DESIGNTIMES south africa’s creative resource
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/03 DESIGN
JADE KLARA
Jade Klara was born in Cape Town and completed a BA in Literary Studies at UCT. She completed a BA at Vega where she fell in love with illustration.
/06 LOERIES
OCTOBER 2011 Issue No.38 ZAR 15 EUR €2, UK £2, US $3
LOERIES
The Loeries Festival weekend began early and when I say early I mean Friday at six pm. Which means everyone was late except for the Mayor.
in cahoots with 9 77199 9 24 8001
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/12 DESIGN
Mat Nielson
We speak to Mat Nielson about his life and design philosophy, aims and objectives with Matblac as a brand all the way through to his adoration for avocado pear trees.
Loerie Award Winner
Samsung recommends Windows® 7.
Introducing the new Samsung Series 9 Notebook. Cast from aviation alloy and powered by a 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processor, it’s the latest innovation in fast computing performance. At only 16mm, its ultra thin, lightweight streamlined arc design make it more than just a notebook. It’s a true reflection of strength and sophistication. What defines you? TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Intel® Core™ i5 Processor 2537M (1.4GHz, 3MB) • Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64bit) Operating System • 4GB (DDR3) System Memory 13.3” SuperBrightPlus© Anti-Reflective HD LED Display • 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD) • Up to 7 Hours Battery Life** • Weighs only 1.31kg
www.samsung.com/notebook Copyright© 2011 SAMSUNG Electronics Co, Ltd. Screen images are simulated. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Core and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. ** Battery life based on Battery Mark test scores that will vary based on configuration. SAM_SERIES9_7374_DT_F
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NEWS
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Wax on, wax Hoff! The Loerie event fairly erupted into all out insanity as the Hoff waxed lyrical, broke into song and had the crowd hooked on a feeling... I’m not sure exactly what that feeling was, but it certainly moved me to want to put the Hoff on our cover. Two greatly deserved Gold’s went to FoxP2 for their “love to meet you” Drive Alive campaign, although we make no mention of the great team who brought the concept to life they know who they are! The other Gold we felt was well deserved went to Jade Klara for her inspired illustrations, you can see a smattering of her work just a few pages on. Of course there were many other winners, all are listed on the Loeries website www.loeries.co.za. We found inspiration in food recently as we attended the Toffee Food Festival, and we’re not the only ones. Kristy Snell just loves food, she loves styling it and shooting it... almost as much as we love eating it! Enjoy! Mark Rosenberg
Editorial
Mark Rosenberg mark@designtimes.co.za Roxy Rosenberg roxy@designtimes.co.za Ryan Ali ryan@designtimes.co.za Steven Rosenberg steve@designtimes.co.za Zachariah King zac@designtimes.co.za Kerrythe Mahaffey kerrythe@designtimes.co.za
Nikon D700 wins award
Sodastream SodaStream recently teamed up with world renowned visual artist Mat Maitland to launch its latest range of innovative home carbonation systems. Based in the United Kingdom, Maitland developed three colourful graphics to celebrate the new Fizz range of drinks makers which incorporate a digital screen displaying the amount of CO2 remaining in the carbonator as well as the drink’s carbonation level achieved a first for SodaStream. The graphics are part of a global launch package and will be used in TV, print, digital and 3D video campaigns. The images incorporate striking blue, red and green, which are the feature colours of the SodaStream Fizz range. Typically Maitland, the graphics use elements of pop culture to create a kaleidoscope of visual noise. One such element is the brightly coloured mouth that is used as a repetitive theme throughout the artwork designed for SodaStream. The illustrations carry the tag lines incredibubble, delectabubble and desirabubble which are used to describe the fizz element of the machines. Maitland, also known for award-winning music design and art direction while at the London agency Big Active, has worked with, amongst others, Basement Jaxx, Goldfrapp, Snow Patrol and Michael Jackson. He has since developed into a leading illustrator with a unique design aesthetic, as his work uses a montage of art, photography, music and fashion, merging the boundaries between these art forms. www.sodastream.co.za
Less than a year after its launch, Nikon’s inspiring DX-format SLR, the D7000, has won the category of ‘European Advanced SLR Camera of the Year 2011-2012’, at the EISA (European Imaging and Sound Association) awards. This follows up on the success of the same camera at the TIPA (Technical Image Press Association) awards, where it won ‘Best D-SLR Advanced’, and the red dot product design awards where it won a ‘red dot seal of approval’. Jordi Brinkman, Product Manager for Nikon Europe, says: “We are really proud to add the EISA award to the accolades already given to the D7000. For our advanced D-SLR users, we always strive to offer cutting-edge technology that will appeal to passionate photographers looking for the next step in creativity.”
The iPad killer?
Early this month Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, a new class of Kindle that brings the integration of content that helped Kindle re-invent reading, to movies, TV shows, music, magazines, apps, books, games, and more. “Kindle Fire brings together all of the things we’ve been working on at Amazon for over 15 years into a single, fully-integrated service.”With Kindle Fire, you have instant access to all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, the convenience of Amazon
Whispersync, our revolutionary cloudaccelerated web browser, the speed of a dual-core processor, a vibrant touch display and a light 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand all for only $199. We’re offering premium products, and we’re doing it at non-premium prices.” says Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon. Apple must be in uproar now. Bezos just out-jobbed Steve Jobs, announcing a truly impressive device for a truly impressive price. The phrase “iPad killer” has been misused, until now.
Contributors
Eva Csernyanszky eva@friendsofdesign.net Quintin Schnehage quintin@conceptinteractive.net
Ten years of coffee
Cover
Simon Berndt simon@1horsetown.co.za
Sales Manager Wendy Scullard
Advertising
Wendy Scullard, Malika Samuels, Thandolwethu Jevu, Linda Schady , Enricho Monsinger, Roxy Rosenberg, Aniesah Hu
Traffic Controller
Kelly Cupido kellycupido@telkomsa.net
Accounts Executives Kelly Cupido kellycupido@telkomsa.net Laurenda Hagglund laurenda@telkomsa.net
Office Administrator
Carmen Puma beyondpublishing@telkomsa.net
Publisher
Beyond Publishing, 25 Voortrekker Road, Goodwood, Tel: 021 592 5721
Printer
Tandym Print www.tandym.co.za
Sunglass Hut Gareth Cliff has been in hot water over a comment he made on his radio show. Advertising agency Canvas were quick to use the opportunity for a tactical ad for Sunglass Hut. They said, “With all the controversy surrounding Gareth Cliff’s blunder about young girls, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to run an ad for Sunglass Hut, SA’s leading sunglass outlet, and suggest Gareth Cliff may need a pair of dark shades to stay incognito for a while!”
September 2011 marks the 10 year anniversary of popular coffee culture chain vida e caffè. vida e caffè is renowned for its cool and quirky coffee cup sleeve designs that grace your takeaway cups every month; from Mini Cooper to Adidas to their very own Joao. To celebrate their 10th year, vida e caffe partnered with design company ‘Between 10 and 5’ to allow their artistic consumers to come up with a creative coffee cup sleeve inspired by this landmark occasion! Comments Sarah Malherbe: “As we wanted the design to be quite different to anything we’ve done before, we thought who better than to come up with cool new design but the most innovative and talented designers in the industry. We take our contribution to social development of our barista’s, and other staff, extremely seriously, not just overseas but locally too, and this initiative allowed us the opportunity to create a great platform for local artists to get recognition for their work and build on their portfolios.” The winner was Francois Conradie and runners up were, Jay Gordon and Clinton Campbell.
