Miriello Grafico

It seems all over the world the economic malaise is reason for people to be more inventive and to find new ways to move ideas forward.  A friend from Milano just attended a show called LOVE DESIGN.  She said, “It is a different type of event for Milano  -conceived to help AIRC (the Italian research against cancer) rather than to just sell furniture. The idea is beautiful and smart: some of the biggest furniture business, in need of opportunity, are selling some of the best design pieces at a big discount. All the money goes to help AIRC. My only complaint is that the VIP’s bought up all the deals at their private viewing ahead of the public. Very Italian. Very frustrating!”

LOVE DESIGN was well done and well document here.

I heard about Memolio, a new twist on on-line publishing for small flip-book-like brochures. It’s similar to Moocard, but combines a method of chicago-screwing the corners of 24 pages of images together to form a small cool, tight picturebook.  I created a dry-run booklet, using images from our village in Italy, Radicondoli. Aside from the images printing on the dark side, and the cost per unit being somewhat prohibitive (about $22 each), it’s still a very cool and thought-provoking concept.Now how to use it ???

Preview the Memolio Radicondoli sample in detail here or click on the photo.

The Slow Food movement started in Torino Italy and touched a nerve across the globe. Eat locally, support the local economy and build real community, around food.  For most Italians is not something that needs to be learned, but rather something they’re striving not to forget.

Douglas Gayeton is a writer,  photographer, ice cream maker and now author as very well. He’s  just published a very cool book called  SLOW LIFE IN A TUSCAN TOWN.

Douglas in his on-line interview, explained how the project started this way, ” I was eating at a restaurant near my apartment in Pistoia, Italy and after the meal, I went into kitchen and I said to the chef, “Everything was very good. I wish I could cook like this.” And he said, “Come back tomorrow morning.” So, the next morning at eight o’clock, I met him at a caffé and we went to a butcher. We went to buy all these vegetables. Then, I found myself working for six months at his restaurant. At the time, PBS asked about doing a piece on Slow Food, which was going to be a documentary with a bunch of talking heads. The people in my town, they all lived philosophy of Slow Food, but they didn’t even know what Slow Food was. I tried to capture that.”

I’ve already invited him to our house in Italy so we can compare stories and discoveries. Hope it happens.

The photography and overdrawing by Gayeton are a great visual approach for the text. It’s published by Welcome Books.  rm

When I told designer Michael Osborne I was going to be in Italy he said, “You gotta go see my design mentor, Primo Angeli. He’s living in Spoleto now. And if you don’t like Primo, you’ll still love his wife Deanie”.

I’d heard about Primo Angeli for decades, as he developed his packaging empire in San Francisco, but we had never met. I was intrigued to get an idea of what a wildly successful, type-A designer might be doing now in the bucolic small town of Campello Sul Clitunno, near Spoleto in Umbria, Italy. Maybe he spends his days covered in paint, grappling with immense canvases, straining to express his client-suppressed creative vision. Maybe he’s become a wine expert, amassing a wine cellar of Italy’s unknown best. Or maybe he’s still just trying to wind down from 40 year of running a top creative firms in a city that was at the center of the outer most reaches of the change and experimentation in the 60’s and 70’s.

Marlane and I spent two days with Primo and his rock-of-Gibralter and beautiful wife Deanie, in Campello. I found that Primo is doing a little bit of everything I projected and more. He’s still making sense of the business he piloted for decades,  stories of it’s wild successes and failures find their way into much of what he talks about. I learned that Primo loves to tell stores, like how his jukebox-selling father pleaded with him in broken English to not go into design, “Please Primo, donta do dis ding.” And I learned that Primo is also lucky, lucky to be the first born (Primo) instead of the second (Secondo). Secondo Angeli Design, just doesn’t have the same zing does it.

He doesn’t speak much Italian after ten year in Italy. But he can find the exact words for the situation when he needs them. It’s one of his gifts. When the cook at their favorite local restaurant came back to refill a basket of deep fried antipasti, Primo blurted, “Questi sono criminali”. (Those things are criminal!)

Seeing what people do with their success interests me greatly.  Primo and Deanie are living their full lives in Umbria with their opera singing son and his new wife, creating new and simple successes every day. Just like the day we spent together becoming new and fast friends. “I’ma glad you doin dat ding Primo.”- Ron

In the September 08 edition of Wired magazine there’s a small article on a very cool little Germany company called Fluidforms. These guys have wired together Google maps + CAD cutting technologies and a web interface to allow some very amazing one-of-a-kind things to be made. I just went to their site www.fluid-forms.at and ordered a topographic CAD cut wooden bowl-form of our home village in Italy- Radicondoli (Si).

The Fluidforms site allows you to enter a place or zip code like Google Maps, but then renders the location into topo form so you can preview it’s potential as a sculptural object. A very innovative combination of technology that creates a company “brand” that’s both customer centric and entirely made-to-order.

Here’s what they say about themselves: “Each part of the earth is unique in then design of her heights and depths. Fluidforms enables customers to have a piece of this singularity on a table at home. The different contour lines of a chosen area define the shape of the bowl. An expedition into landscapes and cities only known from hiking. The earth becomes a sensory experience, that can be filled with the fruits of the earth.”

When I travel I try to connect with craftsmen whenever I can. (Here are a few photos of a Rome woodcarver and Pisticci shoemaker, two of many I’ve managed to pester, befriend and often then take to lunch.) It’s been a way to learn and connect with real people in far away places. The tools that craftsmen use have also been a fascination. I come home with cool jewelry shaping anvils or wood chisels, just because they were so well designed and impeccably crafted. So when we got a call recently from Craig Winer and Garry Chinn from Garrett Wade in New York City asking if Miriello Grafico might be interested in helping their “tools for enthusiasts” catalog perform better, the answer was an easy “yes”.

Garry has been traveling the world for decades sourcing the coolest, best-made hand tools the world has to offer. Japanese specialty saws, Swedish carving knives, re-issued British tools made from the original metal molds, all the hard to find, form-follows- function tools that transcend their original functional role.

We’re in the process of diving deep into the Garrett Wade brand and catalog design. When the product is as good as this, the design work is more about setting the stage than fabricating a story. I love working when it feels like play.

Garry and Craig’s Garrett Wade site is : www.garrettwade.com

A vortex-shaped surface which reacts to sunlight.

From Dezeen Magazine-

OR is the boldest installation project at the Milan International Furniture Fair 2008, a vortex-shaped surface which reacts to sunlight.

The polygonal segments of the surface react to ultra-violet light, mapping the position and intensity of solar rays. When in the shade, the segments of OR are translucent white. However, when hit by sunlight they become colored, flooding the space below with different hues of light. At night, OR transforms into an enormous ‘chandelier’, disseminating light into the surrounding courtyard, an atmospheric space for events and gatherings.

The hues generated by the photo-reactive surface are therefore indicators of changes in weather and daylight, a dynamic architectural tool that can be used on building exteriors. OR is skin, OR is shining, OR is the light OR the shade.

OR is the first time that photo-reactive technology has been used on an architectural scale. The ecological structure is a step in exploring the possibilities of photo-reactive materials in the fields of furniture and design. The beauty of OR is its constant interaction with the elements. Each moment of the day is unique.

The project was developed by the architects and designers Ran Ankori, Francesco Brenta, Maya Carni, Christoph Klemmt, Laura Micalizzi and Elisa Oddone

Learn more at: http://www.klemmt.com/