“ The future is all around us, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

Designers are inherently and historically forerunners of visual trends and purveyors of the zeitgeist visual style. Trend spotting and forecasting are easy inclusions into design practise, but what if there was something a bit more rigourous, something deeper that could super charge our insight into business and brand. This vlog piece is an interview with an experienced Futurist seeking his thoughts on crisis and how it could relate to the design paradigm.

Video scheduled for upload onto vimeo. Watch this space for updates.

Interview by Joanna Alpe
follow  @joannaalpe

     

Click here to download:

Hello_Future_An_Interview_with.zip (263 KB)

Renée Lam

           

Click here to download:

Fight_vs_Flight.zip (5366 KB)

If design was a sale, what might it say?

At a time when the world is reacting to the repercussions of an economic crisis, businesses are doing everything in their power to survive. As a result, we are constantly bombarded and lured by cut price offers, sales and clearance reductions.

Sell-Out addresses the relationship between a recession and the design industry. By investigating the contexts of contemporary culture, a candid social commentary of design can be offered using conventions of the current retail market.

Are designers expected to offer the same slashed prices and cheap deals? By churning out mass-produced bargain basement material will we ultimately be selling-out? Could this move risk the highly-crafted and intelligent artisanship of considered design to nothing more than glorified production? Or will it instead encourage an alternative thinking citizen, a devoted originator of ideas?

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Contextual Publication
Screenprinted A1 Posters
Limited Edition of 25 Prints
$60 each or $200 full set (4)
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For purchase enquiries,
please contact Kylie Phillips
kylie@thoughtmatter.co.nz
021 544 878

     

Click here to download:

Sell-Out.zip (212 KB)

Graphic designers react to the world around them. A time of crisis is no exception. Whether it’s a passing shower or more of a storm settling in, crisis is undeniably catalytic.

What do designers do in crisis...?
We ask questions and look for answers.

These days the answers are increasingly open source, user generated and ‘the world out there’ focused. We interact and engage with the people we seek to communicate with. This work centres around the question “how does design change in a time of crisis” and the answers provided by the viewer help craft and shape the work into being. Who says crisis is a bad thing? Like a storm which is created to right an imbalance, it is a vital part of change. Viewers to the work are encouraged to use the time and space to reflect, consider, engage and interact.

NeonPlayground is:
Luke Malcolm, Ralph Matthews & Joanna Alpe

follow us: 
@lukemalcolm  @joannaalpe

contact us: 
email@lukemalcolm.com 
hello@ralphdesign.co.nz
joanna@weloveinc.com

Coding by Luke Malcolm
Visuals by Joanna Alpe & Ralph Matthews
Sound by Steven Kinsler
steven.kinsler@gmail.com

                     

Click here to download:

Storm_Of_Inquiry.zip (1249 KB)

Newspapers traditionally serve as a snapshot of events,
the semiotics of our times. This work takes an exploded view
approach of a newspaper, randomly selected from April
2009. This vision is then compounded to create an entirely
new vision of a newspaper.

This piece challenges the visual guidelines inherent to
a paper through the overlapping of information and graphic
elements. When the given information is reshuffled and recollated
using a new criteria, order is transformed into chaos
and likewise, some of the ordinarily chaotic elements of a
newspaper gain a new sense of order.

The purpose of the piece is to discuss the way information
is delivered daily to us through the printed word. It questions
whether all the essential facts are being given to us and
most importantly, is proper attention given to the facts that
matter the most.

A1 publication screen-printed onto newsprint

If you would like to buy one please contact
livia@weloveinc.com

               

Click here to download:

None_Of_Our_Business.zip (357 KB)

'DESIGN BY NUMBERS' synopsis

by Ralph Matthews

Historically, there has been a consistent correlation between economic crises and innovative design. The old order will simply not do in a climate where price is the overriding factor for buyers and companies are forced to come up with new and cheaper methods of making and marketing their products. The challenge of responding to this demand has often precipitated a major change in technologies and culture.

One such response to the current crisis is the prediction that the designers of the future will devise “design machines”. These machines will be an advanced form of interactive software, employing artificial intelligence in a manner that goes way beyond the scope of current software packages such as Adobe or Quark. While the latter might be regarded as essential “tools” for a designer, the “design machine” would offer an active and more comprehensive involvement in every aspect of the design process; a comparison of roles that echoes the step-up from tools to machines and artisans to engineers that took place during the Industrial Revolution.

       

Click here to download:

Design_By_Numbers.zip (1164 KB)

<p>Design in Crisis from We Love Inc on Vimeo.</p>

Cheers to the Wine Vault, Fiasco Wines of Nelson, Supplement Water and McCoy juices and the illustrious Yvonne McLaren at Valentine Addis for pulling it all together.
Big thanks to Andrew, Sara and Gregory at Kruziener Properties for the brilliant venue for the show.

                 

Click here to download:

The_Opening.zip (839 KB)

Opening on Friday, Design In Crisis is an exhibition intended to engage the design community in a discussion around what happens to design in a time of crisis.

If you are in Auckland on September 18th, get down to Achilles House on 8 Commerce Street at 6pm for the opening. The show will continue until September 23rd. Plans are to travel the show, so Wellington, Melbourne and London, watch this space.