ADC president
Fold by Marx Her first solo exhibition at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Maja Marx presents Fold, a selection of new paintings, drawings, objects and monotype prints. Her latest body of work is a study of disrupted surfaces, and comprises of an examination into the properties of text, line, flatness and depth. Notions of the Fold are explored through a process of modification, Marx purposefully disrupts the flatness of inscribed surfaces, by crumpling paper or folding cloth. A small creased or folded piece of paper bearing an inscription that is painted to appear like a real piece of paper that looks as if it has been pasted on the surface of the painting itself, Marx’s paintings exaggerate this subtle illusionism. www.whatiftheworld.com
Benjamin Palmer, co-founder and CEO, The Barbarian Group, New York, has been elected to serve a three-year term as the 58th president of the Art Directors Club, the premier organization for integrated media and the longest-running global creative collective of its kind with membership in design, advertising, interactive and visual communications. Palmer co-founded The Barbarian Group and has served as CEO since 2001. He has quickly risen as one of the most recognized and respected voices in interactive advertising, playing a pivotal role in transforming the digital industry from an experiment into a central component of successful marketing and earning accolades including one of Esquire magazine’s “Best and Brightest”. Under his leadership, The Barbarian Group was named Creativityʼs “Interactive Agency of the Year” in 2006 and “Digital Company of the Year” in 2008, and recently recognized as one of the worlds’ 50 most innovative companies by Fast Company. He joined the ADC board in 2008, and has played an active role in club direction and programming. Palmer succeeds Doug Jaeger, president, JaegerSloan, New York. www.adcawards.org
Steve Jobs 1955-2011
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TOFFEE FOOD FESTIVAL
FoxP2 out on top at the Loeries
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he team at FoxP2 this year delivered a stream of some of the best advertising which we have seen in years. What astounds is also the variety of the campaigns which clearly show the spectrum of their creativity. At the Loeries they walked away with being the top agency of the year. Undoubtedly their stand out campaign for the last year was “love to meet you ” which was completed for Brandhouse’s Drive Dry campaign. The campaign seems to have some mixed feelings about it. Some make the valid point that while the campaign is simply painting a
reality of male rape within overnight prison cells. The opposition to the campaign thinks that instead of using this problem as a deterrent, it should be addressed and more focus should be on elevating that issue. The argument simply is, is it ok for advertising to utilize one crime to discourage another? The campaign achieves its goal where it takes a great fear of young males which are the highest risk drunk drivers and puts it right into their consciousness. The idea of utilizing one crime to negate another in the advertising forum can be questioned but in this case, justified. Previous campaigns which highlighted the result of
drunk driving by displaying car crashes while effective, did not hit such a personal note as this campaign. The net result was a TV & Cinema ad which ends up in the Viral advertising category. It did this by simply being an ad that garnered people’s attention. Some negative at that, the ad was reported to the Advertising Standards Authority however since all complaints have been dismissed. The strategy behind the campaign was not to raise awareness as we have seen in previous campaigns filled with statistics. The goal of the campaign was to change behaviour, which is a true measure of how effective an advert is. In
a time where the same tactics are used to sell useless products which the consumers do not need and cause a negative impact by creating an insatiable consumption culture. Overt sexual innuendo and selling pipe dreams are the norm. Brandhouse has utilized the same tactics of addressing our core internal fears to motivate change. FoxP2 have delivered an exceptional advertisement which performed exceptionally across multiple mediums. Alongside this they have had a stellar year with Brandhouse and Frank.net in the Top ten brands for the year. Ryan Jared Ali
3 to 4 September 2011, Cape Town, City Hall. A food festival hosted by The President which includes exhibitions, a market and talks by some interesting foodies. Kicking off at 9am on Saturday morning we were wildly entertained by the likes of Kobus van der Merwe, owner of a famous shop on the corner in Paternoster, who draws inspiration from his surroundings in the beautiful Paternoster and introduces them to us in his dishes. Tammy Frazer, a fragrance expert who informed us about her procedure for producing her own natural fragrances from organic raw materials like ginger, vanilla, jasmine, coconut. Tung-Yuan Lin is a Barista in Taiwan. He has won several world championships for his coffee shop GABEE which in Taiwanese means ‘coffee shop’. We attended his workshop where he showed us how he does his infamous latte art, using only the movement in his wrist to form creations like jellyfish, swans and butterflies. The highlight of the weekend was the ‘secret dinner’. Each delegate was allocated a dinner venue and had a meal prepared by a well known Cape Town Cook. Listening to various chatter the next day, it certainly was a unique and enjoyable evening. We also experienced a beer tasting session with Kitchen Cowboys Goon Pete GroffWood who made us mouth watering dishes served with SAB beer. Who would have thought that beer could be served as a compliment with rich and flavoured dishes. Anna Trapido walked us through an interactive and informative tasting lunch, Food in the life of Nelson Mandela, sponsored by Woolworths Taste Magazine. Wolfgang Koedel of Paulaner Brauhaus with his German sense of humour reminded us how much beer Capetonians drink. He was very informative regarding the procedures an ale or beer goes through as well as how to correctly pour an October Fest Beer! An adventurous weekend ended off with a family braai at the festival. Who knew that there was so much more than just savouring food. All in all it has the potential to be bigger and better next year. Roxy Rosenberg
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Jade Klara wins gold at the Loeries Jade Klara was born in Cape Town and completed a BA Literary Studies at UCT. She then moved to London to get a job only to return to complete a BA at Vega where she fell in love with illustration.
After graduating she went to work for Amicollective, who she describes “are so amazingly talented and driven”. She then moved to New York for a while to paint and since I’ve been back I’ve been freelancing. My first job as a freelancer was a Sunday Times magazine cover about the internet’s birthday. How did you get started in illustration? I have always loved drawing for as long as I can remember. I have a box of ridiculous drawings I did as a child. Don King features a lot. Him and dinosaur-ponies. I fell into illustration as soon as I completed college, we had a great teacher, and from there I was lucky enough to work at Amicollective. I then founded a little studio and started freelancing. I feel so blessed to be able to do what I love. Your work seems split between illustration
and fine art, which one are you? I don’t see myself as one thing or the other. I love painting and doing shows and I love illustrating, whether it’s commercial work or stuff for myself. How do you describe your style? I think style is something innate, but also evolving. I’m going through a phase now where I’m obsessed with simplification and monotones. I’m happy playing with different approaches and adapting my style, but it will always look like mine. What is your creation process? I start by collecting information, visuals, colour swatches, references etc. so I can fully understand the layers of the illustration. I then do some non-pressure sketches where I play with ideas and generally draw sad dogs and perfect my illegible handwriting. Once I have an idea
I sketch it. Then I either ink it up or use my wacom. Describe your work setting. I love my work setting. I have a studio in the Woodstock Industrial Centre with Andrew Berry, Cassandra Johnson, Lauren Beukes and the occasional Dario/Simon from A Store Is Good. They’re inspiring people. So are the cockroaches. They never die. It’s weird. Maybe because they feel at home in the post apocalyptic wasteland we call a studio. Do you have side projects you work on? Yes, Dani Loureiro and I have started a company called Spookasem that does artist edition products. We have just completed our Skål range of artist edition beer glasses and are working on the next range. I also write ridiculous spooky poems that I hope one day to illustrate.
