Design Debate

Loving this home renovation in Charleston, USA. It's the use of materials that brings such warmth, and utilising the space. I love how the kitchen fits under the stairs but it's the cane cabinetry that stole my heart first. Calming, practical and full of old world charm. Carriage House was originally a cook house, used for food and laundering and the project was a collaboration with the owners, a local wood worker and Workstead .    The walls look ravaged but provide a texture you just can't achieve any other way. Red brick, crumbling render and slabs of plaster sit alongside smooth honeyed wood panelling.   It's actually quite a small space but so thoughtfully reimagined the home feels refined, grand even, and a place were you could happily sink into a good book.  Originally found at Dezeen . 

I wanted to share some deceptively simple branding with you today. We can often be tempted to be a bit too clever when it comes to brand concepts and I think Norwich Castle's rebrand by The Click has the simple confidence that speaks volumes. It may seem a little obvious to represent a castle by using its silhouette but the striking battlements have allowed for a really universal application across signage, websites and advertising. I just love every example of this brand, it is confident without shouting and fun as well as refined.  Originally found at BP&O . 

Well this is a blast from the past, technically a bit before my time (born in the 1980s) but the Raleigh Chopper is a design classic I remember well. The British brand just this month have brought back their iconic 1972 bike keeping it as true to the original as possible, whilst also making sure it meets modern safety regs.  My first bike was a Raleigh and I loved it! Not quite as cool as the chopper though, I seem to remember it was gold in colour, a hand-me-down I loved. The Chopper made bikes cool, it was the bike all kids wanted in the 70s. Designer Alan Oakley based the look for the bike on Peter Fonda's motorbike in the 1960s movie classic Easy Rider. The tall handlebars and vintage graphics remain in this re-launched version, as well as the original colours of 'ultraviolet' and 'infrared'.  The new Mk2 took four years of pain-staking research, the company keen to not disappoint fans. They used 3D modelling of the original bike to produce the CAD designs for t...

As I gaze out my window today it is very grey, cold and soggy. So instead I will gaze into my computer window and dream of long-gone summers. Danish ones to be exact, captured by photographer Sven Türck in the 1930s. It's the fashion that catches my eye, and that carefree feeling that summer holidays can bring. Plenty of fun, be that at the beach, on a bike or giggling amongst flowers. What power a photographer has when preserving history. The 1930s were overshadowed by economic hardship and an approaching war, yet here, in Türck's world, we are whisked off to a Danish idyll that I, for one, am quite happy to lose myself in today. Perhaps that sense of idyll isn't entirely accidental. Türck was an illustration photographer with a studio in Copenhagen, and his agency sold what were described as 'situation pictures' for advertising and othe...

I have always had a fondness for rugs, early memories of tracing the rings with my toy car on my Granny's circular rug in her kitchen. My simple student rag-rug that made a blank canvas feel more like home and the recycled plastic bottle Moroccan-inspired one my mum bought me for my terrace that echos the greens of the surrounding hills, linking inside and out.  Speaking of Morocco, I had the great pleasure of seeing the masters at work both here as well as India on my travels. The art of weaving really is something quite captivating.  Today I thought it might be nice to share with you some rather stunning rugs I have found recently. Some following a great tradition, others more pushing the boundaries but all with sumptuous colours or alluring tones.  Starting with something graphic, right up my street as a graphic designer! I love the comic book nature of this, as if scribbled in a cafe on a napkin. It has movement, called Agave Sketch by Florence Bamberger.  ...