October 2008

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

Hopscotch, performance and game for 400 people / Photo: J. Reid

October 20, 2008. Artist Julia Mandle crosses disciplines as often the chicken crosses the road. She uses design (fashion, interiors, sets), architecture, and the city itself to choreograph her performance-based work. Her most recent project, Hopscotch for WTC, took place in September near the World Trade Center site—a large interactive public game for approximately 4oo participants and two performers ...

Snack by Mara Skujeniece with Karpendonkse Hoeve's chef

October 22, 2008. Will the chef from De Treeswijkhoeve restaurant be able to design a 'no screw, no glue' dish with industrial designer Joost van Bleiswijk? Thus asks the press release for Eat Drink Design (EDD), which is taking place during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven from October 18 to 26. Design studio Moon/en/co and Sot-l'y-laisse created this pop-up restaurant, dinner party series and exhibition in a vacant storefront by pairing seven local chefs with seven designers to create Signature Snacks ...

The Grand Panorama Still Life vignette by Beth Lipman

October 14, 2008. In a studied ensemble arrangement, the crystal pieces that comprise Still Life, the aptly-titled fall collection for Steuben Glass by Beth Lipman, depict an Old Master canvas drained of color and texture but brought to life in three dimensions. All that’s missing from the series is a dead rabbit fresh from the hunt ...

The Dupli.Casa Villa in Germany by J. Mayer H. Architects

October 17, 2008. The villa has just been given some serious va-voom. Berlin-based J. Mayer H. Architects recently completed a home near Ludwigsburg, Germany, that updates that dusty Italianate look ...

Technical drawings by Greta Grossman at The Drawing Center

October 14, 2008. From October 17 through November 6, The Drawing Center will host Greta Magnusson Grossman: Furniture and Lighting, the first major U.S. exhibition of concept drawings by the Sweden-born, Los Angeles-based architect and industrial designer ...

Tord Boontje’s colorful new outdoor seat for Moroso.

A view into the Matters of Sensation show at Artists Space

September 25, 2008. Good-looking and smart too, architecture exhibition Matters of Sensation will be on show at New York’s Artists Space gallery through November 22. An eclectic gathering of biomorphic experiments and installations – the model of an entire Corian-clad house, an iridescent shell lit and ventilated from within, nubbly rubber rugs, elaborately folded “bricks” that were 3D-printed from a mixture of aluminum and nylon, a cursive acrylic armature – are more than just eye candy; they are displayed strategically, almost by genus and species. Co-curator Marcelo Spina (with Georgina Huljich) explains ...

2008 was supposed to be ethanol's coming out year.

Carsten Höller's Revolving Hotel Room at the Guggenheim

October 25, 2008. The Guggenheim has invited 10 contemporary artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Angela Bulloch and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, to generate a group exhibition of installations. Theanyspacewhatever show recalls a period in the 1990’s when some artists used the exhibition as their subject and object, and calls together those who exemplify this impulse to interfere in the museum using cross-disciplinary means (literature, architecture, design, theater, etc.). Asked by Guggenheim Chief Curator Nancy Spector to collectively formulate the exhibition, the group chose to create a series of overlapping, albeit individual, site-specific projects that dot the museum’s spiraling rotunda ...

Plaque made by Italian craftsmen in thanks for a reprieve from tragedy

October 15, 2008. New York-based Constantin and Lauren Boym of Boym Partners are renowned for their Buildings of Disaster series, miniature limited-edition models of sites where tragic, historically-significant events have taken place. Their project is meant to be ironic, but while traveling recently, Constantin stumbled upon the real thing ...

A new shoe promises grip (and guffaws).

Use motion tween presets in Adobe® Flash® CS4, and learn how to create and save your own motion tweens as presets.

Understand the importance of symbols as the basic building blocks of Adobe® Flash® CS4. Learn the difference between movie clips, buttons, and graphics.

Use the Deco and Spray Brush tools in Adobe® Flash® CS4 to turn graphic shapes that you create into complex geometric patterns.

Become familiar with the Adobe® Flash® CS4 drawing tools. Use the Line, Pencil, and Shape tools. Change the color of a shape's stroke and fill.

Create bone systems to easily create animated hinge effects in Adobe® Flash® CS4. Generate complex animations using a bone system. Preview an animation and test a movie.

Utilize sound in Adobe® Flash® movies. Import sound to the Stage or the Library. Open the Sound Properties window to change the compression of a sound.

Create Adobe® Flash® movies for the Web. Automatically create HTML, SWF, FLA, and F4V files. Preview Flash movies in a web browser.

Learn what Adobe® Flash® CS4 is and what it can do. Create and display animation, video, and sound content. Add interactivity. Learn the Flash interface.

