Mostly, I am not a big fan of VICE Magazine, but the Vice TV productions sometimes are very recommendable. Berlin Fashion Week started today, but you might be interested in how the same event is celebrated in cities that don’t get as much attention as Paris, Milano or New York. In the series Fashion Week Internationale, journalist and ex model Charlet Duboc travels to e.g. Seoul, Jamaica, Tel Aviv and Nigeria and digs deeper into the countries’ culture, ideals of beauty and societal challenges. Find all episodes here or just search on Youtube.

It is on the day one year ago that I wrote about the book fair in Leipzig and also this year I saw a bunch of inspiring books there – content-wise as well as regarding the design and production.  I spent hours admiring the nominees and winners of the yearly award »Best Book Design From All Over The World« and the presentations of the students of different German book art study programmes, find some impressions in the pictures. Another highlight was the Korean Pavillon – every single book here could have won the best book award, in my opinion!
I concluded my weekend in Leipzig with a visit to »It’s a book, it’s a stage, it’s a public space«,  a meeting of small independent publishers, where I met friends who presented their cool project »Publishing as (part time) practice«. Check it out here, I heard they will come to Berlin with it, soon.

We love you too.

Thank you for the wonderful show at Volksbühne in Berlin yesterday night … all we are saying is give peace a chance!

Images top to bottom:
– 1969, Yoko Ono  | Clay Perry
– Yoko Ono und John Lennon – Bed-In for Peace, 1969. Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam, 25.-31. März 1969
– Unknown
– Yoko Ono, thewire.co.uk
– War is over | imago

Once more Berlin Fashion Week came and went; but some impressions are still lingering on. Like the presentation by Augustin Teboul, atmospherically illuminated by a wonderfully warm and bright light concept. The collection is black and dominated by intricate lace and crochet elements. As usual, you might say, but experts agreed upon a progress in Augustin Teboul’s work which in this collection became evident in more graphical and ethnical elements. Check out for yourselves here!

What started out already in 1966 as a competition for the best posters in the GDR has become a dear recurring event: The exhibition »Die 100 besten Plakate des Jahres« (100 Best Posters of the Year) is once more on display at Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz. 53 posters from Germany, 45 from Switzerland and 2 from Austria were awarded for their outstanding design, whereof 23 of the prize-winning entries are posters designed by students.
We were great fans of the posters by the following designers: Paula Troxler for a Moby Dick theater play, Valeria Gordeew for a masked ball at Udk Berlin, Markwald & Neusitzer for an exhibition of islandic artist erró, Björn-Christian Schiebe for the Museum of Natural Sciences.
Have a look at all winning posters here or check other dates of the travelling exhibition.

We went out to see Sarah Illenbergers exhibition at voo store in Kreuzberg. Some of the exhibits apparently were done just at the same day but a lot of her work was familiar. Nevertheless it was nice to see some of the originals and the beetroot diamonds, the pomegranate and the blonde apple just made us smile!

Right in time for Berlin Fashion Week, the lookbook we designed for eyewear label Lunettes Kollektion arrived from the printers. Great glasses, perfect models, beautiful photos shot by David Fischer and styled by Rainer Metz … a welcome dash of colour in Berlin’s grey weather. Check out the new Lunettes collection at the Collect Showroom!

Thanks to everybody who joined to celebrate the release of Π#2 at voo store. And a special thanks to the wonderful Almdudlerdern for yodeling along!

Photos: Christian Smirnow

The next flyer we did for TGA is announcing the show of allrounder and power woman Polina Lapkovskaja and her partner – come and see on thursday, 28th july 2011 at Bethanien!

A little potpourri of things we saw last week during Fashion Week in Berlin. We complemented Reality Studio’s presentation on Alte Schönhauser Straße with a closer look at the collection in Arne Eberle’s Collect Showroom. After some more stops we congratulated Alfhild Sarah Külper on her grand graduation at Central Saint Martins, which made Lady Gaga instantly order one of her 3D-dresses. On Saturday our Fashion Week excursion was rounded off with a Œ Magazine get-together at ninety-five gallery on Torstraße.
As lovers of printed matter we like to take along the publications accompanying Fashion Week, first of all DERZEIT fashion week Berlin daily.