Do you ever have creative slumps? Of course. I find life-slumps can inspire creativity, so I think when you have a creative-slump it gives you space to do the life stuff. It’s a balance, although, that’s an idealistic answer. I usually wail when I’m slumped. What has been inspiring you lately? Edward Lear and Neil Gaiman. My neighbour Totoro. My lovely friend Emma Cook made me a Totoro hat which I run round in every now and again. Tomoharu Katsumata’s The Little Mermaid is a childhood favourite and always inspires. How did it feel to win at this years Loeries? I was so happy. I jumped up and down a lot. I still jump up and down a lot. It was a great campaign to work on and I had fantastic direction from Network BBDO. www.jadeklara.co.za
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LOERIES
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Comment on the Loeries 2011
S
o the Loeries Festival weekend began early and when I say early I mean Friday at six pm. Which means everyone was late except for the Mayor who impressively was right on time. Thank you Patricia de Lille. The Mayors Welcome was an affair attended mainly by what looked to be like the people that keep the advertising industry going. The people who run the companies which agencies pitch after, the people on the other side of
the table. The Mayor shared an important message which we hope to see fulfilled and listened to, design is going to help the economy. Simply put, design requires hardly any capital investment, it’s all about ideas and realizing them. By creating an enabling environment for creatives and attracting international creative business to South Africa, this will act as a sure stimulant to the economy. Saturday however was the evening that everyone was waiting for. The event was
moved to the prestigious CTICC which is a world class venue and what it seems that the awards have done is make it an attractive event for non-industry people. There was much focus on the fashion and fun giving the event the desirability for the future of attracting a broader audience. The night was dominated by Net#work BBDO who proved that they are the best at voiceover ads that try to narrate what is going on in our minds. Jenny Glover and Brent Singer did a number of trips for advertisements which they wrote. Finally, they also took the Grand Prix for the Mercedes Benz Safety Features campaign. Sunday came around and there were a few ashamed faces walking around after the previous evenings antics. The creatives get one weekend off a year and they seem to utilize it to its full potential. The evening was abuzz with who the MC was going to be and after speaking to the organizers of the event they were saying someone more special than Riaan Cruywagen, who in my opinion at that stage could not be topped by anyone. I was completely wrong and as the curtain opened the crowd went into rapture, David Hasselhoff, yes the real one, the one
that was in Knightrider and Baywatch. It was amazing to have him present the awards as it surely raised the profile to another level, has any other South African awards had such a prestigious MC? I don’t think so. On the night, Keith Rose of Velocity Films did a lot of walking undoubtedly as
FoxP2 should have walked away with a Grand Prix for the “love to meet you” campaign for Brandhouse. he is a genius who continues to outshine his own performance year after year. But what did we think of the award winners of the weekend? Firstly, FOXP2 should have walked away with a Grand Prix for the “Love to meet you” campaign for Brandhouse. The marching band activation for VW should not have won a Grand Prix. Some stand outs include Daddy’s World who won a Gold for Three dimensional & Environmental Design, they have an amazing model of doing things their own
way and making design good business. Two campaigns which really marked the change of interactive advertising were Design Indaba “Future Product” store which only won a bronze? Secondly, the simple yet tailored perfectly for the medium Mercedes “Test drive CL63 AMG” campaign done by 140BBDO won again only a bronze. It’s simple and uncontrived utilization of the medium showed what the future holds in terms of this new seamlessly interactive medium. Again the discussion around pro-bono accounts came up, should they be considered to compete at the Loeries or should they be disadvantaged greater while competing. It is clear that they do not have the number one stumbling block to great advertising which is the client. However, agencies that are producing great work inspite of having to deal with client opposition. What will the Loeries do about this, further handicaps? It was a great weekend which each year seems to top the last, now what does the Loeries 2012 have in store for us and where will it be. Ryan Jared Ali
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ILLUSTRATION
Seb Jarnot
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eb Jarnot was born in 1970 by the banks of the Loire. He studied visual communication and worked in advertising agencies for a few years and then in 1998 his career as a freelance illustrator began. He worked with newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, designed record jackets and worked on big advertising campaigns like Nike, Audi, Mercedes and L’Oréal. His work can be seen world-wide and has appeared in many publications. At the same time, Seb Jarnot developed more personal research. His book ‘3x7=15’ which was published in 2004 gives a general idea of the bridges he has built between commissioned illustrations and artistic research. His personal creations are regularly shown in exhibitions and participation in artistic projects in Europe and the United States. Has illustration always been a passion for you or has it developed over time? As far as I remember, I’ve always been drawing and found a deep interest in portrait at about 10 years old. I was fascinated by the fact that I could give life with few lines and that the adults seemed amazed by my drawings. That’s the birth of the passion. Partly due to my obsession for drawing, my schooling has been such a sinking. Despite this, I was accepted in a Graphic Art School in Tours école Brassart where I was awarded a Degree in 1992. After a few years working in an agency as a graphic designer, I decided to try my luck in freelance illustration. Your illustrations appears to be quite simple, how are you able to capture the characteristics of people? When I began to get commissions from magazines and newspapers, I was making the portraits on paper, directly with ink without any preliminary drawing. That means that I had to make about 20 or 30 portraits to obtain the good one. It’s been pretty good training. I think my style is a mix of the energy brought by this technique and my fascination for photography. When I was a kid, a friend of my parents gave me his collection of “Photo” a French magazine. A chance for me to discover the work of artists such as R. Avedon, H. Newton or L. Clark. I fed myself with those incredible images and tried to get closer to the intensity of their work. Now, I work on a graphic tablet but the feeling is the same. Your style of illustration is unique, did it develop into what it is today? I have several styles or approaches but in terms of portraits I think it’s my natural style, it’s all about rhythm. How did your relationship develop with the Financial Times? They approached me about two years ago, since then I have worked for them on an irregular basis. What can we expect in the future? One of the aspects I like most in my activity is that I’m often surprised by the variety of clients who contact me like Nike, L’Oréal, The Financial Times. Recently, I’ve been approached by a South Korean agency to make some portraits of the chairman of one of their biggest companies. Through those portraits they asked me to express some of his quotes which is going to be very interesting. So in the future, I’d like to go further than replicating likeness, by expressing some intentions, ideas or context in my work. Ryan Jared Ali
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Macallan Masters of Photography
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he Macallan brings internationally acclaimed Masters of Photography exhibition to South Africa. The Macallan is proud to announce the showcasing of the internationally acclaimed Masters of Photography (MOP) exhibition in South Africa. This renowned black and white photographic series has travelled the globe including exhibitions in New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, Toronto and Taiwan and will now be hosted in South Africa for two days only. Together with famed photographer Albert Watson, MOP is a visual narrative of the long journey made from acorn to glass to eventually produce a rich and complex Single Malt. This is the first time The Macallan’s romantic journey will be shared with South Africans, which begins in the Spanish forests and concludes at The Macallan’s spiritual home in Scotland. “The Macallan came to me with the incredible story of the Spanish sherry oak casks used to make their single malt and asked me to interpret this as a photographic art project. The freedom and encouragement given to me allowed the creation of a visual journey demanding complete artistic integrity,” says Albert Watson, one of the world’s most respected successful photographers of the past four decades. Watson embarked upon a journey of 12 days covering 965 kilometres and encountered some of the most breathtaking scenery. From the forests of Northern Spain, where the Spanish oaks grow, to the traditional cooperage in Jerez, Watson began a journey of discovery, culminating in the alchemy and passion of The Macallan Distillery in Scotland. The photographic odyssey took place in three parts – the romantic tale of a couple’s road trip, a series of images expanding on this particular journey and finally the creation of fine art platinum prints. “The Macallan prides itself on aligning with masters of different crafts, which is why we are proud to present this international collaboration. To us the Macallan MOP showcases a unique relationship between two great art forms, whisky-making and photography,” commented Candice Baker, Brand Ambassador for The Edrington Group Whisky Portfolio. To celebrate the launch of the Masters of Photography, The Macallan invites the public to view the prints in Cape Town at the Photographers Gallery and in Johannesburg on at the Co-Op gallery. The first Macallan Masters of Photography was launched in 2008 with Rankin. Rankin produced 1,000 individual black and white images captured on Polaroid. Each limited edition bottle of rare 30 year old Macallan Fine Oak single malt displayed a bespoke label featuring one of Rankin’s images, accompanied by the original Polaroid. The array of images featured artistic nude studies of Tuuli, Rankin’s muse and wife, contrasted by shots of the dedicated craftspeople of the distillery, and still life images of the surrounding flora and fauna at Easter Elchies Estate. The Macallan is among the world’s top selling single malts and is recognised as being a leader within the Scotch Whisky industry when it comes to innovation. www.themacallan.com
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Kristy Snell
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hen you first talk to Kristy you realise that her now vocation is a path that didn’t begin once she completed her studies, it goes as far back as drinking only a quarter of her bottle as a baby possibly due to it not being that appetizing. A few years later a simple ritual of first decorating her plate before she would eat with tomatoes, herbs and ground pepper. Food is in the blood of Kristy. This love has poised her to integrate her skills into food photography. We asked Kristy a few questions to find out more about how this developed to what it is today. After being in London and working in a restaurant why did you return to South Africa and how did you get involved in the art of photographing food? As life would have it, food would always find its way in my life. After school I went to London for two years with the aspiration of becoming a star in their local soap, Eastenders. When that did not pan out, I found a job in a restaurant as a waitress. When I was not busy I would help the kitchen porter gut and scale fish, it was always such a treat when the fishmonger’s van pulled up and I got to go and have a look at all the remarkable fish. Later in the year, I was asked to be a chef in the
I found a job in a restaurant as a waitress. restaurant. I learnt many culinary skills and began to really understand what food would later mean to me, it’s a wonderfully unifying element filled with love, every family celebration is revolved around food. After two years of working in the UK, my visa had eventually expired and I thought that it would be a good chance for me to go to University. After varsity I went into the film industry and it was then that I was reminded of my fate, to work with food. I would spend all my free time at work looking at food blogs. I became obsessed with them. At this point I wanted to start my own and did called the food-monger.com. What kind of equipment are you utilizing? I do everything myself, from recipe development to styling to photographing. I generally use natural light as I think it works well when photographing food. However, I am working on a more artistic food range that will require lights which I will setup. I use a Nikon D90 with various lenses depending on the look I want, however I generally use a Macro lens. You are a food stylist, photographer and a writer, how do you manage all three? Managing all three is a bit of a juggle. I suppose I manage because I don’t have a choice. I would like more time in the day though. I love the photography and styling aspect the most. I enjoy creating and working on something to make it look beautiful. At times it’s tricky to come up with an idea that I like, since I foot the bill I have to work within my means. It would be fantastic to have a larger budget as I have a lot of ideas I would like to shoot. I had never taken a photo on a SLR before I started my blog a year ago, so the photography and technicalities were a bit of a learning curve. I would like to explore photography further and broaden it beyond food and find other avenues to capture beautiful things, be it objects, interiors, design or people. Roxy Rosenberg
Wanda Michelle Interiors
Defining Self Within
Wanda Michelle Interiors are involved in various markets, predominantly the residential, leisure (boutique hotels & lodges) industry. We are passionate about design and decor – about defining the individual within His or Her environment. We offer a full turnkey service specializing in interior design and interior décor We strive to interpret our client’s unique style, adding the polish of balance, flow, warmth and versatility that is our signature. We are known for creating environments that are at once peaceful, healing, uplifting and energising.