Learn essential Adobe® Flash® file types, including FLA, SWF, FLV, F4V, and MP4. Discover other file types, such as ActionScript and XFL.

Use ActionScript to control the Timeline or add interactivity to animations in Adobe® Flash® CS4. Place ActionScript code in frames on the Timeline or in external files.

Create animations using tweens in Adobe® Flash®. Learn what tweens are and discover the different types: shape, motion, armature, and bone tweens.

Analyze and fix an entire PDF, or run single checks and fixups on trouble spots or certain objects. Then embed an audit trail of the inspection.

Learn how to efficiently bring photos from Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ into Adobe Photoshop CS4, including editing photos as Smart Objects and automatically merging photos into panoramas and high-dynamic range images.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

Convert files and create portfolios in Adobe® Acrobat® 9. Send files for review and add comments and interactive elements. Enhance PowerPoint presentations.

Learn how to create shape tweens in Adobe® Flash®. Identify object and merge drawings. Create starting and ending keyframes. Preview complex shape tweens.

Learn to export Illustrator files with multiple artboards to Flash, set options for export and view the art in the Flash library and Timeline.

Combine diverse content into a single, compressed PDF Portfolio using Adobe® Acrobat® 9. Use Acrobat.com to create, share, and collaborate on PDF files. Easily create and manage forms.

Create, review, and share comments in Adobe® Acrobat® 9. Use comment tools and review cycles. Collaborate via email or Acrobat.com and share pages.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

Work with all documents that are related or attached to the current document without losing the current document's focus.

Enhance websites by adding multimedia elements, such as video in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4. Use Dreamweaver's integration with Adobe Flash® to create FLV files. No scripting required.

Get an overview of what Adobe® Dreamweaver® can do. Create web pages, structure and declare text, and place images on the page. Use CSS to format a web page.

Become familiar with the workspace and creating new documents in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4. See how you can style text using CSS, preview and edit files, and manage files.

Write code more rapidly with code hinting support for JavaScript, the DOM (Document Object Model), and Spry.

Use CSS rules to style web pages in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4. Write contextual or descendant selectors to change the size, color, and font of text. Duplicate rules for subheadings.

Learn to create tooltips with the Spry Tooltip widget. Learn about the form validation widgets that come with Dreamweaver.

Personalize a website with custom text and images in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4. Add assets using multiple workflows. Integrate Word, Excel, and Dreamweaver.

Design pages using the built-in starter pages in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4. Choose between one-, two-, and three-column layouts. Add headers, footers, and sidebars.

Plan websites for optimal layout and organization in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4. Define a site from multiple locations. Use the Site Definition interface to connect to a server.

I am participating in Digital Camera magazine photography contest, and here are some photos i have submitted. Check out my photos and please vote for me here. (You have to click on each photo in order to vote for it, and yeah, you have to register ) I would really appreciate your votes!!!

Rotate an image on-screen in Adobe® Photoshop® without rotational distortion, for easier painting, drawing, or editing at an angle. Zoom, pan, paint, and draw with continuous smoothness.

Get an overview of how to work with layers in Adobe® Photoshop® CS4. Use the Color Range command and invert an image. Jump an image to an independent layer.

Resize an image in Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 using the Image Size command. Print an image at a certain size or change the pixels inside the image. E-mail images or post them on the Web.

Use the selection and painting tools in Photoshop to efficiently rotoscope. Exchange files between Photoshop and After Effects.

Use improved Auto-Align and Auto-Blend features to correct vignetting, extend depth of field, or create a scene collage or spherical panorama.

Import Photoshop files into Fireworks. Retain font attributes, keep layers intact. Fine-tune tradeoffs between editability and consistent appearance.

Make color and tonal adjustments using an easy layer-based workflow with the improved Adjustments panel.

Develop raw photographs using Adobe® Camera Raw. Navigate the Raw panels. Adjust the Temperature and Tint sliders. Use the White Balance tool.

Learn how to efficiently bring photos from Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ into Adobe Photoshop CS4, including editing photos as Smart Objects and automatically merging photos into panoramas and high-dynamic range images.

Add and edit filter masks, layer masks, and vector masks in the Masks panel. Learn how to easily change the density and feathering to refine a mask's edges.

BIO Quality Concept Award: The Argo, A Boat for Touring the
Ljubljanica River, by Jernej Jaroslav Kropej

October 13, 2008. Bio.21, the 21st Biennial of Industrial  Design, sponsored by the Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, recently announced the winners of its Gold Medal awards and Quality Concept designs. The pieces, chosen by an international jury for their ‘quality, innovation and contemporary appeal,’ will be on show at the museum in Slovenia through November 2 ...

Top winners from the category.

