Explosions awoke Cairo early this morning (July 11), as a car bomb outside the Italian Consulate killed at least one civilian and injured eight others. Now Reuters reports that a local branch of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, posting on a website that they had used 450 kilograms (990 pounds) of explosives.
It sounds like an internet meme, but this one is IRL.
In the middle of a bright yellow room at The Morgan Library and Museum in New York sits the 150-year-old original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written and self-published by the enigmatic Oxford University mathematics teacher Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll.
To commemorate its fourth year anniversary as a nation, the Republic of South Sudan is set to release its first ever set of coins on Thursday, July 9. The design of the five coins in 10, 20, and 50 piasters as well 1- and 2-pound denominations all feature South Sudan’s coat of arms on one side and motifs representing the geographic regions of South Sudan on the other.
In 2012, Marilyn Monroe’s buxom figure inspired two towers in Canada. Now it’s Beyoncé turn to become the muse for a skyscraper in Melbourne. Designed by local architecture firm Elenberg Fraser, Premier Tower is a 68-story, 226-meter-tall building inspired by a 2013 video from the singer.
In an move to pressure the Washington Redskins football organization, US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that her office will likely bar the team’s plans to build a new stadium in Washington, DC unless it changes its name—which is seen as racist toward Native Americans.
The Human Organs-on-a-Chip, designed to revolutionize clinical testing and research, bested 75 other finalists in the 2015 Design of the Year by the Design Museum in London. The contenders included the Google self-driving car, Norway’s new banknotes, and Rodarte’s covetable couture Star Wars gowns.
More than 15 years after it raised a ruckus in New York, Chris Ofili’s mixed-media painting depicting a black Madonna decorated with elephant manure sold at auction at Christie’s in London today (June 30) for 2.9 million pounds ($4.6 million). This is a record for its artist, who surpassed his previous auction record of 1.9 million pounds.
The rainbow flag has become an iconic symbol of the LGBT community. Fittingly, its creator once dressed in drag as a busty Betsy Ross, the maker of the US “stars and stripes” flag.
From a field of more than 1,700 entries, the winner of the controversial Guggenheim Helsinki museum competition was revealed this week. The proposal the jury selected, named ‘‘Art in the City” and designed by the relatively unknown, Paris-based architecture firm Moreau Kusunoki, was praised for its sensitivity to the museum’s site along the Finnish capital city’s South Harbor.
Following the shooting deaths of nine people in a historically black Charleston church by white man apparently trying to start a race war, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley finally joined the call to take down the Confederate flag from her statehouse’s lawn. Then the US retailers Walmart, Sears, Kmart, Amazon, Ebay, Target, and Etsy announced a ban on all Confederate flag-themed merchandise, removing it from their websites and stores across the country.
At the end of his lecture at his alma mater, Cooper Union’s School of Architecture in New York on June 16, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban asked: “What is the difference between temporary architecture and permanent architecture?” No architect is more qualified to explore that question.
In 2004, psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote The Paradox of Choice, a compelling manifesto that outlined the paralysis and dissatisfaction one feels when presented with too many choices. A decade later, Aaron Shapiro, the CEO of the global digital design agency Huge, has evolved Schwartz’s observations into a provocative scenario he calls “anticipatory design.”
On June 17, 1885, 200,000 New Yorkers eagerly lined the docks to welcome France’s heftiest gift to America. The glorious, highly-anticipated 225-ton copper statue, “Liberty Enlightening the World” travelled across the Atlantic aboard the warship Isère, carefully packaged in 350 separate pieces, its color likened to that of a shiny new penny.
Martin Scorsese grew up during a time when the poster was central to the movie-going experience. In the 1930s and 1940s, these hand-painted, hand-lettered compositions were transformed into billboards or became splashy large-format displays in movie theaters. The posters loomed large on the horizon and in the collective imagination.
When seeing a new logo, how many times have you asked yourself, “Where have I seen that before?”
“Sorry for being a bit late, I was just washing some bees,” says Sam Droege. “They usually arrive covered in goo, not quite camera ready.”
The internet has not been the best design teacher when it comes to formatting résumés.
Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such as Palatino, Optima, Zapfino, Melior, Aldus, and the bizarre but much beloved Zapf Dingbats, has died at age 96.
New logos are easy targets. Mocked, manipulated, and abused, the online militia of Photoshop-savvy design commentators are quick to pull the trigger whenever a new logo is launched—and often miss its point.
Paintings in place of pears, silkscreens instead of sweet potatoes, art in lieu of artichokes—shareholders of community-supported agriculture (CSA) collectives across the US are discovering a different kind of bounty in their crates.
Let’s hope that Google’s new video about its so-called design philosophy is a glitch.
Design is a double-edged sword, as the ongoing debate on 3D-printed gun legislation reminds us. Even as designed objects, systems, and buildings have enhanced and prolonged our lives, design (and designers) also aid, abet and enable great acts of violence to mankind and the planet.
This post has been corrected.
