Gypsy Eco Caravan at LDF

The OXO Tower grounds was home (temporarily) to the nomadic "transcendental gypsy caravan of creativity" last week. I passed by on my way to the Designersblock exhibition and happened upon a sweet guitar mini-concert by a talented local musician. In front of his porch/stage was a live workshop. Kids and adults were surrounded with colourful fabric and glue, and I couldn't really see what they were making but I could see that they were happy.

Being serenaded by a talented acoustic guitarist while working on a crafty project sitting by the Thames: another sweet outcome of the London Design Festival 2010.

Find out more about its creators, Eco Factory here: http://www.eco-factory.co.uk/index.html

Puff&Flock Shop

The sign went up, the plinths went out, the wonderful products got put on display, and the shop opened. And four days later, it all came down! That's LDF for you: short but sweet. It was months in the making and over in a heartbeat.

For those of you who couldn't make it, our shop was designed along the theme of "parlour meets warehouse, future meets past". The Bargehouse's peeling walls and exposed brick made the perfect setting for the atmosphere.

And some of the products we were proud to carry:

Teacups by Kedo and Tea Set by Rondo

T-Shirt by Grit Hartung and Jewellery by April 23

Unique Sound Poster by Grit Hartung and Mushroom Hooks by Masako Sato

Crochet Eyeballs by Monstify

See the full collection at http://www.puffandflock.com/, and contact us for sales enquiries at info@puffandflock.com!

Size+Matter: Paul Cocksedge Studio for LDF

Paul Cocksedge Studio has designed this year's Size+Matter installation for the London Design Festival. Size+Matter is a platform for showcasing materially fascinating work by London's talented designers in a public setting. It brings public awareness to the festival and to London's design culture in general.

Below is a special look inside the coin, at the shape of the magnetic field. Being a magnetic materials designer myself, I was happy to have a field viewing wand on hand!

Paul Cocksedge Studio is formed of designers Joana Pinho and Paul Cocksedge. They are based in London, but take on installation projects all around the world. The result of this commission from LDF, an enormous golden magnet, testifies to their talent at using uncanny physical effects to attract attention.In other past projects, you see a variety of fascinating materials from the scientific world being brought into a design context.

The Size+Matter coin uses the wonder of magnetism to engage people. Passerby stop, attach coins to the piece, play around with the coins that are already there, and generally look delighted. Kids love playing with the coins, but so do adults. You can hear whispers of "how did he make the coins magnetic?"

The magnetic coin, hovering on its end just at the bottom of the Jubilee bridge, attracts pennies from the generous (and curious) hands of passerby. By now, hundreds of pennies have been stuck to the brushed gold surface. Barnardo's, a children's charity organisation, is going to match every penny collected with a full pound through the help of its corporate partners.

Stuart Bannocks' Protosynthesis Workshop

Design your way out of banality at Stuart Bannocks' Protosynthesis Workshop.

There's a cat that lives on my street. She can go outside whenever she likes. Sometimes I see her playing in the empty alleyway. They alleyway is not just empty, it is completely and absolutely barren. Aside from cobblestone, it contains zero mice, zero cars, zero plants, and zero other cats. Yet somehow, my neighbor's cat is most often playing around like crazy.
One time, I walked by and saw her stalking something, but I couldn't see what it was - it looked like there was nothing there. Suddenly, she lunged at the ground and then leapt in the air, clawing at a clear plastic drink straw wrapper which she had just thrown up in the sky.
She had just invented a bird.

Stuart Bannocks and his collaborators have created a low-tech rapid prototyping workshop for curator Daniel Charny's Mestakes and Manifestos gallery at the Anti Design Festival. It invokes something of the inventive spirit of my neighbor's cat.

Visitors are presented with a blank cardboard box and a pile of black vinyl stickers. From these basic supplies, they can prototype any product they want. Sounds wonderfully open.

But it is a challenge to invent something from nothing. We live in a material-rich world. Cardboard is great, but we are not used to being stuck with it. We go to art shops that are full of variety, colour, texture, function, weight. Stripped of our material comforts, we are challenged to get a spark of inspiration anyway.

Don't expect to get any easy ideas from the stickers either. Stuart calls the stickers "components", although they're mostly random and unrelated. They are things like triangles, warnings, gears, brains, DNA strands - the narrative thread is really nonexistant. You have to design your own way out of banality, calling on whatever mental tools you can find, from cleverness to hybridizing to rudeness.

Pictures of the finished products appear online on Stuart's flickr photostream, and you can see a huge mix of results. (A selection copied below) Some managed to make a point, many struggled. I haven't attempted it myself - it seems daunting. If I go, I'm taking the cat with me for support.

Live from the Digital Hub at the V&A, Puff & Flock take on a sewing workshop.

While at the V&A, checking out the Digital Hub, Framed by Stuart Haygarth and Max Lamb's piece in the Cast Courts, I decided to test my sewing skills by taking part in 'Trafalgar in Flight' sewing workshop.

The idea is to reinstate banned pigeons to Trafalgar Square by making a whole new flock. Ok they are stuffed and can't fly unless thrown but they are still pigeons!


Once all the pigeons are sewn they will be taken to Trafalgar Square, photographed and set free to make their way back to their makers, as long as you gave them your address that is.


Put together by Selvedge magazine and designed by printers Thornback & Peel, the workshop took place over the first two days of the London Design Festival and is the start to a week long program at the V&A. Free and drop in, there are workshops in stitching, fabric making and metal work everyday until Friday 24th. Be sure to stop by.

