TOP FIVE: Colouring Books
THE KEY TO enjoying colouring in with your child is not just great pens (juicy, both fat and thin, and fab colours), but to love the colouring book so much you’d like to hide it under your pillow (or at least buy another copy) so you can indulge in a little late night colour therapy.
Our current favourites are here: Read the rest of this article
Posted 12 July 2010 in Books
PARENT PROFILE: Corinna Dean
FOR AUTHOR AND CURATOR Corinna Dean, 42, [pictured left in her kitchen], family life and modern art aren’t mutually exclusive. Her latest project, Bankside-on-Call, which runs until 4th July 2010 at 7 Chancel Street, London SE1 OUX, is a sonic landscape celebrating the past and present life of this newly regenerated part of London (thanks largely to the Tate Modern).
Corinna lives in a 1970s house in South London with her husband, furniture designer Matthew Hilton, and their son, Lucas, aged 6.
LittleBig: Describe your latest work project in layman terms!
CD: Bankside-on-Call is a response to all the commercial development going on around Bankside as a result of the success of Tate Modern. It is a pop-up parlour which acts as a salon where residents and passers-by can add to a sound recording leaving behind a record of their voices and opinions on the once rundown but much loved neighbourhood. The souvenirs on show are an imaginative response to the area’s grittier details. I have commissioned the textile designer Charlene Mullen to design a beautiful table cloth based on an 18th-century banqueting cloth which she has appropriated with details from a local caff in the area.
Posted 30 June 2010 in Art + Graphic Design
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.
Posted 14 June 2010 in Books
Editions Paumes: Children’s Rooms
WE’D BEEN RECOMMENDED the Editions Paumes series of lifestyle books by so many people, in the end it made sense that we stocked a selection of them in our shop.
If you don’t know, the boutique Japanese publishing company Paumes was founded by photographer and art director Hisashi Tokuyoshi and his wife Fumie Shimoji in 1997, two years after returning to Japan from Paris where they had worked with a number of French artists. On returning to Tokyo, they set up Paumes, initially as a way of featuring the work and lives of the artists they still represent to this day in their gallery and boutique known as Galerie Doux Dimanche.
Posted 26 April 2010 in Books
WALL STICKERS COMPETITION: sweet as chocovenyl
HOW TO MAKE now ubiquitous wall decals more enticing? Employ some of the best children’s illustrators out there and pick a sensuous fabric finish for your re-useable art.
That’s exactly what Nataly Nir of new decal outfit Chocovenyl has done with her range of art-based illustrations for walls, featuring the likes of illustrators Adolie Day (creator of Fairy, left), Jillian Phillips, and the Canadian Helen Dardik (who designed Red Riding Hood, below).
“I’ve followed the decal market for some time,” says Nataly from her newly adopted home in the north of England. “Yet I had my own vision of how they should be - I felt there was much room for creative exploration. I’m inspired by the richness of the best of children’s book illustrations, and I wanted to do more than decorate - there being enough flat colour vector cutouts on the market. I wanted to create a universe full of character, depth and colour. And with the matt, slight fabric texture, the [tear-resistent] decals look as if they belong to the wall.”
Graphic designer Nataly - mother to Troy, three and a half, and Mia, 18 months - chooses her artists on the basis of intuition alone: “We love whimsy!” she says, and there’s certainly something whimsical about LittleBig’s current favourite, Adolie Day’s Fairy. “Yes, she gets a lot of attention,” admits Nataly. “But she’s certainly isn’t sugar, is she?”
*Order at www.chocovenyl.co.uk
GIVEAWAY: We have two sets of Adolie Day’s Fairy design to give away (approximately 400 x 600mm). To have a chance to win, simply send us a quick email with Fairy in the title - to mail@littlebigmagazine.com. Winners will be picked at random on 15th October and notified by email.
Posted 14 September 2009 in Art + Graphic Design
Loading... 