223 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg - telephone 011 447 7453
www.wmi.co.za
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DESIGN
Tammy Frazer
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e meet with Tammy Frazer at her studio, as you walk in you notice there is something special taking place there. The mix of a beautiful stand of a raw tree which displays the chapters of her collection of fragrances and as you look across the science behind it all hundred of little essential oil bottles used in the production of her scents. It is with this collision between science and art Frazer Parfum delivers a beautiful authentic product. The idea of combining your own smell with that of a produced fragrance, there are not many more aspects which are so intrinsically linked to. It
so I wanted the shape to feel natural and organic, I achieved that with the bottle and then the male shape has the pebble like form also an organic natural shape. When you start dealing with perfume an important aspect is to avoid extreme temperature and light variances as this would adulterate the oil, the glass is also purposefully opaque to protect the integrity of the oils. Very important to me was the function, it was a long hard process. To get the bottle not to leak perfume was a real challenge utilizing a hand blown glass, it was almost impossible I worked with an amazing artist David Read, who is able to blow bottles which are exactly the same. There are very small variances but the stopper utilizes tools which I especially imported for David to ensure a proper seal on every bottle. After he blows the bottle he grinds the inside of the bottle then the stopper and it has a perfect fit. It is very difficult and learning the constraints of glass was interesting. At the moment I am working on a spray bottle as people want an atomized perfume, it has been quite a challenge but that is something for the future. Many products out there today try and fake the sustainability, we know you are passionate about this aspect of your product. What have you done in your product offering to make it sustainable? What I am really passionate about is ensuring my business model is sustainable, not only for me but also the people and communities which it interacts with. This is not only in the environmental aspect but as social and economically. Each aspect of the product is uncompromising, we use the best materials we can possibly find. Luxury for me is about longevity and what I am trying to create is a product that is not only used and thrown away but is passed down for generation to generation. I am looking to create a legacy. This extends to event the manner in which the products is presented. The packaging has had almost as much thought as the contents. The hand blown glass bottles are not only beautiful pieces of art but the technical craft that has gone into ensuring a perfect seal to the bottle which is a hand crafted piece is a further testament to the attention to detail. The solid perfumes are housed within a hand crafted blackwood cases. The cases are produced in Mozambique where a project by Allan Scharz in the Mezimbite Forest Center has aimed to not only superficially support a area. The value adding takes place with the community where the resource is, in turn the value created is directly ploughed back into the community. The net result is a community who see the value to protect their own forest. The key to sustainability is not charity, it lies in business models that embrace and are genuinely sensitive to the communities. Meeting Tammy was a completely inspiring affair, the passion, consciousness and craft in all aspects of what she is doing is completely evident. It is a product which does much for South Africa, showcasing what can be done right here. Frazer Parfum have been sought by the best stores internationally, it will be launching in Collette Paris in November and continues to be a feature of the Harrods exclusive perfume room. This is a true testament to what can be done locally. www.frazerparfum.com
Luxury for me is about longevity and what I am trying to create is a product that is not only used and thrown away but is passed down for generation to generation. I am looking to create a legacy. tells who we are or who we want other to recognize us as. In a world we instant gratification is the norm a new line of thinking is starting to take hold, the new niche is all about authenticity. If our personal brand is about being conscious of the environment, conscious to helping to socio economy plight of those around us and also maintaining a sustainable lifestyle, we search for products that embody that ethos. Frazer Parfum combines with us in offering an authentic product conscious of all of the above. We want to be proud of the stories of the products we use. We asked Tammy to tell us more about the story of Frazer Parfum and how it came about . Where did the journey start for you? You had a background studying communications, this must have helped you in providing a holistic offering in terms of story, packaging and product. My background in communication really helped me and I have a passion for writing and the stories behind all the different chapters were all written by myself. The product has organically grown to what it is, when I started I went to Belgium to a perfume factory and while I was there I made a contact and was invited to Madagascar along with 30 Japanese botanist’s. That is where it began and what has since happened while I have been travelling and each new chapter has been related to a place I have been. The bottle is a handcrafted piece, which actually passes as art without the contents, were their challenges in the production of the bottle? It was really important for me to have form function and design for the bottles,
thebodyshop.co.za
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ARCHITECTURE
Mokena Makeka reinvents the police station Architects design the world, designing the world sounds daunting. The way the Makeka Design Lab approaches this problem in a different way where architecture is not only looked to fill space or to place beautiful buildings but how do they interact with nature around them. The challenge that architects now face is that their work interacts with not only natural forms which they studied for many years. The new world architect has to design for the social interaction within a modern society. Often the message that institutions want to communicate with the users is where the problem begins. When buildings are placed diametrically opposed to the community which they serve creates an
immediate barrier. Social alienation not only affects the users but also result in vandalism and a forced usage of spaces not in the intended way. The team at Makeka Design Lab performed well with their entry at the Loerie Awards with a Gold, this was for the SAPS Retreat Police Station which they designed. When Makeka Design Lab was first briefed by the Police High Commissioner the message was clear, “Build a Fort Knox.� The SAPS had a problem with munitions being stolen from police stations, in turn the SAPS wanted to communicate that the building is a fortress. Using the architectural communication to make that statement clear. What Makeka reasoned
with the proposals to the SAPS was, that communication strategy was flawed, by communicating that message it would not result in the desired outputs. What he did propose was a building that would be sensitive to the community it was to serve. In the context of Apartheid police stations were a institution to protect a minority but now the message is to serve the majority by opening the communication dialogue with the community by placing a building that represents safety, service and well-being for the community instead of terror, fear and oppression. Design of building what has interactions a wide spectrum and with differing messages which are communicated to users. where
the interactions are mapped in order to prevent intimidation. A simple example of this being the flow of users ensure that victims do not have to come into contact with criminals which is a common occurrence at other police stations. The building after construction seems to have achieved the goal of becoming part of the community a simple gauge for this has been in a area where vandal graffiti is rife, this new building has not been marked with graffiti. This tells a story of the communities pride in the building which is now theirs and serve them. Ryan Jared Ali
Consult Design is a young multi-disciplinary architectural practice based in Durban. We pride ourselves on providing a personalised service that is both professional and innovative to best answer client needs. An integrated approach is adopted in addressing all aspects of the project, resulting in unique solutions that are environmentally responsible, socially sensitive and economically viable. Our expertise encompasses architecture, interior design, space planning, feasibility studies and building analysis, tender and procurement services, effective project management, architectural photography and computer generated designs and plans.
telephone 031 5641627
email leon@consultdesign.co.za
www.consultdesign.co.za
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DESIGN
MATBLAC
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atblac shares Unit 1 of Canterbury Studios, a bright, airy, woodenfloored, high-ceilinged space, with two other creatives. Filled with inspirational hand-crafted works of art, this studio is a place any budding creative should plan to visit. As I got to the gate I was warmly greeted by a friendly smile and firm handshake and offered some tea. From then on my interview with Mat Nielson felt less like an interview and more like chatting to an old friend. We spoke about all sorts of things from his life and design philosophy, aims and objectives with “Matblac” as a brand, all the way through to his adoration for avocado pear trees and his very affordably obtained Durkopp-Adler digital motored sewing machine. One of his favourite pasttimes is to sit down at his machine with a cup of coffee and service it or at least investigate the inner-workings of it. Mat says he would not be where he is today without his beloved machine as it affords him the ultimate control over each stitch. Mat’s wallets, ipod pouches, ipad sleeves and laptop cases are meticulously crafted using the finest and most natural and unaltered hide that hasn’t been imprinted with that “homogenous” perfect leather pattern and smell. Instead, it still has the naturally occurring cuts and grazes and it’s aroma is reminiscent of a dusty room filled with old oak furniture. Along with this he has even sourced a particular type of felt coming all the way from Germany. Each piece he makes is a labour of love, as they say, especially when one considers the pains he went through to have the perfect metal badge made with the Matblac logo and the fact that he drills each tiny hole in these badges by hand, even altering the staples used to attach them to achieve the specific look he wants. Since he started he’s been searching for an apprentice possessing this same eye for detail and desire for perfection. Preferably someone methodical and focused with small fingers, he says. But the search continues. Like many artists, people that like to make cool stuff, he started off studying a Bcom after school as it was the “sensible thing to do” but ended up getting back to his true passion, working with his hands and creating one-off pieces for friends and knocking at many potential doors of opportunity, not always getting the response he expected. But Mat’s spirit was not easily dampened. His energy and enthusiasm for what he does and life in general is infectious. Even on days when everything gets a bit much and he’s feeling less than inspired, he clings to that one bit of positive feedback he gets and jumps upwards and into the future from there. Matblac feels like the kind of classic brand that’ll stick around for a long time. Expect to see some ladies handbags, purses and his philosophy to be applied to other mediums such as furniture and lighting in the future. Kerrythe Mahaffey
A sample of our work? You’re looking at it!
