event by the visitors to the exhibit, in the form of milk bottles, food trays, and various plastic containers direct from their waste bins.

www.design-event.co.uk www.dott07.co.uk

The factory was housed in a disused Fire Station on Pilgrim Street, in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). The space was almost empty at the beginning of the event, but as the visitors supplied the waste materials needed to fuel the Cohda team's creativity, they saw first-hand how recycled products could be made. With the plastic rubbish they had donated being transformed on the spot into a range of beautiful and useful recycled designs. The final recycled products were displayed alongside information on how they were produced and the energy saved in the production process.

At the end of the week-long event Cohda gave away once design for every day of the exhibit. The winners of the designs were the fortunate few who had brought along their plastic waste, which was marked at the event with the suppliers details and the winners were picked out at random.

Thank you to everyone who got involved in the event and brought along there plastic.