The current pandemic has shown our ability to pull together and innovate as a design community. Cities worldwide are revealing truly innovative, resilient, and progressive ideas. As the virus keeps on postponing possible exhibitions and design fairs, some creative minds decided not to put down their plans. Having temporarily shuttered its tangible spaces, the design world is adapting fast. For now, at least, our screens step in as gallery, studio, and canvas. These are the digital initiatives satiating our design appetite with the real – yet unreal – deal.
by B Zippy. Render- Charlotte Taylor and Victor Roussel
by Christopher Norman. Render- Charlotte Taylor and Victor Roussel
Designs by Supaform
60 designers and brands – explore new products, head into 3D rendered booths, and escape in interior still-lives, allowing New York City’s annual design festival, NYCxDesign to take place. Offsite Online debuts with its own dedicated page on the Sight Unseen website, where all the collections of participating designers can be viewed. The designer presentations take shape as a slideshow of images, accompanied by a written description about the collection and an audio clip from the designer talking through what inspired the concept and the thought processes behind their work.
studio TRNK launches REND. Images from Yellowtrace.com.au
Forced to rethink presentation, studio TRNK launches REND, a virtual exhibition with four designers whose work shares a common material language: metal and stone. In collaboration with Berlin-based artist Hannes Lippert of Form & Rausch, REND opens the exhibition in a virtual fictitious and surrealist environment. With different styles, each designer chose a common topic: tension and contrast in materiality. Exploration can be appreciated making classical architecture look dreamy.
Left to right
work by Nicholas Daley, Kenneth Nicholson, Phillips
In celebration of the launch – an innovative response to today’s social distancing measures – we caught up with four flourishing brands from fashion cities around the world, to see how their approach to design has developed during an unparalleled global crisis. London Fashion Week’s first digital-only platform, a gender-neutral online space, merging men’s and womenswear. Some of the topics highlighted were: community, culture, and crafts by Nicolas Daley; through a vintage collection Phillips followed the ideas of protection and conservations of forests. Hybrids by Kenneth Nicolson, L.A designer: inclusivity diversity and gender fluidity.
Wallpaper Illustration by Rosanna Bruce
Virtual experiences replacing real ones during lockdown have proved excellence in the creation, and designers’ ability to dig into art and its innumerable branches, from illustration to music, drawing, sculpture cooking, forestry, and more. Sharing one-of-a-kind moments, designers could still interact with the people around them, looking for alternative ways to reach them.
Insights by TIPA Insights
