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London's annual design festival featured over 300 product launches and showcased themes of simplicity and customization in design. Notable highlights included a simplistic mobile phone by Punkt, a furniture-like television by the Bouroullec brothers, and customizable furniture brands like Hem and Tylko. The festival also celebrated unique materials like Jesmonite and showcased innovative designs from Chinese creators.

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8 views

reading sample-1

London's annual design festival featured over 300 product launches and showcased themes of simplicity and customization in design. Notable highlights included a simplistic mobile phone by Punkt, a furniture-like television by the Bouroullec brothers, and customizable furniture brands like Hem and Tylko. The festival also celebrated unique materials like Jesmonite and showcased innovative designs from Chinese creators.

Uploaded by

parisa.khaleghi89
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Simplicity reigns at London's biggest design festival.

(A) With upwards of 300 product launches, installations and exhibitions, London's annual
nine-day design festival is a showcase of head-spinning choice. In many ways that's the
beauty of the extravaganza, everyone has a different experience and takes something
unique away from it. There were however some intriguing themes and trends in this
year's edition that spoke to larger social or cultural preoccupations.

(B) One was the launch of two consumer electronics products designed to simplify and
beautify our technology-addled lives. Both chose the new London Design Festival venue
of Somerset House to show their wares. The first was a mobile phone launched by Swiss
company Punkt and designed by Jasper Morrison that allows users to make calls and
texts only (well, it has an alarm clock and an address book too). Punkt founder Petter
Neby doesn't believe it will replace your smart phone but suggests users fit it with the
same SIM card as your main phone and use it in the evenings, weekends and on holiday.

(C) The other electronics launch came from the unlikely French sibling duo of the
Bouroullec brothers. Though tech companies like Samsung are usually prescriptive
about their products the Bouroullecs (who admitted they found most TVs sad and ugly)
seem to have been given free rein. Their new television for the mega Korean brand looks
more like an item of furniture than an ultra-large and ultra-slim piece of tech. More
importantly, it comes with simplified on-screen interaction and a 'curtain mode' that turns
your screen into a shimmering pattern during ads or half-time. Again, their focus was on
dialing down digital insanity.

(D) Customizable online furniture was also very much in vogue at this year's festival. But
rest assured, weird and unreliable software or off-the-wall designs sent to a 3D printer
somewhere and arriving months later, seem to be a thing of the past. Customization may
finally have come of age. Two examples were Scandi-brand Hem that combinded good
design by the likes of Luca Nichetto, Form Us With Love and Sylvain Willenz with
affordable price points. The fact that the brand opened a pop-up store in Covent Garden
during the festival is a recognition of the importance of both physical and online spaces
that work seamlessly together.

(E) Another online configurable brand to make its debut after years in development was
Warsaw-based Tylko. Like Hem, Tylko has spent time and money on very powerful and
easy-to-use software, but with only three designs - a table, a shelf and salt and pepper
mills - it has a way to go. Its augmented reality app is simple to use however and its table
has been developed with a nano-coating option that really does appear to keep pesky
stains at bay. Craft and 'making' in all its forms was once again a big hit and nowhere
more so than at TENT, the East London design event that gets better every year.

(F) A definite highlight was the massive space taken over by the Design & Crafts Council
of Ireland and filled with weavers and potters doing their thing and showing their wares.
Irish Design had another delectable stand over at the Rochelle School in East London
too. The Souvenir Project was a series of nine non-cliché 'souvenirs' made in Ireland and
included a rainbow plate by Nicholas Mosse Pottery that featured rows of animals,
flowers and watering cans and commemorated the legalization of same-sex marriage in
Ireland in May 2015.

(G) If there was one material that could be said to define the festival it might just be
Jesmonite, the wonder man-made building composite. Lighter and more sustainable than
concrete, its dramatic capabilities were brought to life by London-based design studio
PINCH and their tour-de-force limited edition Nim table and Swedish artist Hilda
Hellström's giant colorful volcano made for the restaurant in London's Ace Hotel. A show
called Matter of Stuff near Covent Garden was in on the jesmonite act too, but even more
intriguingly was presenting vases made out of Propolis, a resinous material collected by
bees and used to seal gaps in hives that, according to their designer Marlene Huissoud,
behaves like glass.

(H) Finally, this was the year that Chinese Design finally displayed a well-edited and
inspired showcase of products. Despite the mouthful of a title, Icon Presents: Hi Design
Shanghai stand at 100% Design was a meaningful selection of designers exploring
materials and ideas. Young design duo Yuue's offerings were the most representative of
a new conceptual approach to design that seems to be emerging. Their lamps were
functional but also thought-provoking and humorous. What more could one want from
the stuff that surrounds us?

Ques%ons 1-8

The text has eight paragraphs A-H. Which paragraph contains the following informa%on? Write the
correct le?er, A-H, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

1. Examples of customiza3on

2. Unusual keepsakes

3. A new approach

4. A simple cell phone

5. Unbelievable material

6. A strange TV

7. Number of products shown on the fes3val

8. Three designs of a soIware

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