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
DESIGN HERO: Alexander Girard
THE WORK OF MID-CENTURY design hero, Alexander Girard (1907-1993), is getting harder and harder to ignore. The latest Girard re-edition is a set of new trays for Vitra, the company that has been working on reissuing designs from Girard’s archives since inheriting them upon his death. But then again, why would you want to ignore it?
With a folky take on modern, Girard was well before his time. A contemporary of Mies van der Rohe and the Eames, who when his friends were pioneering Modern furniture design and architecture in California, moved from Michigan to New Mexico to focus on a wholly new type of design.
Girard was into loopy-loo, vital colour and ethnic pattern and themes - such as the Mother & Child motif seen on the Vitra tray above, and the Madonna Plyprint, pictured right - before it was considered acceptable to indulge in such things, and on his death he left over 100,000 folk objects to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. It was Girard who coloured much of Charles Eames’ work, becoming Herman Miller’s textiles director in the 50s under creative director George Nelson.
All but forgotten for a number of decades, Girard is back in the spotlight thanks partly to Eckart Maise, the enthusiastic director of interiors at Vitra - who says that going through Girard’s archives was like “a discovery: his work is immensely rich and vibrant.” The first Girard-Vitra reissue was a collection of hand-painted wooden folk ‘Dolls’ inspired by Girard’s own hand-made personal collection created for his own home. The three Vitra tray designs, meanwhile, including Eden below, £44 from The Lollipop Shoppe, all showcase Girard’s way with both figurative ethnic themes and pure colour. Read the rest of this article
Posted 20 August 2009 in Art + Graphic Design
SIGN OF THE TIMES: abcs
THERE’S A PLETHORA of stylish, graphic ABC posters and prints this season - all of which are spare and beautiful enough for anywhere in the house and not just the baby’s room.
And in fact, thinks KinderGallery’s Fiona Lang, the impetus behind the likes of alphabet-inspired work from Gregoire Ganter, Charley Harper et al (what Lang calls our current “design fetish for showing off different typographies”), is as much adult-informed as it is for the kids. Many of us have fallen back in love with the retro typography of our childhoods and the last century: “as a great contrast to the internet/computer age - or perhaps as an extension of it.”
“These are design works appealing to modern parents who travel to New York or Berlin, and have a bit of ‘urban cool’ about them,” she adds. “Perhaps it’s that nostalgia that makes me buy “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and Dr Seuss books for my 2-year-old when it’s really me that loves the typography, illustrations and stories. I justify the purchases as worthwhile because ‘it’s good for kids to read.’”
Having said this, ABCs are still functional pieces of artwork. A friend who is currently fulfilling her three-year-old son’s desire to be able to read his favourite book titles, and so is tackling the alphabet for the first time, relishes every opportunity to talk letters - and the more visual, creative or super-cute the raw material, “the more enthusiastic my son is about learning and reading.” Read the rest of this article
Posted 30 May 2009 in Art + Graphic Design
WALL POWER: Limited Edition Art
NILOUFAR BAKHTIAR-CLIGNET and Julie Hamon’s new kids boutique, Bobo Kids, in Chelsea, London, is full of delectable goodies for children - from ZidZid soft toys, to soft green cot beds, to pink painted highchairs, and cushions by covetable French label Maison de Vacances - all possessing the ‘bourgeois-boheme’ European verve of this French/Swiss duo.
But it may well be its artwork Bobo becomes most well known for.
Niloufar’s personal passion is art for children, and when she met the photographic artist Robert Holden on a beach in Greece this summer, just before the store opened, a fortuitous new relationship was born. The artist agreed to offer a collection of still-lives based on little figurines (including the cartoon character, pictured left) donated by local children to a friend of his in South Africa as an exclusive. “He said they had been in his drawers for a while, and he didn’t know what to do with them. He picked a series of 13, and let us have five of each, plus one really big one. He was really happy to do it. As are all the artists we’ve met. They’re very keen - their agents not so.”
It’s a shame the agents still don’t take art for children seriously. But there’s a growing public, and number of galleries, that do and want to offer children something more than Winnie the Pooh on their walls. When decorating their home in Paris, Mélanie and Régis Evennou struggled to find art they wanted in their toddler twins’ room - despite knowing “there are so many talented children’s illustrators out there.” The duo decided to launch L’Affiche Moderne (’The Modern Poster’), a limited editions poster art e-shop, selling 300 editions of artworks commissioned from original artists, photographers and illustrators around the world (including ‘Red Apple’ by Limoon, bottom right, and ‘Marie-Kong’ by Franck Juery, bottom left) as a response. A good proportion of the stock is intended directly for, or suitable for, children.
Posted 6 December 2008 in Art + Graphic Design
BOOKISH TYPE: Ed Vere
ED VERE, the 35-year-old artist from London, (pictured left) could be one of the UK’s saviours of children’s picture books. Here the award-winning author of bold, modern and slightly subversive titles, Banana!, The Getaway, and latterly, Mr Big, talks morality, crime and idyllic childhoods spent in the Peak District…
LittleBig: How do you think you have got away with what some might consider risqué material for young children? For example, your Fingers McGraw mouse character in The Getaway who commits serial robbery (of cheese) and tries to enlist the help of the reader?
Ed Vere: I did wonder if it might be a problem - the fact Fingers doesn’t show any remorse for his crimes. But if you consider that as part of a mouse’s character they’re a bit cheeky and have the tendency to occasionally purloin the odd morsel of cheese, you could just about get away with it. Puffin were extremely encouraging. They wanted to do something less conventional, for which I’m very grateful. I think there can be a lot of pressure for English publishers to play it safe - particularly as they perceive the American market to be more conventional.
It seems sometimes that there’s also a perception that the book buying public in the UK aren’t particularly intelligent/sophisticated in their tastes, but I think that people who venture into bookshops to buy books for their children can be assumed to be intelligent people who want good, intelligent and challenging stuff for their children.
LB: Your books have a fabulous pre-war gangster feel to them (in a good way!). You’ve described it as Raymond Chandler for children. What other influences are in there?
Posted 1 October 2008 in Books
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