The Big Stitch: 10am - 4pm, Monday 21st

Whizz Bang!: 10am - 4pm, Tuesuday 22nd

Be Bold Be Gold: 10am-4pm, Wednesday 23rd

Experiment!: 10am-4pm, Thursday 24th -Friday 25th

Invasion of Trafalgar Square by German Robots

The Outrace installation in Trafalgar Square is very clever. It has to be! A collaboration between Audi with their 'Vorsprung durch Technik' mantra and two very serious and clever looking designers, Clemens Weisshaar and Redd Karm, Outrace could be nothing but. So what is it?


In its basic form Outrace is a circle of eight car making robots borrowed from Audi and each fitted with a powerful LED light at its head.

Commissioned by the London Design Festival, it's purpose is to enable the general public to write large scale messages which are then 'drawn' in light by the robots. A message is processed every sixty seconds and the technology used allows the handling of 10,000 messages per week.


The sight is magical. The 'arms' move with such smoothness and grace that it is hard to perceive they are industrial machines normally programmed to make industrial product. Taken from their home and placed in such an alien environment, I imagine if they had emotions the robots would feel a little out of place and uncomfortable with all the attention. But they don't look or seem out of place. In a historic open space in the centre of a bustling metropolis with invisible technology surrounding us, they are a reminder of the industrial, technological and design processes that allow us to live our daily lives.


The arms move too slowly to see the letters with the naked eye, but they can be picked up by slow motion cameras. To get your message written and lots more information go to www.outrace.org. Then type in your message and wait to see if the robots will write it for you. If they do the drawing will be filmed and an e-mail sent to you so you can show friends.

I have done it, so let us hope it pasts the test. Watch this space!

Art Attack in Arch 4

Hello from the Puff&Flock hub - Arch 4 in London Fields. We don't want to reveal TOO much, but as we head into the final weekend of prep-time, here is a little slice of the madness we plan to unveil next week at the LDF.

Our studio is packed with strange creations:
The ideas are coming to life, one by one, growing bigger and bigger. There is barely room for us to walk to our workspace in the back. Dr. Frankenstein must have felt something similar when his monster came to life!

Ingrid Hu building the skeleton of one of the seven monstrous costumes for Elisabeth's Siamese Accessories. Come see the finished product at the V&A's Friday Late.

Suzanne Antonelli's beautifully rendered parlour sign. She didn't back down in her quest to find the perfect tone of pink, as you can see.

Above is one of our hard-working interns, Rosanna Kennedy, who spent two days making cargo crates look dainty for the Puff&Flock Parlour.

Rosanna, again, here demonstrating her sewing skills.

We couldn't have dreamed of a better, more multi-talented exhibition prep team. And we certainly wouldn't be able to construct Frankensteinian creations without all the help!

100% Design: Crinson's Countdown

Hello from Puff&Flock! We'll be covering the London Design Festival this year for mydeco.com, giving you an insider's perspective of one of the world's biggest creative events. As exhibitors, we see all sides of the LDF - the planning that starts in March, the brainstorming that starts in April, the sketching that starts in May, the call for help that starts in June, the panic that starts in July, the hard work that starts in August, and finally the action that starts in September. With less than a week to go before opening, it's time to finish it all up! As the preparation gives way to presentation, we'll write about what goes on behind the scenes.

To start it off, we present the working profile of a designer who is showing at 100% Design and whose digitally printed tiles and wallpaper are an inspiration to us textile designers: Dominic Crinson. What is he up to in the final few days before 100% Design opens?

He is, in short, extremely busy. This is the first time in five years that Dominic has exhibited during London Design Festival. After six consecutive exhibitions at 100% Design from 1999 - 2005, he decided to take a hiatus from what felt like a repetitive venture. A lot has changed in the meantime, out in the design world as well as in his studio, and he will be presenting a fresh collection of surface designs this year.

The stock is so new, in fact, that it's still in transit! After telling me this, Dominic makes a mental note to call the delivery service.

Dominic is based in the same studio unit that we use in East London. Last week, we saw him standing outside on a piece of cardboard during lunchtime. He disappeared back in the studio and returned soon after with a stack of tiles, then started laying them out on the cardboard. What was he up to? As usual, these days, when we see a designer performing an inexplicably random activity, there is only one explanation - LDF.

He was getting ready for Earls Court, which apparently has an uneven concrete floor. He'll be laying some of his brand new tiles on the floor of his stand, and was testing different ways to create an even base to lay them on.

Delayed shipments and impossible installation spaces - these are the things that occupy our days in the countdown to London Design Festival. But from September 23rd to September 26th 2010, it will all be a distant memory for Dominic, as he debuts a delicious range of digitally printed surfaces. Visit him to see the result of all his hard work:

Dominic Crinson
100% Design
Earl's Court
stand D38

Don't miss your chance to register for entry! Register here: http://www.100percentdesign.co.uk/page.cfm/Link=324/t=m/goSection=96

Puff and Flock at London Design Festival

We are pleased to announce that future textile collective Puff & Flock will be exhibiting at Designersblock for this years London Design Festival. Puff & Flock are also part of the Mix magazine seminar program at 100% Design, both taking place at Earls Court, 24th - 27th September.



Don't forget to register for both for tickets and visit it us for inflatable wonders, magnetic magic and glowing fabrics set amongst the Puff & Flock hub of textile dreams and inspiration.

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