We’ve printed this paper from the very first issue and it’s not because we’re on a contract, it’s because we know that ‘you’re only as good as your last campaign’. The reasons we’ve kept this account is because we’re passionate about print, we’ve built and maintained a valuable relationship with our client and we’re committed to meeting their deadlines. Like the paper, we’re getting better all the time. Driven by the latest in print technology, we produce top quality brochures, magazines, corporate folders, posters and point of sale material.
Tandym Print
Corner of Park Road and Mail Street, Western Province Park, Epping
T: 021 505 4200
F: 021 505 4280
Email: print@tandym.co.za
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TECHNOLOGY
Green website hosting When Chris Edington opened the doors of his web hosting company, he knew he was entering into a saturated market. But smart thinking and an eye on international trends enabled him to quickly find a niche and establish a unique and differentiated offering. Get Green offers carbonneutral web hosting to green-conscious individuals, businesses and organisations throughout South Africa. “I did some research internationally and discovered that there were a number of green datacenters. There was nothing like it in South Africa and knew I‟d found a gap,” says the Cape Town-based twenty-something entrepreneur. The company houses its server in a datacenter that uses renewable wind and solar energy to power and cool the servers. Get Green makes it simple
for companies (and individuals) to go green, offering free domain, data, email and database transfers from their current web hosting provider, and as the green revolution has grown in South Africa, so too has Get Green‟s business, as more and more businesses seek ways to be more environmentally conscious, safe and sustainable in ways which don‟t impact the way they do business. As a GreenPop partner, the company is also able to pledge to plant at least one tree for every new customer that signs up, as their contribution to our stressed environment. “Customers also get a „Gone Green‟ badge to display on their website so that earthaware consumers will be able to easily identify which businesses are doing their bit for the planet,” Edington explains.
Every website you visit has to be hosted by a web server. A web server is essentially a dedicated computer which needs to remain on 24 hours a day/7 days a week/365 days a year: all the while using a constant high amount of electricity to perform its functions. Each year the average web server uses 1000KWH of electricity producing 630kg of CO2. That means that each year the average web server uses as much electricity as is required to fully power 30 000 households! Combined, the world‟s datacenters consume 4% of the Earth‟s entire electricity output, meaning that if the internet was looked at as a country, it would be the 5th biggest electricity consumer. www.getgreen.co.za
Softening barriers to learning
sometimes inappropriate, sometimes taking the form of poor teaching methods, especially in rural areas, and limited or inaccessible professional assistance. Active involvement by parents in the form of recognition and participation is most often nonexistent, and within the disabled community, otherwise known as having special needs, and our human resource departments we have fragmented and unsustainable development strategies which result in learning break down. In a 1996, WIRED magazine interview Steve Jobs, he indicated that WebObjects might one day allow for automated storage management and a connected world that will allow for new opportunities to create new solutions. In 2011 integrated and automated machines are available to us (a generation always-on-the-go), they reduce the divisions in the learner population by providing an inclusive communication solution through mobile social interactions whilst eliminating the professional access issues, and supplying meaningful solutions to the anxieties of our society. All levels of design education in South Africa have a social responsibility and with the technology we have today we have limitless opportunity to meet these needs, both in the classroom and in the home by extension. This technology in the form of Apps, iPads, iPods and the iCloud will be a disruptive force in softening if not eliminating our barriers to learning in South Africa. Karl Fedderke
Usisi Designs
In an essay in the book, The Education of an e-Designer, edited by Steven Heller, it was proposed that technology helps us to make sense of our world, whatever and whenever that is. It is my opinion that technology, properly organised and managed, will help us to make sense of the issues we face and provide a workable solution for our future giving access to information whilst making sense of it in the process. A recent White Paper by the Department of Education determined that there are ten barriers to learning; some of the barriers identified include attitude, attitude toward difference, be they race, gender, language or disabilities, which often results in labeling and prejudice. Other barriers include language and communication issues based on the many diverse first languages spoken in South Africa giving way to low expectations and discrimination thereby providing an inadequate support mechanism for effective learning. Support services often prove inadequate and
Usisi Designs has recently embarked on an adventure into the world of recycled glass. Using glass bottles that are so abundantly available, we began to make beautiful, innovative, functional and decorative pieces for interior decoration. We cut bottles into rings and melt or fuse them together in a kiln. The melted components are then strung together to create chandeliers, lights and beautiful window decorations. Working with this new medium has opened a unique door in the manufacturing and design process. Despite popular beliefs, recycling has proven to be very challenging. Collecting the glass bottles from various locations, all over Pietermaritzburg, having to clean them and only then being able to start the creative process is a very lengthy and expensive way to manufacture crafts. It might be seen as “cool “ to recycle, but collecting dirty smelly bottles from dirtier and smellier bins, is no fun. Everybody thinks that recycled or upcycled products must be cheap, but on the contrary: recycling is expensive. However, recycling is an amazing way of protecting our environment and glass can be recycled again and again without compromising its quality. We are passionate about creating a healthy future for our children and we believe that this project will help preserve our beautiful world. www.usisicraft.co.za
Peugeot HX1 concept The HX1 Concept Car gives Peugeot the opportunity to once again illustrate the marque’s ability to reflect on new ideas, learn how to evolve and to continually reinvent itself. The brief for this concept was to produce a vehicle for up to six people, offering strong styling, that is sporty and efficient and at the same time
giving a unique driving sensation. To achieve this, the HX1 transcends the notions of adaptability in all areas, with its extreme aerodynamics (‘flaps’ are deployed to optimise aero efficiency according to vehicle speed), its tapered, low MPV architecture and its HYbrid4 power plant integrating ‘plug-in’ technology.
Versus Paint Specialists Versus Paint Specialists can offer you an environmentally-friendly alternative to normal paints. It has formulated wall coatings that considerably decrease the amount of damage done to the immediate environment and the environment as a whole. This is because indoor air is three times more polluted than outdoor air and, according to the EPA, is considered to be one of the top five hazards to human health. Paints and finishes are among the leading causes of this pollution. “Ideally, you’ll want to use paints that meet better health criteria,” says a Versus Paint Specialist spokesperson. “This means looking out for low volatile organic compounds (VOCs), low biocides and natural pigment paints.” Versus products are environmentally friendly in that in terms of VOCs they have
less than 25 grams per litre, they contain non-toxic pigments, their products are water based and they use minimal biocide content. “You see, many paints contain VOCs, which refers to a class of chemicals that evaporate readily at room temperature. When these VOCs give off gas, a process that can last for weeks or years depending on the type of paint, they may cause a variety of health problems like nausea, dizziness, irritation of the eyes and respiratory tract, heart, lung, or kidney damage, and even cancer,” says the spokesperson. “Versus produces low VOC coatings. These paints are durable, cost-effective and less harmful to humans and environmental health than conventional paints.”
Reduce costs with solar water heat pumps
Distributors for well known branded name water heat pumps & EZE swimming pool heat pumps.