Arsenale NovissimoTese di San CristoforoSept 12th - Nov 23rdMon - Sun / 10:00 - 18:00Free entranceCheck-in Architecture is a participative research project. We invited students of art, architecture, design and sociology from more than 20 universities in Europe, to tell stories about our cities in the form of 3 minute long documentaries. Featuring works by: Claudio Sinatti / Invernomuto Ecosistema Urbano / Metrogramma / Ma0 / NLArchitects / Cherubino Gambardella.click here for the map The spaces of representation on the web are changing their shape. As the shapeshift, many questions arise: how are they transforming the way we look? How much of these representations change how we perceive urban spaces? In their own audiovisual research, Claudio Sinatti and Invernomuto have always paid a special attention, almost an obsession, to urban and suburban space. Their obsession led us to invite them to dig into the overflowing audiovisual archive we collected in a span of four months, and to fill with their aesthetic practice a sizable exhibition. They've created a visionary space, where movements, postures, behaviors and the perceptio...

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, c. 1991, ink on paper.

October 24, 2008. Frank O. Gehry: Design Process and the Lewis House will open November 8 and run through April 5, 2009 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  The show presents Gehry’s decade-long (1985-1995), unrealized Lyndhurst, Ohio residential commission. The unbuilt Lewis House, the curator argues, was critical to the development of the architect’s geometric formal language ...

October 17, 2008. South African designer Heath Nash—whose honeycomb-shaped Tyvek Anemone lamp for Artecnica debuted recently—was one of the guests of honor at Vienna Design Week, where he presented a new line of lamps made from recycled plastic bottles at the design store Habari. In this video, he describes his inspiration for the project ...

Herman Miller’s new task chair is designed for maximum comfort.

How the priest’s collar went from practical necessity to holy symbol.

Hanno by David Weeks in the first American Design Club exhibit

October 1, 2008. Titled Outside of Sorts, the inaugural exhibition of the newly-minted American Design Club (AmDC) went up in the Character shop at 19 Prince Street in Manhattan last week. Curated by AmDC members, the show includes a number of unknown names who were found by putting out an open call through word-of-mouth, online design sites and other channels. The profusion of work – a smaller selection will be on display through the month – includes everything from a terrarium and a fruit bowl to a faceted coffee table, table sculptures that resemble houses of cards and jewelry, as well as studio work and more conceptual pieces (involving, in one instance, croquet mallets). New York designers, charter members, co-founders and co-curators (along with the charter members listed below) Kiel Mead and Theo Richardson of Rich, Brilliant, Willing explain the provenance and goals of the new organization ...

DBA, a new product design company, seeks to wrest innovation from simplicity.

I’ve got my asbestos underwear on, so flame away…   So many of us are so thrilled at seeing an official Front Controller / MVC framework for ASP.NET development that I think we’ve forgotten to ask ourselves “Is this thing any good?”  In *my* opinion, if you look at the ASP.NET MVC framework as a complete framework to be used out of the box, the MVC framework isn’t very good at all.  However, as a set of fairly loosely coupled classes that you can use to build a highly productive, specialized MVC stack for your specific application needs, the ASP.NET MVC framework is perfectly fine. Basically, my issue with the MVC framework is that I think it falls far short of Ruby on Rails in terms of productivity enhancing features and testability.  Specifically, I think the MVC framework – out of the box – has failed by not embracing the Rails mantras of Opinionated Software, Convention over Configuration, the  DRY Principle, and Testability support.  That’s okay...

Wanted to check out my favourite square in Paris, Place des Vosges, with its elegant boutiques but arrived to find it boarded up. There was a lot of activity going on and I was ushered into a "backstage only" area, given a carton of coffee and sandwich - perhaps a case of mistaken identity.
Very confused, I then couldn't find the way out and was terrified that I'd be found out as an impostor. Finally escaped but never did discover what was going on - or get to the shops.
Giambattista Valli's show by the Eiffel Tower was incredible. Big Fifties skirts and huge ballgown dresses with cascading frills like the icing on a wedding cake.
Came out, no Sammy - my driver - apparently he was moved on by police and had gone home. Well, he's fired. No taxis so walked to Costes, almost rubbing the red soles off my shoes.
Met Peter, Chrissie and Rose Blake for tea at The Ritz, then saw Jasmine Di Milo's collection - she gets better and better. Her tulle dresses are ravishing and some "must have" jackets, and all so wearable.
Peter wanted to see the tattooist at Collette but by the time we got there he'd gone - Peter was most disappointed.

My neighbour Cath Kidston, whose evocative style we associate with all thinks nice, held her 25th anniversary celebration in Portman Square, turning it into a village fete: a cosy comfort zone of sweetness and light, tombolas, competitions, fish 'n chips and loads of beer.
The party was enchanting, with the fashion world and friends congratulating and paying their respects to an icon.
Across the road at Home House, Lacoste unveiled Zaha Hadid's footwear collection, timed to coincide with Frieze Art Fair. The crocodile logo, the basis for the design, was tempting, should I ever go sporty. The new bar and lounge designed by Zaha one of the sexiest in town and serving buckets of Champagne. I was tempted.

