Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Design”
Courier talks Afropop and hunting for discarded furniture with the artist-designer. Yinka Ilori spends a lot of his spare time wandering around London, looking for abandoned chairs. Two or three finds provide the raw materials for one new creation, which is painted in vivid colours and re-upholstered. The fabrics, sourced from London or Lagos, are inspired by the bold patterns …
The relationship between business co-founders can be the most emotionally demanding in a person’s life. It can also be the factor which determines the success or failure of a company: the double act. In 2009, the Blackberry was so popular it was being referred to as the Crackberry. It accounted for half of all smartphones being sold. It was even credited …
Reams of vinyl, super-hot hairdryers and £42,000 for three months: the business of splashing advertising over a single Routemaster. Some time around 2014, jet black buses started turning heads when they began trundling around the capital. It wasn’t a radical overhaul of London’s famous red buses; it was a regular number 38 bus, dressed up with an Adidas ad campaign …
A long way from the glitzy developments underway in central Aarhus, Denmark, is the sight a of Tetris-esque collection of stacked containers in an abandoned freight station. It’s become a magnet for creatives but the area is under threat. Located on the edge of the city centre of Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, is an area that many could be forgiven …
We speak to a seventh-generation milliner about the company’s experiences. Working with your nearest and dearest might sound a hellish prospect to some, but family firms have been the lifeblood of the UK economy for centuries. The UK currently has 4.6 million registered family businesses, generating £1.3tn in turnover a year. Some of the world’s biggest firms are still family run, …
How did a bass player in a funk band become the poster boy for British furniture designers? Tom Dixon’s £600 Melt pendant lights were the best-selling branded items at John Lewis in the run-up to Christmas last year. Middle England followed boutique hotels and upmarket restaurants in falling for Dixon’s products, which have become a shortcut for people looking for …
The British furniture industry lags behind Europeans despite a wealth of design talent. Why? It’s perhaps an interesting time to reflect on the fact that Europeans simply do some things better than Britain and in a way that we would do well to learn from. This includes the making and selling of furniture. It’s a sore point for individuals in the …
More than half of 16-34 year-olds use a mobile phone as their main way to tell the time, according to a YouGov poll. With this generation expected to outspend baby boomers by 2017, attracting the business of the sector is viewed as the watch industry’s biggest challenge. And that’s even before considering the impact of wearable tech. The Apple Watch was …
A fresh crop of British brands are trying to break into the notoriously old-fashioned world of watchmaking. How will they tackle criticisms of heritage mining and new protectionist measures from the Swiss watch industry – not to mention the impact of an updated offering from Apple? The world’s watch industry gathered recently in Switzerland for Baselworld, where hot topics included …