Contact
• Fast hot water recovery at temperature under 60° celcius • 70% saving on your hot water bill • No unsightly solar panels on your roof • Compact and relatively easy to install by certified technician • Operates with standard low/high pressure geysers or storage tanks • Can be retrofitted to existing geysers • Can be used in conjunction with solar panels • Fully automatic key pad control with adjustable water temperature setting • Environmentally responsible – extremely energy efficient with no CO2 gas emissions • Low maintenance
072 795 5592 roger@zmail.co.za
Eskom increased their tariff by 25 per cent in February 2011 with a further similar of 25 per cent in February 2012, therefore, it has become even more important for hotels, lodges, B&Bs and businesses to look at ways of cutting their overhead electricity supply costs. Roger Fawcett & Associates can provide businesses and homeowners a minimum of 70 per cent saving on their monthly hot water bill, using their air powered water heat pumps. Roger Fawcett commented: “We have completed installations at FNB Corporate office in Fairlands, Johannesburg and Southern Suns Hotel Group to mention a few, saving our clients tens of thousands of Rands on their electricity accounts and helping to reduce carbon emissions on their big hot water boilers, of which some were emitting up to 38 tons of CO2 per annum.” The 10 major benefits of the water heat pumps: • Fast hot water recovery at temperatures up to 60 degrees Celsius. • 70 per cent saving on your hot water bill. • No unsightly solar panels on the roof. • Compact & relatively easy to install by qualified technician. • Operates with standard low/high pressure geysers or storage tanks. • Can be retrofitted to existing geysers. • Can be used in conjunction with existing solar panels at front end of system. • Fully automatic key pad control with adjustable water temperature setting. • Environmentally responsible-extremely energy efficient with no CO2 gas emissions. • Low maintenance. Consumption The standard water heating process through the use of a geyser in a home or business consumes 60 -70 per cent of the electricity usage. A heat pump can reduce this by as much as 70%. The geyser is disconnected from the distribution board. The geyser is used as a reservoir to store your water which retains the pressure in the system. • A geyser will consume 3 to 4 kilowatt of power (dependent on size of geyser)to function. • The Heating process will be repeated throughout the day and night. • A 1Klw pump delivers 6Klw of heat energy which is far quicker and consumes less energy. • The pump circulates the water throughout the system continuously which ensures hot water almost instantly and heats to 60 degrees Celsius in three seconds, only when in use. • The reduction in electrical consumption is 60 to 70 per cent of the current water heating cost. Placement Another great advantage of the heat pump is the universal positioning of the unit. Regardless of the structures, clustered together or far apart, the pump/s are sized according to need and placed in optimum positions to accommodate the amount water heating required. They are fully weather proofed. A heat pump can only be positioned (placed) outside a building ie on a flat roof or external wall or on a concrete plinth on the ground. Pricing The price of a unit will depend upon the size of application and site conditions. Roger Fawcett & Associates will accommodate any request to provide an estimate from plan or visit the site. Thereafter we will provide a detailed proposal. Finance and rental facilities (rent to own) are also on offer.
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TECHNOLOGY
Sony NEX-C3
Adobe Muse, web The move to the cloud design without code How often has a small groan escaped your lips when presented with yet another creative brief with a web component? It’s daunting when faced with the apparent cross media skills required to meet such briefs and, whilst there is always the option of outsourcing the web aspects of a project to the nearest “propellor-head”, the frustration around the integrity of your original design becoming diluted in the process just adds further difficulty to managing such a project. What is the solution then, when code is just not your thing? Adobe has recently unveiled Muse, a new Web design program that lets printoriented graphic designers create and publish standards-based websites without having to write code or work within restrictive templates. The software, which employs Web standards such as HTML 5, CSS3, and JavaScript, has been released as a public beta under the code name, Muse, and will be available from Adobe’s website as a free preview until the first quarter of 2012. Muse is a freeform tool targeted at designers who have worked thus far only in print, but who want to create interactive websites sans code. Adobe envisions the Muse designer as someone who spends most of their time working in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Creative professionals will be able to use their current skills to combine images, graphics, and text in a process that is similar to working with InDesign. Danielle Beaumont, Group Product Manager at Adobe, has made it clear that Muse was built with the artist and print designer in mind, allowing designers who are not coders to create unique, professional websites as easily as producing a layout in InDesign, stipulating that Adobe has worked really hard at creating an easy to use, end-to end-solution with interactive elements. It allows the designer to do things that only a hand-coder could do. If designing in InDesign is your speciality, then you’ll feel at home using Muse. The interface is an interesting mix of InDesign and Dreamweaver. When first testing it, an immediate concern was around how effectively the text stylesheets were converted into CSS (cascading stylesheets), but the tool appears to do a pretty good job of it. Creating a basic layout was fairly straight forward, though there were some InDesign-specific features that were missing such as giving a text box more than one column and the Align palette, features we hope will be rectified in the future.
There are some useful extras for fledglings to Web design. For example, when you select text from the drop down box, Adobe identifies a web-safe font and which fonts will be exported as images. The Color Picker will let you key in RGB numbers and return the hexadecimal for that colour. The Eyedropper tool will run over any image and provides the hexadecimal and RGB values in the Color Picker. There are also palettes for spacing and text wraps around images. While Muse doesn’t have any existing templates, it ships with basic widgets that allow you to add rich interactivity such as slideshows, galleries, menu bars, fully customizable tabbed accordion panels for organizing lengthy information into visually appealing bite-sized “chunks” and embedding HTML source code for Google Maps and YouTube. Included, too, are webspecific palettes such as states, where you apply an attribute to elements like rollovers, actions upon clicking a mouse, and more. Tool tips and remote rollovers are easy enough to implement and lightboxes that bring special focus to an image, video or other content, add a level of user interaction that would be tricky to included without coding knowledge. The Preview mode is put to good use throughout the layout process, you can test links to external websites from within Muse and you can also preview using external browsers. Muse requires AIR 2.7 or higher to run, which can be an obstacle for some, an Intel Core Duo or faster processor is recommended, OS X 10.6 or higher, and at least 512 MB of RAM (1 GB is recommended). Muse will be available in early 2012 for around US $15 a month via Adobe’s subscription model, but other options will be available. Whilst clearly still only a beta version, it’s definitely worth checking out as Adobe has promised future features such as additional CMS integration and enabling the creation of websites for mobile and tablets. Visit the official site muse.adobe.com, made entirely with Muse, and read up about planning your project, tips on designing pages and publishing your site using Adobe for hosting or a provider of your choice. Get your ideas flowing by visiting some websites already created using Muse. With the freedom to focus on design and not technology, now is the time to get out here and promote your newly acquired web skills with confidence. Eva Csernyanszky Director of Friends of Design
Cloud computing, cloud storage, cloud backup, cloud email, cloud servers, cloud this and cloud that, can’t I just stay on the ground? The reality is that we have been using cloud services for years without knowing it, without calling it the cloud. Anyone who has ever signed up for Gmail, Webmail or Yahoo! email account has used a cloud-hosted email account, where your email service is not stored and kept primarily on your computer, but accessible on the internet wherever you are. Even your Blackberry is a cloud-hosted email service stored and kept on one of Blackberry servers. The cloud is far from new, it’s been here for a while already and is spreading to all areas from data storage to office telephony and communications. How did we get here? Why are we here? Way back when, with the advent of computers, it was the companies that wanted to get ahead, that invested in information technology such as computers, word processors, internet, servers in the back room, email for all staff, because the extent to which the business could use IT in order to operate more efficiently and quickly was a crucial differentiator. At that stage, you could make your company more competitive by applying technology to your various work processes and steal a march on your competitor who hadn’t done the same... This no longer applies. Now that IT services are much more readily accessible, it is no longer a differentiator but rather an essential cost of doing business. It’s now a commodity service like having running water in a building. And this is how the winds of change blew in the ‘cloud’. As with anything that becomes commoditized, the focus shifts to how the service can be improved. We have seen this before... These kinds of shifts have happened before. As Nicholas Carr pointed out in his book, The Big Switch, about a hundred years ago every business had to produce their own electricity to power their operations, this enabled them to get ahead of any other business that was using more primitive sources of energy at the time. Eventually, there were industrial advancements that enabled electricity to be transmitted over long distances and you didn’t have to create electricity in your backyard to have access to it. Major electrical companies emerged to provide this utility and it ceased to be a differentiator and it became a commodity. Businesses became more efficient as they could focus on their core business instead of worrying about how to generate more electricity, if you are making clothes or furniture, why bother being an electric company for your own needs and build expertise in that if you don’t need to? The
impact of this shift was profound. It opened the door for smaller-scale businesses that had previously not been able to generate their own electricity. And then products and services that exploited this easy access to electricity became commonplace over time, televisions, vacuum cleaners, photocopiers and almost everything you can think of. This created whole new industries and ushered in the modern world as we know it. In the shift today, we see a new kind of power plant emerge: computing plants that will ‘power our information age the way electric plants powered the industrial age’. Computing power and utility can be generated in plant-like data centres, the cloud, and delivered to business and individuals through the internet. Cloudbased services will enable us to operate at greater levels of efficiency than ever possible before. We have already noted the use of email services in the cloud as an example. And it doesn’t end there. It is no longer necessary for companies to have back rooms to host large servers on their premises; servers of even greater power are accessible on the cloud through services like Amazon’s EC2. We can back-up all the data on our computer through cloud services like Dropbox that perform the back-up automatically. Before the cloud, the only way to manage office communication and calls was to buy a big box PBX system, now an entire PBX service can be hosted in the cloud and easily managed online, with only a phone connected to the internet in your office or home to make and receive calls. Even office telephony will be significantly improved through the cloud; from the portability that comes with the cloud (accessing your office telephony system wherever you are, connecting multiple branches, home and mobile workers); to the lower entry barrier where any business no matter how small can access a full featured PBX service without a high Capex cost. The cloud is not hype as it is already self-evident and motivated by factors that are almost unstoppable. Why bother maintaining a server room or a telephony system when it is not your business’s core function? Surely the only services that should be maintained in-house, that a company should take on the cost of ownership for, should be those that give a business its competitive advantage over others and not support services like email, telephony, data storage, servers and such like? In answering these questions, cloudbased services will undoubtedly shunt us into the next age. Rapalang Rabana Global Head of R&D for Telfree
The new NEX-C3 by Sony is for now the world’s smallest, lightest interchangeable lens digital camera in its class. The NEX-C3 features an attractive new body design that combines a satisfyingly solid metal top casing with an easy-touse streamlined grip shape. Reducing the size of main circuitry shrinks camera body weight to just 225g. Resolution of the sensor is boosted to 16.2 effective megapixels, capturing stills and 720p HD video with breath-taking clarity. There’s no need to dig into confusing menu options or guess their effect on your composition. Just turn the camera’s rearmounted control wheel and instantly see the effect of your settings previewed on screen. If you wish, two or more different settings can be combined to create more sophisticated creative effects. A new incamera ‘Picture Effect’ setting lets users add extra impact to stills or HD video during shooting, without the worry of editing images afterwards. The single lens kit with an 18-55mm lens is ZAR6499.
