Happy Monday, I hope your weekend was mostly relaxing, maybe some good wine or food. I’m not sure I’m ready for the week yet, though some good music can help you ease into most situations. I can’t quite remember how I came across Nico Georis and his album Cloud Suites, I believe it was one of those rabbit hole discoveries.
Nico Georis is an LA-based “keyboard player, experimental composer & songwriter” who composed Cloud Suites in real-time to render specific clouds as music, each named after a particular formation. It’s an album filled with soft, melodic songs which augment your mood or surroundings. I’ve been writing to this album for the last couple weeks and I’ve found it to be so additive to whatever I’m doing, enhancing my mood and sharpening my focus. Hopefully you find Nico’s music equally as enjoyable.
I’m off to Bilbao today to visit the Guggenheim. Very excited to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibit they have up currently. I’ll share photos and thoughts tomorrow!
Yesterday, we took a trip over to the San Sebastián Aquarium, hoping to see some cute marine life. Located on the edge of the Donostiako portua, the aquarium tells the history of the town’s port, the evolution of boats and fishing practice, and has a beautiful area showcasing the sea life that lives in the waters nearby. Of course, I had to take photos of the little critters (I’m channeling my 2009 Flickr energy here) and wanted to share.
Finding seating that can be playful and comfortable can be a challenge. The Filicudi Armcair manages to accomplish both those things. Designed by Marcantonio Malerba, the chair’s prickly pear cactus-esque shape is meant to “evoke a magical place of holiday and wild nature,” which I think it does perfectly. I feel like one could easily sink into this chair, maybe even take a little nap with big hat on in the sun.
A key part of a home (in my opinion) is how much greenery or nature you can bring into it, and conversely, surround it with. Perhaps Giles Miller Studio feels the same way? Their first completed residential property, Woven, is located 100m from the cliffs and sandy beaches of Broadstairs, Kent, and features a unique sculptural facade that breaks down barriers between the building’s internal spaces and the surrounding natural planting and trees, inviting nature to grow up the outside of the house while also being visible from within it.
“The buildings we inhabit have a direct impact on our state of mind. Through their design they are curators of light and sound, and they can expose us to nature and enrich our interactions with dramatically positive effect. We believe that this aspiration, in synchrony with our latest surface and sculptural experimentation in the studio, has spawned a wholly unique architectural typology.”
It’s always romantic to see buildings with creeping ivys or vines, nature slowly enveloping a stucture. Though here they’ve been so smart about it, creating an exoskeleton of sorts that encourages jasmine, clematis, and other plants to grow through the latticework, where no harm will come to the building.
A lot of art, inherently, is about memories. Things seen and remembered, and then recorded through a medium, be it words, clay, or paint. In the work of Japanese painter agoera, it feels like you’re quite truly viewing a memory from his life, like a snapshot from a movie. Born in Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka-ken, Japan, and currently residing in Kanagawa, he graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo with a degree in, surprising to me, graphic design. On the other hand, his sense of composition is spot-on, so perhaps it helped to set a foundational understanding. I find his work to be so lovely, little snippets of life captured in the dreamiest ways.
Knowing we’d be in San Sebastián for a fair amount of time, I had to figure out where I could score some natural wine. Thankfully I found PIRIPI, a quaint wine shop opened only two months ago by a husband and wife team, focusing on Spanish natural wines, beers, and ciders. And while browsing their great selection I found BIZIO, a group of Basque cider makers.
They use natural brewing methods (“ancestral petillant-naturel“) which means they intervene as little possible in the bottling and production process. They are made with 100% fruit, without additions –no sulphites, yeasts, or sugars– unfiltered and from spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts.
I’m also a big fan of their label designs. It’s very much in the vein of edgy, slightly punk style that is consistent with a lot of natural wine and cider makers. The feeling with many producers is that what they do is an act of rebellion from large-scale, mass produced wine houses. So the labels themselves should communicate that this is something, quite literally, counter cultural. It’s all beautifully done by Amaia Moran and Brou Gràfic.
This week ended up flying by! No idea what happened or who I am, haha… No, honestly, it was a chill week filled with a lot of planning and prepping. I’m headed out to San Sebastián on Sunday, spending a month up there with the fam to escape from Barcelona’s intense humidity. We’re driving up, it’s going to be super fun to road trip through Spain and experience what the other parts look and feel like.
I’ve also been working on a mixtape that I think I’ll release next week. I wanted to make the ultimate 2023 summer mixtape, and I think I accomplished that. It’s a lot of the big pop songs from all the girlies, with some very me, very danceable tracks mixed in. There’s more projects like this in the works, stay tuned.
Things To Read
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Nap I’ve always been a fan of napping, and during the pandemic it was very routine for me to take a 20 minute nap during the day. I mean, I still nap almost every day. I even encourage my team at work to take naps. We need a break in the day to stop and let our brains rest.
The A-Z Guide to Maison Margiela SSENSE took a deep dive on the world of Maison Margiela, tracing the history, symbolic meaning, and general universe of the storied brand. I learned a ton reading through, like how Margiela invented the Double Strap watch band for Hermés, which you’ve probably seen most famously on the Hermès Apple Watch.
