I love tearing through design rags and eating up every sketch, color, detail, and space. There’s so much to consume that you get full quickly. All of those handcrafted objects, bent steel widgets, and angular pastel shapes take on some iteration of De Stil or Bauhaus and get lost in the forgettable. Some, however, are absolute fire!
The really cool stuff pulls you so hard you scan the room for a waxed pencil and a bright pink post-it to earmark the thing. The thing can be any of the thousands of well-designed objects and spaces curated by the periodical. I once ogled over a corked topped side table for the form and orange of the stems that held it upright. I do the same for colors in textiles, modern typefaces in corporate branding, patterns in Scandinavian quilting, buildings finished of soft pink stucco, and bright yellow stainless-steel ranges. Those items that evoke are hunted, discovered, collected, and categorized.
I then tear through the design magazines, literally. When an object calls, it is cut out using clunky school scissors, my fat hands, or an Xact-O knife if care is needed. Each piece of cool is labeled “color”, “pattern”, “typeface”, “product”, or “space” and then composed onto an art board of cheap butcher paper and titled with the periodical’s name and release date. The final composition is simply my edit of the magazine I spent 30 minutes scavenging.
With so much stuff to see, only a handful of things really matter.
I recently rummaged through the summer issues of Interior Design – May through August 2018 – and offer you Rick’s “Summer of Cool”.
ID May 2018
Typeface – MTT Milano Black; OFS Corporate logo
Pattern – “Paris” Wall graphic by Rapt Studio at TV Studio Turner. ATL
Space – Learning Annex by BC Architects. Morocco.
Product – “Darning Sampler” Textiles by Maharam.
Color – Pantone P5-5C
Color – Pantone 10129C
Color – Pantone 3538 UP
ID June 2018
Color – Pantone 101 12C
Typeface – Nimbus Sans Novus Heavy
Architecture – “Kitz” Hotel. Germany; Meyer Architecture
ID July 2018
Product – “Courts” Rug by Coombs, Corrado, & Kaplan
Product – “NudaFlat” Lavatory by Ceramica Flaminia
Pattern – “X” by Lissoni Architecture
Typeface – Swiss 721 + Europa Grotesk SH Demibold
Color – Pantone 3588 CP
ID August 2018
Color – Pantone 13 – 1520 TCX
Typeface – Uniform Rounded
Pattern – “Steps” by Alexander Girard