With my date for the evening, James Long, we beetled to Banqueting House for Christopher Kane's dinner. Parked in a side road to change into Victorian bustle coat but was unnervingly escorted out by security brandishing a machine gun - too close to Number 10, apparently.
Held at The Undercroft, the look was Gothic and the dinner table based on the Beggars Banquet was sumptuous; the cocktails a la Tammy Kane, lethal. Jeanette DJ'd and guests threw themselves onto the dance floor. However, we did take in Christopher's elegant Couture Glass on its plinth, which thankfully survived the night.
A few of us ended up at the Groucho for a nightcap - a recipe for disaster and a sore head.

READ MORE ABOUT CHRISTOPHER KANE'S COUTURE GLASSWARE HERE

It's the Damian Hirst sale next week - it's going to be this enormous, mad thing and he's bound to make millions from it. It's a clever plan. He's putting on the auction himself as well as a huge party - it's going to be really extravagant and fantastic.
There is a three-book catalogue and it's really the most sought after ticket we've had for ages. It's called Beautiful Inside My Head Forever and it's from 8pm until midnight. It's going to be very cool - there are three DJs and I hear that Lily Allen will be one of them.

Off to the Outset NSPCC dinner at Philips de Pury and Company in their cavernous space in Victoria - set amongst the 200 or so lots of mid-century modernity to go under the hammer the next day.

The dinner was organised by the stylish and hyper-dynamic Yana Peel (literally she lives in London, Moscow and Hong Kong all at the same time). We both started our respective endeavours at the same time and I've witnessed her ascendance to one of the art world's real shakers with her Outset Art Fund (www.outset.org) which has programmes from buying work from the Frieze Artfair for the Tate, to workshops and studio visits.

Following an inappropriate drooling incident over a Gio Ponti 12-piece cutlery set, I put my hand deep into my pocket for a beautiful vase made by Tomas Kral. Kral is a recent graduate from the Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland, who deeply etches reclaimed bottles and jars and turns them into exquisite pieces. Very Morandi. Have a look http:/...

In my household, shopping is rarely done with a good conscience. But the Chicken Shed charity auction at Harvey Nichols last week proved the exception to the rule.
With ten per cent of sales going to benefit the children's theatre, an auction and inspiring performance by a troupe of 20 Chicken Shed members, Vogue editors and Harvey Nichols were on hand to support a very worthy cause.
What strikes you immediately about the ensemble of children performing with Chicken Shed is their range of age and ability, and the sheer talent involved. Instead of doing what most children their age do, watch television or play video games, they were singing, dancing and most importantly, supporting each other.
An inspiring performance by blind cast member Lissa Hermans, accompanied by a choreographed dance piece performed by children ranging in age from four to eighteen, was the highlight of the night.
Raef Bjayou (from The Apprentice) auctioned off prizes including a holiday in Trasierra, a Harvey Nichols shopping spree and a fashion package of goodies from

While it’s been forever and a year since I’ve written a new blog post, I do want to let folks know I have been writing.
My run as the Desktop columnist for Print Magazine has now come to end. It was great while it lasted, but I’m moving on to new work at Yahoo! You can always find my past articles at Print’s website or better yet, go buy the magazine since it’s one of the few design publications that’s worth paying a subscription for in my humble opinion.
My most recent articles:

• PowerPoint is Not an Excuse (Feb 2010)
• Can Typekit Bring Fonts to the Web? (Oct 2009)
• A Tale of Two Valleys (Aug 2009)
• Make Big Money Online! (Apr 2009)
• Upward Mobility (Feb 2009)
• Source -

Today we are featuring our fall giveaway with our good friends at Sephora! But today’s giveaway is a little different! We at Couture would like to hear why you feel that you are a beauty authority! Yes, we want you to tell us in a few sentences why you love the Sephora brand, and what makes you a beauty diva! Here are today’s spectacular giveaways from Sephora! Win this! Colorful Pearl Mono Eyeshadow What it is: Luminous pearl eye shadow in a round compact. What else you need to know: Each of these pocket-sized shadows glides on smooth with a sheer, luminous finish that can be layered for added intensity. Each sheer shade is perfect for layering and highlighting. Enriched with green tea to soothe the delicate eye area. Here is what Sephora fans are saying about the product! “I love these shadows! They apply smoothly, blend well, feel light, lasts a long time & don’t dry out the lids. Such a pretty finish!” Caroline G, Boston, MA “I bought a lovely dark grey, and it blends so ...