Hard Candy (Not By Madonna)

This fun find of the day is from Maison & Objet OXYGENE magazine, featuring a spectacular editorial piece by Vincent Poinas (stylist) and Arnaud Gouallec (photographer). Poinas and Gouallec took the conceptual task of turning regular and precious raw material into decor that's deliciously different for display in the magazine's Fall exhibition in Paris.

**photos via yatzer.com, sourced from Maison & Objet OXYGENE magazine

"Start at the beginning.." said the Mad Hatter to Alice...

The following work could be considered very typical of me as a Dubai gal. Coming from a Bedouin Arab heritage, I’m one of the first people you’d expect to jump on the heavily ridden heritage art wagon here in the U.A.E (even though local artists are not the only ones on that ever beaten path).

So when does this stuff get old? Well it already is, literally… Joke. ☺

I’ve steered away almost completely my entire (short) design student life from doing what I had considered stereotypical of the region’s creative community, I even rebelled with a Swiss design phase (or what was close enough). But once upon a time in my sophomore year, I decided to get the local out of my system and the following photo series was born. This was a final in my Photography Basics course, labeled Heritage Stills; a recreation of typical traditional settings from dated life in the Emirates. The grainy quality of film helped with its past like quality (I’m hoping you wouldn’t know they’d been shot in the metropolis that is Dubai, 2005), and a special thanks to the Dubai Heritage Village for providing the actors and settings used.

Traditional Dagger Carved In Stone

Old Woman in typical yard setting

Blacksmith in his Workshop - anonymity in this photo and the previous one is intentional to keep the characters iconic heritage figures from the past; almost ghostly even.

Food covers hanging on a wall - both the wall and the covers are made fully from Palm Trees and their derivatives.

Inside a typical Storage RoomFirewood for cooking and making coffee, set close to camp. Typical setting of a wandering Bedouin nomad.

Portrait of an Old Man

Still shot of a man reaching for the ‘finyan’ or small coffee cup. The bowl close by is filled with water and used to dispense of used cups immediately, avoiding stains.

Composition 1

Composition 2

Wit Caught On Camera

One of my current Professors once mentioned that the difference between graduate work and student work is that graduate work communicates clearly and narrows down to a single point; while students tend to prove their 'out of the box' thought process by tending to go all over the place - Sigh!

I don't know if Robert Gligorov was ever a student, in fact I don't really know much about him at all since most of what I've found on him is in a foreign language (probably Macedonian or some slavic dialect, -do you know?). All I do know is that he hails from Macedonia and was born in 1960.. And that his work pretty much rocks, and does an outstanding feat of being communicative and focused on the single idea behind each piece - Truly great stuff to look up to :)

Here are my picks, or you can click here for the rest


** photos via http://dar-jan.livejournal.com/267001.html

Age before beauty - Or not?

Being young and still-a-student in the design world, I always associated brilliant work with years of experience. That’s not to say that I don’t see a lot of great work from relatively up and coming designers and school work, but ever since being the freshman that I was, if we were to research designers we’d always go for the greats. Carson, Rand, Glaser, etc.. And they’re all pretty seasoned in what they do. Maybe it’s a school thing?
I think to an extent, I spent a long time thinking that the only way to be absolutely brilliant is to spend a lot of time doing whatever it is that you do.. There’s truth to that, but it can also be twisted into an easy scapegoat out of holding personal work to a higher standard-because guess what! I’m only and still a small fish compared to all those out there, etc…etc…etc.. You see my point.

So with all that being said, here’s to youth and inspirational work (and no I’m not going to obnoxiously put my own work with that claim, not yet anyhow ☺ ), and here’s to this post’s star – 20 year old Phillip Schilling from Plauen, Germany. His brilliant image making skills and mixed media approach definitely puts him as one to watch, I'm showing some of my favorites of his work in this post, but you can check out the rest of his work on his website colorbunch.com or click on the print thumbnail below

(his work's also been displayed in Advanced Photoshop magazine)

**all images in the post are courtesy of colorbunch.com and are Schilling's personal work. I'm in no way affiliated with the designer, but only paying tribute to great talent with inclusion of these images.

The comeback...

Yes, I’ve fallen into the blogging pit again, this time perhaps with more focus on what I want out of my blog. Designerly is back, on its way to becoming ‘ferosh’ and fabulous as soon as I get down to giving it a visual makeover (hence the beta), dahling.

First things first, I’d like to thank my best friend – a fabulous non-designer- who used the word “designerly” ever so often that it helped me coin a title for a blog that, although I had an idea flow of content for, lacked a proper name.

Now that DINAW is born, I hope you’ll stay tuned to posts related to life in the scholarly lane as a design major, heads up on what’s out there in the design world (things I think are pretty effin' cool), and stuff from reviews to life in the city.