Pattern Pulp

Twitter Influencer: Alyssa Nassner




Alyssa Nassner is a charming illustrator, surface designer and overall creative lady. By day, she works as a surface designer in Minneapolis at Paper Bicycle and freelance illustrates by night. Additionally, Alyssa co-runs a collaborative project called Ten Paces and Draw and recently launched another delightful side-project called Positive-Inking.

Always looking to grow, she also dabbles in cartooning, screen-printing, and pattern design. With so many different skills and projects, twitter is a fantastic place to stay up to date. An expert user of the medium, she’s friendly, enthusiastic and engaging, keeping in touch and making connections with design and art peers around the world.

 

July 20, 2012 | By: Shayna Kulik

Jenny Hart




Jenny Hart first tried embroidery in the summer of 2000 as a means to deal with stress and anxiety and quickly became known for her stitched portraits of the famous and infamous. She founded Sublime Stitching in 2001 with a new model for embroidery design and resources. Hart has since become an internationally recognized artist and designer and has authored eight award-winning titles on embroidery for Chronicle Books.

Her works have appeared in numerous books and magazines including Vogue, Rolling Stone, BUST, Nylon, Juxtapoz, The New York Times Magazine and others. Hart’s work is in multiple public and private collections of note, including the estate of Elizabeth Taylor. In 2012, her embroidery will be included in a 40-year retrospective group show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery.

July 20, 2012 | By: Shayna Kulik

Patterns in Chocolate




Though we sent a brief thumbs up about this last Friday, we realized it was worth sharing the video for the true impact of why it’s so special (thank you Grace). Artists are always weaving hidden transformations and surprises into their work and Studio Wieki Somers along with chocolatier Rafael Mutter outdid themselves with their installment, Chocolate Mill. In conjunction with the Gerrit Rietveld retrospective, Vitra Design Museum invited five of the most innovative designers from the Netherlands to develop a concept.

As the wheel is ground down, new shapes, patterns and colors emerge, revealing patchworks of mouth-watering ingredients. In their own words,

“We have created a device, a chocolate carrousel, by adapting a machine used mainly in Switzerland as a cheese slicer. We use it in a different way, as an instrument that mediates between us and the chocolate. We also designed the chocolate which the machine processes, by inserting memories into it like fossils. By rotating the carrousel’s arm, one image appears while another fades away.

Eating the delicate flowers generated by this process will be a completely new experience of tasting chocolate. Unlike breaking a conventional chocolate bar, the material now becomes so fragile and generous. It is affluence and scarcity at the same time: slicing layers of pleasure.”

 

July 20, 2012 | By: Shayna Kulik

100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design




Though we encounter graphic design all-day-every-day, we rarely contemplate it’s roots. Worldwide authorities on genre, Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne recently took to the task of combing the past 100 years of design and compiling a wonderful book examining the top 100 game-changing ideas.

The entries are arranged in chronological order and range from technical (overprinting, rub-on designs, split fountain); to stylistic (swashes on caps, loud typography, and white space); to objects (dust jackets, design handbooks); and methods (paper cut-outs, pixelation). This richly informative and lavishly illustrated book is both a great source of inspiration and a provocative record of industry greats.

Cover image via The Salt Lab 

 

July 18, 2012 | By: Shayna Kulik

Fluidity with Carolina Herrera




Off the heels of an evolution-from-watercolor post, it’s only appropriate to self-contradict, right? Kidding, but watercolors still feel luxurious and the application’s not going away anytime soon. It’s been interesting to observe the range in motif design across various home and fashion sectors. Carolina Herrera’s 2013 Resort Collection went live on Moda Operandi yesterday and in an attempt to peel my eyes off of this treasure of a gown, I fell for these whimsical prints: bleeding blocks and wild bunnies.

 

July 17, 2012 | By: Shayna Kulik

Merging Soft & Sharp




Over the past few seasons we’ve seen watercolors flood the home, type and paper markets. From organic textures to electric florals, soft bleeding edges have counter balanced the pixel trend. Today we’re discussing a merging of the concepts.

Parris Wakefield Additions, a UK-based interiors company founded by Howard Wakefield and Sarah Parris creates pillows, rugs and wallpaper merging crisp transparencies with graphic kaleidoscopes. Feeling both painterly and digital, the patterns are unique with broad, modern appeal, thanks to commercial color palettes. We suggest checking out their blog, as it’s an interesting window into their design process.

 

July 16, 2012 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tracking Repetitive + Awesome.
On Instagram.