CULT BOOK: Gestalten’s Play all day
WE FINALLY GOT OUR HANDS on Gestalten’s ‘Play All Day: Design For Children’ tome dedicated to unusual, creative and off-beat children’s design. And what a meaty, inspiring tome it is too. We asked author and Gestalten’s creative director, Sven Ehmann - Berlin-based father to a four-year-old daughter - for his favourite children’s design-led projects from the book.
1. Jan von Holleben and his “dreams of flying” images. so simple, so rich in imagination.
I love the fact that Jan von Holleben’s “dreams of flying” photographs are so simple and easy-going. He has this ability to create a whole world with very simple means. Looking at the images you can still feel how much fun it was for him and the kids to create such scenes and to live out their dreams. The sad thing is that his idea was copied so very often in very uninspired ways. I remember seeing ads by a denim brand at a fashion trade show in Spain, that were just too close to the original. Getting inspired by good work and taking it further is one thing - and we hope to inspire parents, children, designers and others to play with this idea further - but copying with no own additional idea is just bad.
2. Marije Vogelsang and her playful way of bringing all sorts of food to children’s attention.
Marije started as a product designer and at one point decided to use food as her material, just as others are using wood or metal or any other fabric. All her projects are invitations to re-experience food. Not in a glamorous, food stylist way, but in a very simple but always surprising way. She challenges her guests - kids and grown-ups alike - to question their eating habits, to pay more attention to details and - not least - to enjoy food as well as the social experience of eating again in a fresh way.
3. Jordi Ferreiro and his DIY workshops
I always enjoy it when I see kids in art exhibitions, and they start laughing at paintings by Picasso, while all the grown-ups are so dead serious. Looking at the work by artists like, let’s say, Miro I feel that all they tried was being a kid again. Jordi’s approach to inviting children to experience art and the museum context without fear or distance is perfect to create a better, more open and curious relationship between children and the arts - and the fact that he learns from those workshops for his own work as well, makes it even nicer.
4. Die Baupiloten and their way of making a formerly grey school a more colourful and successful place to learn.
There are lots of new school and kindergarten projects around these days, but often it seems that they are much more about the aesthetics and surface than about the issue of learning, playing and communication. The projects by Die Baupiloten are outstanding in this regard since they work with the school children - almost as their clients - to define the scope of the project. By that they manage to create school spaces - even in socially challenging urban environments - that the kids identify with so much more that in the end they learn better and get better grades: which gives them a completely new set of skills and opportunities. What more can a school do?
5. Everything by FriendsWithYou. They are the Peter Pans of design.
I simply love the work of FriendsWithYou. Whatever they do - prints, animations, t-shirts, toys, playgrounds - it is positive, light, happy, full of love and always with a smile. The friends are kids themselves and they enjoy all the stuff they do so much, while being highly professional at the same time - which is a rare mix somehow. Just imagine that they put up a huge rainbow coloured bounce house at an art show during Art Basel Miami… that is how they are.
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