Studio Forbes - Blog

Super Normal

“Super Normal is a reminder of some pretty obvious points, as well being what we consider to be a pointer to a more sophisticated approach to design than the purely visual.” - Jasper Morrison

The word “normal” was hovering around the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) last month, seeded by an exhibition at the Vitra showroom gallery entitled Super Normal. “Normal” means something like average or standard, something definitely not “innovative”, and is not a term usually celebrated in modern design. Combine “super” with normal and you get all kinds of definitional contradictions and ambiguities. The show was curated by designers Jasper Morrison and Nato Fukasawa and is supported by a book from publisher Lars Muller - Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary. It’s a good read.

Thinking Diffrent About Stuff

I’m not sure if Steve Jobs would have enjoyed the Maker Faire that was put on just down the road from Apple’s headquarters in Silicon Valley earlier this month. Upon entering, the very first piece you come upon is a mobile robot-like head - built entirely out of Apple components - emitting computer-generated sounds. Like some inbred offspring of R2D2, this is nothing cute. It’s visually clumsy, goofy, clever, weird, disturbing, curious, fun, irreverent, and anything but Apple-elegant - as great a contrast as you could find to iconic Apple symbols such as the slick cubic glass storefront on 5th Avenue in New York. If you were forced to assign the classic tagline “think diffrent” to this object or to the now-mainstream Apple iconography, you wouldn’t pick Apple. Jobs would not have found much solace immediately inside the Maker’s Shed where there were seminars and books on how to hack your way into your iPhone and iPod.

Circus Milano

I just returned from the colossal annual design fair in Milan (Il Salone di Mobile). This event has become so huge that it draws more visitors (300,000+) than “the sum of all the other major design events worldwide” according to Design Boom. Only religious pilgrimages draw more people to one location for an extended stay. In addition to the massive official fairgrounds site, there were over 400 satellite design events in surrounding stores, parks, galleries, and public spaces. The spectacle itself is more remarkable than the work displayed – transcending its content like Carnival or the Oscars. Of the many blogs that cover the event, Design Boom and Design News are the most comprehensive. But, in order to fully appreciate the enormity of the fair, in order to be properly overwhelmed, there is no substitute for being there. Context matters.

Spotting Bikes and Birds

People-watching is one of the great pastimes of travel. We learn a lot about a place by studying the parade of characters past a café or through a public square. There are limitless clues in their attire, bearing, mannerisms. Studying bikes can be equally rewarding. The insights about local design, history, technology, use of materials can also tell us a lot about a place. Even the details of the bikes can be loaded with cultural information. This became obvious to me in Amsterdam, the bike capital of the western world, where bike lights/headlamps stood out as a unique design feature.

Hunting Around for Patterns

I wrote a piece on patterns six months ago, and a number of readers responded with notes and some terrific images. Howard Meister sent me this one of eggs, which I pass along to you as we enter Easter Weekend. There will be lots of Easter egg hunts; untold eggs painted; yellow sugar chickens and chocolate rabbits consumed. What these things have to do with Christianity escapes me, but I enjoy peeking through to the pagan world.