THE NIKON 1 Nikon also introduces a new digital camera system, Nikon 1, with the launch of two new cameras, the Nikon 1 J1 and the Nikon 1 V1. “This is Nikon’s most significant announcement since we introduced the digital camera 14 years ago” said Takami Tsuchida, President, Nikon Europe, “With the launch of Nikon 1, we’re unveiling two ground breaking interchangeable lens cameras that are packed with revolutionary technology.” Romi Jacobs, Chief Brand Officer for Nikon in South Africa said: “Our engineers have managed to house an incredibly powerful processor and sensor in a sleek, minimalist Nikon 1 body design: people will be able to take shots they didn’t believe were possible. These are not only the world’s fastest cameras - they have features that have never been seen before: shooting modes like Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector are going to let people capture images in ways they could never have imagined.”
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This October the Tale of Barrello begins at Toro...
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Artwork by 68 De Waterkant Street, Cape Quarter, Cape Town
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DESIGN YOUR OWN FRESH FLOWER RING Fresh rings are created from a high-quality acrylic base, set with an exquisitely bold semi-precious stone set in 18ct white gold. Choose from our wide range of ready-to-wear pieces or express your individuality and customise your own design. Add extra sparkle and surround your gem with diamonds for a truly exceptional finish.
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JEWELS DURBAN +27 (0)31 303 4417 | FANCOURT +27 (0)44 807 0244 | MELROSE ARCH +27 (0)11 684 2985
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AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN
BMW’s smart car of the future Cars are bound to become a central hub of information, a supersmart mobile office that allows you to complete most of your daily tasks.
T
he smart car of the future will allow you to order movie tickets, make reservations, and email or text people. Surely they will be the ultimate mobile devices, because they truly are mobile. Making information more accessible to the driver has become a new automotive focus and that’s where BMW’s Domagoj Dukec comes in. He’s Project Leader for BMW’s Advanced Design Studio, where their latest concept, Vision
ConnectedDrive, was designed. Built primarily around future technologies and innovation, the new Vision ConnectedDrive Concept is creating a buzz in design circles. BMW’s head of design is Adrian Van Hooydonk. He reckons their ConnectedDrive concept had to be communicated in an emotional way to help people to grasp the ideas they have for the future of cars. Van Hooydonk continues. “The most appropriate way to convey the concept was to reveal it in a classic roadster. If you look at the car, there is not much that’s new as far as surface languages go, as it retain the core elements of a BMW like a long bonnet and shorter overhangs. Since BMW has such a strong heritage, the so called ‘flaming surfaces’ and colours are muted to emphasise the interior.” Domagoj Dukec picks up on the theme. “The other heritage element we used
here is the sliding door, coming from the BMWZ1. On the Z1 the door slides down, so you have to compromise on the design
“BMW really opens up the horizons for a designer.” Dukec to make it work. Since BMW always has this long distance between the front-wheel and A-pillar which is perfect to put the door inside. This side design also allows you to even drive with the door open.” BMW stands for driver-oriented interior. “On this car, again, the story is ConnectedDrive, and it also shows that regardless of what we do in the future, in all the technical pre-development which is quite complex, we will not be losing the emotional aspect of driving pleasure. The main focus is to enhance driving pleasure
and all this technology is helping you to make this experience even better. This is a dream car that shows our potential”, says Dukec. As a two-seater roadster, the BMW Vision ConnectedDrive showcases a dynamic, purist interpretation of the characteristic BMW language of form: the long bonnet, the long wheelbase and the passenger compartment set well back seem to accelerate the vehicle even at a standstill. Perhaps more importantly, the cars have the ability to pinpoint your current location at all-time, identify your music and movie preferences, and furthermore, interact in a social way with other cars on the road. Over the next ten years, cars will ‘crowd source’ information from other drivers as they pass your vehicle, learning valuable information which is then displayed on your screen. And you thought it was just a car? Richard Webb
Juliane Blasi Juliane Blasi was responsible for the design of the car, her second roadster. She is one of the most talented of the 300 or more designers within the BMW Group studios around the world. Ms. Blasi joined BMW back in 2003 and previously studied transportation design at Germany’s Pforzheim University, one of the oldest design programs in the world. As part of a six-month exchange program, she joined the DesignworksUSA design studio in California back in 2005. At the time, BMW was already hosting an internal competition for the second-generation Z4 Roadster, which launched in 2009. Ms. Blasi teamed up with another talented designer, Nadya Arnaout and together won the competition for the new Z4.
We don’t really need to advertise. You’re doing a pretty good job for us already. Over the past 21 years around four thousand of you have been through our doors. You walked in as a student, and left ready to hit the ground running. Now our alumni are found all over the world, often where incredible work is being created. In fact, it would be hard to find an agency in South Africa without any AAA graduates on board, in some cases, even on the board. And while that says a lot about you, it says something about us too. It is through your achievements that our success is brought to life. You are our portfolio. Our most sensational campaign. So for our 21st birthday we thought that a conventional advert wouldn’t be quite right. We would rather make a toast. A salute to all of you who contribute to making us who and what we are today. So thank you, for being the greatest ad we’ve never produced.
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TUTORIAL
6
Master glow effects in Adobe Photoshop
Create advanced glow effects using layer styles and blending modes in Adobe Photoshop Mastering the use of Blending Modes is a vital key to creating special effects in Photoshop, writes Eva Csernyanszky
07 Select the Pen Tool again. This is an
important step and you won’t be able to proceed unless you have it selected. Right-click and select Stroke Path. In the dialog box, choose Brush and ensure that Simulate Pressure is ticked. This will apply tapered ends to the curves. Next, right click again and select Delete Path.
01 Create a radial gradient on a blank
canvas. The colours you select are not important, but make sure that you select a bright colour for the centre and fade it out to black at the edges of the document.
02 Duplicate the
layer you have just created and set the blending mode of to Colour Dodge to make it appear more vibrant.
08
The curve should thin out as it reaches the end point of the stroke and be fattest in the middle, as shown on the left hand side.
When used in conjunction, Layer Styles and Blending Modes can be used to create a variety of visual effects to enhance your designs. Whilst most Photoshop enthusiasts know of Layer Styles, few know that they are the basis of lighting effects.
new layer and draw in a radial gradient as illustrated on the left. Any colour will do, just make sure your gradient fades to transparent.
09 Next, add the glows. The easiest way to add glows is via Layer Styles. In this example I’ve added two sets of glows. To do this I first used an Outer Glow and then to add a second glow, I change the Drop Shadow settings so that it becomes a colourful drop shadow with Overlay Mode applied to it, hence becoming a glow. Try reducing the Distance and changing the blend mode to Color Dodge too for varying results. I’ve used a Color Overlay to make the glow yellow so that it appears more intense at the centre.
