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Our latest addition to our Not On The High Street shop. The ubiquitous motorway sign doesn't need any introduction, originally designed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir their road sign system has been copied by many countries throughout the world and now by The Design Conspiracy!
We thought that this classic piece of design needs elevating to art status, primarily in a frame on your wall. So if you're from Manchester, Nottingham or Leeds or have any connection with these cities take a look at our new screen prints available framed or unframed at A3 or A2.
We were very pleased to be invited by Not On The High Street to join their online marketplace some months ago. However moving studio and doing the day job have delayed our debut until now but finally we are live!
Just in time for the christmas season (although for other retailers this started back in september!) We'll be updating some new stuff over the next few weeks too keep checking regularly.
Finally like your actual high street why not take a browse and see if anything takes your fancy!
So, the all new print studio is up and running, not quite at 100%, but we will see what we need to address as we use it, so far so good - need to address storage issue and the darkroom area is being amended on a weekly basis, but it is all good fun.
Also this week we recieved these beauties, yup, 144pt Bodoni Poster. Looking forward to putting them on the press.
Keep an eye out for the work we have been doing with the contents of these salt and pepper pots, AB did lots of experimenting to find the perfect finish, and I can vouch that the end product, is delicious.
Finally after what seems like a month of travelling to and fro we have settled into our new studio in Hatton Place. We've got a decent pub at the end of the road, Leather Lane market and plenty of new eateries to explore, mind you all of this will have to wait for now as we've still got loads of sorting out to do but the new place already feels like home.
Like the last place we have a dedicated floor for our letterpressing and screen printing. In addition we'll be producing our own screens too instead of me making them at home which will save me carting screens back and forth. Anyway got to go holes to drill...
You wouldn't need much of an excuse to visit Tokyo but if you happen to be visiting Tokyo during August there's an added attraction! Our friend and textile embroiderer Naomi Avsec has a lovely exhibition called Doodles, Dreams & Stitchery at the Paul Smith Space Gallery. Running until 28th August she will also be giving sewing demonstrations on 20th/21st. So if you're there why not take a look?
So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Where is the centre of nowhere? How do you get to the end of a rainbow? And where is the needle in the haystack?
No, we don't know either. But illustrator Harriet Russell has tackled these thoughts visually, along with many other impossibilities, in her new book "Sixty Impossible Things Before Lunch", and we have the pleasure of hosting an exhibition of images from the book here at The Design Conspiracy.
For those who like to ponder the impossible and unfathomable and those who love quirky thought provoking illustration with hand drawn type, this book and show is a delectable feast.
'Sixty Impossible Things Before Lunch' published by Corraini is her fifth book after 'Jack and the Beanstalk', 'A is for Rhinoceros', 'A Colouring Book for the Lazy' and 'The Utterly Pointless Counting Book.'
She's downstairs setting up the show as I type this and we're all looking forward to seeing what she's got up her sleeve.
The show runs from 15th July until 22nd, open weekdays 10am-6pm and weekends 11am-4pm at The Design Conspiracy, 12 Stukeley Street, London WC2B 5LQ
Browsing through ffffound.com the other day I saw these fantastic typographic chalk illustrations and I realised I need to up my game - a lot! You see we have a door in our meeting room covered with matt black vinyl for the very purpose of writing on it in chalk. A few years ago I wrote very ornately the word 'create' it was a spur of the moment thing and looked ok but compared with these drawn by the very skilled Dana Tanamachi I now need to revisit it...now where's that chalk...
To bring a bit of sunshine to this dull and damp February day we thought we'd share with you a few nice things we've seen lately.
First off, a great exhibition of photos by Andy Willsher, a photographer with NME. He's been fortunate to work with many musicians over the years, such as Artctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, U2, Paul Weller, Bobby Gillespie, Radiohead and many more and this exhibition captures them all in striking black and white. It's being held at our freind Pete McKee's Sheffield gallery, A Month of Sundays.
Whilst there you can also check out Pete's gorgeous and always humorous colection of paintings and prints. If you happen to be in Scarborough you can also go and see Pete's exhibition at the Scarborough Art Gallery.
Next up, is another british artist, John Stezaker, at The Whitechapel Gallery in London. It's a really interesting collection of images that he has created by merging together photos, vintage postcards and classic movie stills. The simple collages sometime verge on surreal but are always arresting and clever.
If this is all a bit too arty for you and just fancy say, looking at a nice car, then pop over to The Design Museum to roll your eyes over the E Type Jaguar. They are celebrating 50 years of this true classic.
Whilst in London you might as well swing by The Design Conspiracy and take a peek at our ten exhibition. It's a collection of 10 pieces of work by 10 collaborators who were given the brief of creating depicting a given year between 2001 and 2010 in a 10" x 10" format. Artists involved are Alex Parrott, Di Macdonald, Guy Hulse, Henry Obasi, Inkymole, Karen Thomas, Lord Dunsby, Neil Roberts, Pete McKee and Sarah Ellen Bailey.
And finally, it's Pink as colour of the month over at Kate Spade. There's a print by Jenny Bowers and the cute video below by Part & Parcel and a gorgeous clip featuring actress Bryce Dallas Howard, their face of The Year of Colour. Enjoy. Happy February!!
You may remember a while back we mentioned Kate Spade and their gorgeous London pop up shop and that we'd been commissioned to produce some work for them. Well, the work is part of their fantastic Year of Colour where they are celebrating a different colour each month for the entire year.
They're going to be collaborating with different artists throughout the year, on all kinds of things from prints to videos. You'll have to keep checking back to see what colour we're doing, it's a surprise, but our month is April (apt eh?) . In the meantime, January's pick is red, a strong bold colour to kick the whole thing off and the inspiration behind this gorgeous sparkly red video by Ely Kim. Enjoy!
Tonight we shall be having a cocktail or two at Browns Hotel in Mayfair to celebrate the unveiling of the Paul Smith Christmas decorations. This year Sir Paul has been asked to decorate the hotel for Christmas and he's got his whole team involved.
Members of staff have all created their own baubles and they're going to be hung on the tree. In addition to these Mr Smith has invited a whole host of artists and designers to create their own too, on large discs that are to be hung on the wall framing the tree. These will then be part of a silent auction where the proceeds will go to Maggies Cancer Caring Centres. We were invited to contribute and couldn't conatin our excitement and got to work right away.
We didn't want to be too arty, just really festive and cool. That's when our adventure into glitterworld began. Red or silver? Or white? Hmmm, decisions. After a few experiments and 'ooooohs' and 'aaahhhs' we got a really successful result that we are really chuffed with. All achieved by our own fair hands. We hope other people like it enough to bid and raise money for Maggies.
We're not sure how long the bids are open for but anyone can go along to Browns and have a look and make bids. We'll post when we know a bit more.
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