The 2011 London Design Festival concluded this weekend, and I paid a visit to the Origin Contemporary Craft Fair at Spitalfields Market on Sunday. Highlights for me included the fabulous felt work of Barbara Keal, the delicate jewellery of Julia Parry-Jones and the witty knitwear of Nina Führer. The show continues until Wednesday 28 September with an inspiring collection of over 200 exhibitors working in ceramics, paper, glass, metal, textiles, furniture, jewellery etc. www.originuk.org
Barbara Keal, Julia Parry-Jones and Nina Führer at Origin 2011
Sunday was the last day of this year’s Pick Me Up exhibition at Somerset House. I really enjoyed my visit, with some familiar faces from 2010 alongside a number of new exhibitors. Personal highlights from the Pick Me Up Selects artists included the gorgeous letterpress of Jessica Hische, the quirky cartoons of Tom Gauld and the strangely beautiful information graphics of Stefanie Posavec.
A swift detour on my way back to the office yesterday gave me the opportunity to check out the small but perfectly formed Saul Bass exhibition at Kemistry Gallery. The BFI-loaned exhibits include a retrospective of his iconic film posters, film festival posters, film titles and even the storyboard for the famous shower sequence from ‘Psycho’. The exhibition runs until Thursday 17 March.
Delighted to have received advance notice from Somerset House of the next Pick Me Up graphic art fair. We really enjoyed the event last year especially Rob Ryan’s open studio. This year, the studio space will be occupied by the very talented Anthony Burrill, which reminded me of his brilliant charity project for the Gulf of Mexico disaster – ‘Oil & Water Do Not Mix’ (below). More details on the March event here.
'Oil & Water Do Not Mix' by Happiness Brussels. Designed by Anthony Burrill.
A few months after the launch we finally couldn’t resist the temptation of Apple’s glorious iPad. With the demand for digital content ever growing it was decided we needed some in the office to work with… That or we felt we needed a new gadget to play with!
Premm were present at the Kajima annual reception – held at the refurbished Museum of London – with the great and good from the property and building industry to review the year and to celebrate the launch of the new identity and the Kajima website. Photos taken by Simon Keats at lightworkphotos.com.
BBC Proms in the Park is taking place in Hyde park this weekend (11th September) bringing this years amazing Proms season to an end. So while hard at work producing this years programme, laying out a page containing the Biog for Serpentine Fire, this very strange likeness was found while looking for alternative images on their website. Is this just a crazy look alike or has Adrian here been moonlighting? We’re yet to get the truth out of him!
Despite writing what was thought as the most witty and intellectual post ever to grace the internet it turned out that the iPhone WordPress app that it was written on, thought otherwise. So to save writing this twice, I will keep this short.
On 26 August the team here at Premm HQ headed off to an evening at the BBC Proms. This years concert of choice was the spectacular Jamie Cullum Proms. As described by the Guardian, ‘Jamie hurled himself into a show as if he wanted nothing more than for the crowd to go home happy’ and that we did.
To our disappointment a new shop called Yummishes has just opened over the road from the Premm studio, selling nothing but delicious cupcakes! So Wendy kindly popped over to investigate and came back to the studio loaded with goodies. Everyone is hoping that this will be a regular thing.
Anyone doing a spot of shopping at Westfield (London) last Friday evening was in for a treat, as the full force of the BBC Symphony Orchestra was there giving a free concert to promote the upcoming Proms season (starts Friday 16 July). BBC Presenter Katie Derham guided an attentive audience through a World Cup inspired programme of classical favourites and contemporary music. We applied the Proms Out+About branding to flyers, posters, the stage backdrop and those rather complimentary yellow and purple T-shirts…