In this tutorial,we will revisit Layer Styles and create complex and professional looking glow effects using a combination of these simple tools. DURATION 45 minutes LEVEL OF difficulty Intermediate
Eva Csernyanszky Founder of Friends of Design Academy of Digital Arts. Eva has been in the design software training business for 14 years, with 5 of those years spent running one of South Africa’s leading digital design academies. www.friendsofdesign.net
05 Using the Pen Tool, draw some simple curves as illustrated above.
06 Once you’ve created a suitable
curve, create a new layer and select the Paintbrush (B). Choose a very thin, hard brush, for example, set the thickness to 3 and the hardness to 100. Try experimenting with different presets to see the variety of effects that can be created once you understand this technique.
Do this by right-clicking on the layer with the style you wish to copy and choosing Copy Layer Style, then rightclicking on the target layer and choosing Paste Layer Style. Create a few more curves using steps 5-8 and apply the same layer style to them.
11 Next, create a
choose Filter > Render > Clouds. Make sure that black is set to both the Foreground and background colour.
transparency of this layer to 30% and the blending option to Overlay. For an interesting effect, apply the Filter > Sketch > Chrome setting to this layer and see how it affects your result.
once created, you can apply them to other layers easily to save time.
Add text and copy and paste the same Layer Style onto its layer.
03 On a new
04 Set the
10 The beauty of Layer Styles is that,
For some finishing touches, you can create elements such as dots using a thin brush on a new layer and apply the same layer style used on the curved lines and text. Have fun experimenting further with Layer Styles.
12 Next, set that layer’s Blending Mode to Color and change its opacity to 50%.
You’ll see that it creates a subtle tint over the image with the colours you have used. Try experimenting with creating multiple layers in the same fashion using various colours. By adjusting the position of these, you can create layers of ethereal light which is quite stunning to look at.
Seagram Pearce Photography 78 Shortmarket Street Cape Town info@seagrampearce.com studio 021 422 5823 mobile 083 978 3143
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LIMITED EDITION, LARGE SCALE PANORAMIC LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY Our photographs decorate the walls of homes and corporate institutions both for its aesthetic value and as a tangible, prudent investment. To see more of these breathtaking South African landscapes visit www.shop.ohwow.co.za
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TUTORIAL
8
Web Design Tutorial
Create buttons with CSS3 HTML5 and CSS3 are drastically changing the way we design and code even the simplest parts of our websites, writes Quintin Schnehage.
{1}
- Markup (HTML) Let’s jump right in. Type the HTML markup to the right into your HTML file’s <body> element. Notice that I’ve used a couple of tags that you might not know. These are some HTML5 elements that I’ve thrown in, just for interest’s sake. <!DOCTYPE html> tells the browser that this is an HTML5 document. <nav> is a new element in HTML5 that tells the browser that all the links inside it are used for navigating through the site.
{2}
You’ll notice that the code doesn’t work in all browsers. Don’t panic! We’ll modify the code later so that it works in all the major ones. Here’s a quick explanation of the new CSS3 attributes:
<li><a href=”index.html”>Home</a></li> <li><a href=”portfolio.html”>Portfolio</a></li> <li><a href=”about.html”>About Me</a></li> <li><a href=”blog.html”>Blog</a></li> <li><a href=”contact.html”>Contact</a></li> </ul> </nav>
body { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; background-color: #333333; } nav ul { list-style: none; padding: 0; text-indent: 0; }
Add the shadow around your button: box-shadow: [x-offset] [y-offset] [blur] [colour];
text-shadow: [x-offset] [y-offset] [blur] [colour];
Create the rounded corners on your buttons:
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create some stylish buttons with rounded corners, gradients and shadows using only HTML5 and CSS3.
<ul class=”css-buttons”>
nav li a { padding: 5px 15px 6px; color: #fff; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; margin: 0 1em 0 0; float: left; color: #ffffff;
Apply a subtle shadow to your text:
Although HTML5 has been getting a lot of attention, it has a partner-in-crime that isn’t quite as famous: CSS3. This is quite surprising, seeing as most of the amazing effects HTML5 websites have become known for are actually made possible by CSS3, not HTML5.
<nav>
- Styling (CSS) In your CSS, type the code to the right.
HTML5 has been making waves in the web design community for the past several years now, even though it’s still just a twinkle in the W3C Consortium’s eye. The newest version of the language is still being developed and will only be completed in 2022, but many web design studios are already using it in their professional projects.
<!DOCTYPE html>
border-radius: [radius];
/* These are the new CSS3 attributes! */
text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.25); box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.5); border-radius: 10px; /* Background Gradient for Chrome and Safari: */
We’re also using a new colour mode called RGBA, which allows you to specify an alpha (transparency) as well as Red, Green and Blue values.
Before CSS3, we would have needed to rely on tricky image slicing, tiling images and PNGs to create buttons like these, but now it’s possible to do it with pure CSS.
rgba([red], [green], [blue], [alpha]);
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#faa51a), to(#f47a20)); /* Background Gradient for Firefox and Opera: */ background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #faa51a, #f47a20); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #faa51a, #f47a20); }
DURATION 30 Minutes LEVEL OF difficulty Intermediate
!!
- But wait! There’s a catch. Because CSS3 is still a very new language, not all browsers will use it in the same way. Before the CSS will work in all major browsers, we’ll need to add some vendorspecific prefixes to them. For text-shadow, border-radius and box-shadow, copy the rules and add the following prefixes for each browser:
Quintin Schnehage (@Quintin_S) is a designer, educator and freelance digital artist living in Cape Town, South Africa. By day, Quintin is a web design lecturer at Concept Interactive School of Communication Design, where he teaches young upcoming designers about exciting web technologies.
-moz- -webkit- -o- -k-
Mozilla Firefox Chrome, Safari Opera Konqueror
A final note: Although you can do some pretty exciting things with CSS3, people with older browsers won’t be able to see the amazinglooking box shadows, rounded corners and pure CSS gradients on your buttons. If you want to use CSS3 in your web projects – especially the ones clients are paying money for – you need to make sure your design looks good in all major browsers. To do this, you’ll need to build sites that gracefully degrade . Graceful degradation is a design strategy which means thinking about those cool box shadows and rounded corners as “nice-to-haves”, and making sure that the site still looks good without them. If design your sites accordingly, they’ll still look great in Internet Explorer 7, but even better in more progressive browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox 6. school of communication design
CONCEPT interactive
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0
TUTORIAL
Beginners guide to photography tutorial one
Great portraits with natural light Welcome to the first instalment of Photography tutorials with me Seagram Pearce. As we progress, I will try to teach you how to improve on the most common photographic tasks
01 What you’ll need: camera, window,
daylight, translucent netting, reflector or two.
04 Once your camera settings are giving
The principle of “seeing” your light is something that will be coming out consistently. This makes up such a large portion of all photography. With no light, there can be no photography!
you an exposure that doesn’t blow out highlights or underexpose the side of the face to the window, you can start shaping your light.
One does not need much to create a great looking portrait. Using only the natural light from a window, we’ll go step by step through what it takes to create a great looking corporate portrait. Let’s begin. I know this will help anyone in future that needs to shoot a portrait. I’ve included a lighting diagram in case you are unsure of anything. Enjoy shooting, until the next issue!
02 Start off placing your model next to
the window at a 90degree angle. So either with the window on the right or left of the model’s face. Now put your camera facing your subject. This is your starting point.
DURATION 1 hour LEVEL OF difficulty Beginner
06 You can take this one step further by 05 Add a reflector on the opposite Seagram Pearce Seagram Pearce works as a freelance photographer throughout South Africa and Internationally. Honored to be awarded both local & international photographic awards such as Hasselblad Masters. Specialising in automotive & people in editorial & advertising sectors. www.seagrampearce.com
03 Camera settings: This will always be
different depending on the time of day & amount of available light. A general guideline is the widest aperture your lens can go (eg: f4.0 or f2.8) and a shutter speed around 1/125 with ISO100. If your image is too dark, lower your shutter speed (no less than 1/60 though!) or push your ISO higher. If your image is too bright, up your shutter speed.
side of your window. So ‘sandwich’ your subject between the window & reflector. You’ll immediately notice a massive change! Your subject’s face is no longer heavily lit on the one side & dark shadows on the other. You’re now balancing out your light falling on your subject. The principle is bouncing light. You can vary the intensity of the light bounced by the distance you put your reflector from your subject. Play around. See what looks good.
adding a 2nd light bounce from below. Hand your model another reflector, or even a white piece of cardboard! Let them hold it on their lap or raised to just below their face. This will now also bounce light up under the nose, eyes & cheek jowls. This 2 light bounce setup can be balanced beautifully to create a near studio-like lighting look & feel.
07 Retouching is optional. I personally
feel skin tones can always do with a hint of colour correction. Very red skin can be reduced to a more brown/orange complexion. This varies on skin types and of course who your subject was.
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