Wonderstruck: Paul Reubens (1952-2023) Marya E. Gates wrote a thoughtful look at Paul Ruebens career, and the impact his character Pee-wee Herman had on so many of us. To this day, it’s a tradition in our household to watch Christmas at Pee Wee’s Playhouse, perhaps the most queerest, most joyful Christmas special that’s ever been made. He will be dearly missed.
Nothing Doing: kogonada on the space between I was recently made aware of a Letterboxd interview with film director kogonada that took place around the time of the release of his last film, After Yang, which I loved. Author Isaac Feldberg does a wonderful job of going deep with kogonada, I highly recommend reading this one with your Sunday morning coffee.
Things To Hear
The Loveliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen The new album from Carly Rae, The Loneliest Time, showcases her versatility and explores some different musical styles. It features a mix of pop maximalism, some smooth jams, and an array of campy, ’80s influences. This one is definitely going to be on repeat this summer.
TV Slang by Huerta For a more laidback, headphone listen, try Huerta’s newest record TV Slang. Released on his new label R&R, he describes the album saying that it “explores rhythmic moods and ambient soundscapes: combining traces of deep house, downtempo, and a suggestion of breakbeat flavors.”
DJ Anz on NTS British DJ and producer Anz is never one to miss, and her most recent mix for NTS has been one of my go-to’s lately. It features a nice mix of drum and bass and breakbeat, it gives me such great energy.
I’m not much of a sports boy, though I did find this story interesting about the rise of baseball in the small Buddhist country of Bhutan. Written by Michael Clair for MLB Life, he writes about the sport is “growing from a few dozen kids playing on a concrete slab after school to more than 6,000 children who are fast becoming baseball fanatics despite few having ever seen a Major League game.”
We also have to talk about the incredible photos that Matthew Desantis took for the story, including the one below, which absolutely blew my mind. The composition of this simply couldn’t be better.
It’s almost comical how mainstream brand redesigns are at this point. Being in any creative field, you’ve experienced random folks having an opinion on your work. The nosy executive, the random PA, or in this case, the amateur home chef. The New York Times, or more specifically, journalist and cookbook author Marnie Hanel, has decided to wade into the murky waters of branding, asking, What Happened to Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt?
To summarize the piece, Diamond Crystal hired Enlisted Design to work on a fresh look for the brand, as well as create smaller boxes for home chefs (it was previously only sold in very large, 3 lb. boxes). And ultimately, the piece tries to say that things shouldn’t change. That because Diamond Crystal is in some TV shows like The Bear, Ina Garten swears by it, and that it was used in the (toxic and abusive) Bon Appétit test kitchen years ago, it is somehow sacrilegious for the outdate design of the box to change.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one. Over the years, I’ve learned that everyone is entitled to their opinions, they don’t affect me or hurt my feelings. It does bother me though when there’s a lack of understanding on how branding, marketing, and capitalism connect in our modern world. It clearly states that Diamond Crystal “aims to increase the annual revenue … from $3 million to $50 million.” It cannot grow 16x with that ugly, old, 3 lb. box that was hard to find in most grocery stores. This is primarily, a business decision, a growth strategy, that happens to include a redesign.
Speaking to the design itself, it’s nice! In the article’s byline, it’s described as “minimalist branding.” Sure, it’s simple, but minimal it is not, with bold, typography that bring an interesting bit of personality. The color palette is almost a direct opposite of Morton Iodized Salt, probably the best known brand of salt in the U.S., and distinctly different from the green and white color palette of the other major flakey salt brand, Maldon. Is the design following some rather well-worn trends? Sure, though I’ll assume that most consumers of salt wouldn’t be aware of that, only us design nerds. Some of the comments in the article stated, essentially, that the new design will “blend in with all the other salts on the shelf.” From my point of view, that is not the case here.
I give props to Enlisted Design for their great work, andI totally feel for them right now. The amount of weird spam they’re going to get from this clickbait-ridden article is going to suck. Context and insight is important.
Award-winning Studio Bruch is an Austrian studio specializing in creating visual design concepts and strategies for branding, editorial design, packaging, and signage, both in analog and digital formats. They recently completed a branding project for a carpentry company called Hea.
Bruch created custom-made lettering and type design that aims to combine contrasting elements such as angled and round, hard and soft, to showcase the creative possibilities of working with wood. The typefaces are based on the simplified form of a wooden board, creating a cohesive and intelligent approach to the brand. This design also aligns with the company’s claim that “Everything is built on wood.” Further, the brand is enhanced by warm and atmospheric imagery that really gives it a modern and timeless feeling.
For me, I’m so impressed with how effective the type is with such a simple concept. The way the joints of the letters connect really gives that feeling of wooden boards coming together, and they even remind me of the curves of the iconic Thonet 214 chair. The color palette is also really doing it for me, love the muted greens and golden amber tones paired together. One of my favorite branding projects of the year, for sure.
Maisie Cousins is a London-based photographer known for her intimate and hyper-saturated images that push the boundaries of seduction and repulsion. With a similar visual approach to iconic photographer Marilyn Minter, Cousins is interested in seeing the natural world for what it is, both beautiful and disgusting. I love how unsettling her work is. Everything is so sharp and saturated, you get to see every detail, for better or worse. It’s all so visceral an reaction provoking. If you’re interested in learning more, I highly suggest reading her interview with Materia, where she gives a lot of insight into the whys of her work.
