Come Up To My Room

It's baa-aack!

The Gladstone Hotel is hosting the 7th Annual Come Up To My Room design event starting on Thursday, January 21st. Featuring 11 rooms and 16 public space installations from over 50 designers, it's something to get those creative wheels a-turning. More info here.

The Selby

God bless Todd Selby & his insane photography collection of creative people in their creative spaces. Toronto places have yet to make it on the list, so Todd... consider this an invitation.

View The Selby here.

Parquet is now a buzz word

Wall to Wall by Shay Alkalay and Yael Mer is a parquet flooring installation.
They have investigated the connection between flooring and textiles with their design comparable to a tightly woven knitted garment .By developing the notion of a textile rug being an intrinsic partner with flooring materials ,the designers have combined two conventional surfaces , top create a visually dynamic finish reminiscent of traditional textile patterns used worldwide

Via Design Llama

Helvetica!

On a recent visit to London's Design Museum [which if you're ever planning on visiting, don't. Save your £8.50 and go to the gift shop instead], a friend of mine and I agreed that the only thing remotely exciting about the museum were the stark white walls with occasional directions painted in gigantic, Helvetican text. "WOMEN'S" was definitely a fave, as was "EXIT".

Even though that was the most exciting part about the museum, I couldn't help but feel that that was also the most dated. Negative space has been huge in graphic design across the last 10 years; minimalist styles always seem to go hand in hand with some sort of Helvetica Bold / Helvetica Neue / Helvetica Neue Black Condensed / Neue Bold Condensed combo. Helvetica essentially is the Starbucks of the font families. Uber trendy, functional and would probably own a home in the Beaches if it could afford one, you can order your Venti Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, and bold it if you're feeling a little bit on the gluttonous side. But one has to ask, with over fifty years of use, when will Helvetica be done with being the trendy trend?

So far there are no signs of the font slowing down [the signs written in Helvetica themselves], so we might as well give in to the celebration. Our own TA2 logo is in Helvetica [shames, shames], I've also named my first born after the font*, and the truth is is that there just ain't a font out there as purty.

* I'm lying a terrible lie, but Helvetica Fletcher does have a certain ring to it.



So here goes the celebration of Helvetica! Because without it, the Design Museum would just have white walls [which wouldn't be a bad thing, considering the rest of their exhibits]:



Lars Muller's 2005 book on the typeface showcases over 400 uses of the font. For more info, click here.



Gary Hustwit's feature length documentary coincided with the 50th anniversary of the font in 2007. Learn more here.


Photo of the Design Museum from The Curated Object.

Louis Vuitton vs. Takashi Murakami

For the release of the new Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami “Multicolor Spring Pallet” product, the artist has also left his footprint in the LV stores inerior.




You probably will recognize Takashi's work with Kanye West.

(via High Snobiety)

I could get lost in this!

Here is a wall painting at Thank You's studio. Thank You is a motion graphics firm out of Denmark.



Illustrated by Marcos Ceravolo, Pawel Nowakowski, additional illustrations by Ryan U.

Images via Bocamotion.tv

Watch it go up in flames!

I'm really fascinated by the creative things that people do with their workspaces. Chew on this one. An office designed almost completely out of cardboard. Nothing is a commercial creative agency based in Amsterdam. Created by designers Joost van Bleiswijk and Alrik Koudenburg

The best part of all is that visitors to the agency are encouraged to leave their mark behind on the surfaces. What a great interactive workspace. I wonder if anyone has drawn a penis yet??

Via CR Blog

This Ain't No Disco

This Ain't No Disco is a blog that features some amazing work spaces. Agencies are asked to send in photos of their interesting and unique working environments. A few of them make me really jealous. I call it e-bragging.



OneMethod Digital + Design which is located in Liberty Village in Toronto was recently featured on the blog. And of course, it looks really fun to work there. Urban inspired illustrations, ambient lighting, private meeting areas, and smiling faces everywhere.

Get In My House

The Interior Design Show starts tomorrow at Exhibition Place. STUDIO JOB will be there on February 6th at 3 PM as guest speakers. The pair are most famous for their Alice-In-Wonderland-esque oversized "Silverware" pieces. Their designs are so good that their website doesn't even contain any of their work. Oh snap! Visit it here.



Other top pics are Canadian duo Castor, made up of Brian Richer and Kei Ng. They'll be taking place in 5X5: 5 DESIGNERS, 5 INSPIRED SPACES with 4 other firms designing living spaces within the exhibition. Joining them are 64th and Queen, Dee Dee Taylor Hannah, Tomas Pearce Interior Design Consulting, Inc. and Earth, Inc.

And just an aesthetic tease - check out what's in Studio North:

Chroma Lab

Ani Lumigrane

Manor 12

Soon Cho

Happy Eyes I have, Grasshopper.
More on the Interior Design Show here.