For the second time Corbis awarded a prize for the best cover in corporate publishing media at BCP. We are really happy that our cover for »The Romantic Issue« of Electronic Beats Magazine won this special prize! The image of the romantic German shepherd was shot by Mikael Kennedy. »The cover is the perfect adaption of this issues’ topic romanticism. A strong and exceptional image that intentionally breaks with the viewing habits of its target group, the ‘Digital Natives’.« Yay! Photographer: Mikael Kennedy / Art Direction: Lisa Borges / Editor-in-Chief: Viktoria Pelles / Publisher: Commandante

As usual, the weather was great at the Berlin design exhibition DMY 2011. The exhibiting designers were inspired by nature, raw materials like wood, wool, hemp and concrete and sustainability can no longer be considered as a »trend«, it is a mindset that is here to stay. You don’t see very much of this in my pictures, though, my day apparently was more about colours and funny animals…

This was long overdue: Berlin-based publishing house Gestalten finally opened a shop/exhibition space! But the waiting was worth the while: Situated in Sophie-Gips-Höfe in Mitte, »Gestalten Space« spreads over more than 300 square metres and offers all the great books by Gestalten, covering everything relevant in the international design scene. Besides, you can buy selected products by designers & artists who have been previously published by Gestalten. The gallery space is inaugerated with the exhibition »Cutters Edges« displaying contemporary collages by 50 international artists.

This weekend, I visited the book fair in Leipzig. Besides presenting an overwhelming amount of literary novelties, the fair is also dedicated to book art. At the yearly exhibition »Best Book Design From All Over The World« arranged by Stiftung Buchkunst you can admire really beautiful books. Great layout, fantastic material choices (especially the Asian people know how to work with paper), sophisticated bindings and other extra details lifted my spirits. 14 books were rewarded, check out the winners here!

Together with more than 30 photographers, stylists, hair & make-up artists and models we were part of a fun project during the last weeks. We took care of the visual concept and layout of »Œ Magazine«, which is a new fashion magazine that focuses on Berlin’s fashion scene. The magazine is non-commercial and is in parts financed by crowdfunding. Check out the project’s campaign video here on WeFund and if you like it, feel free to support a good cause!

Contributing photographers: Amos Fricke, Dirk Merten, Lars Borges, Christoph Schemel, Andreas Lux, Jochen Arndt, Rachel de Joode, Clément Martz

Contributing stylists: Christian Stemmler, Christof Post, Rainer Metz, Åsa Lundström, Brenda Barr, Antje Gohlke, MAVEN, Julian Zigerli

Contributing hair & make-up artists: Alexander Soltermann, Henriette Höft, Manuela Kopp, Miriam Jochims

Funny electricity, serially numbered doors and beautiful floors: we´ll miss all that when c/o Fotogalerie has to move out of Postfuhramt and the place gets transformed into another shopping mall! Until the 27th of March you have the chance to see their last exhibition there, a Robert Mapplethorpe Retrospective.

Series are appealing to me: You start observing your environment in a new way when you are on to something, you discover patterns and you can collect – objects, photos, texts. So it is not surprising that I enjoyed the exhibition »In love, to:« by AFF Architects at DAZ. It is part of a series with three up-and-coming architect studios telling us about their inspiration, design processes and methodology – their »Formula X«, quite simply. AFF’s formula is influenced by objects and images from their past and present, things they love and like to surround themselves with.

So nice to see that Berlin makes one small step after the other towards being the exciting fashion capital everybody likes to talk about. Yesterday we attended the shop opening of »Happy Shop« on Torstraße and we think that this colorful shop with premium and middle priced clothes with a playful and humourous attitude adds another facet to Berlin’s fashion assortment. The head behind the shop is designer Mischa Alexandra Woeste, known from her fashion label, Smeilinener.  Happy clothes, happy people, happy music, happy food, happy Maven : )

This sunday we´ll celebrate  a relaxed advent afternoon with an exhibition in our office. Work of the following artists will be exhibited:
Casey McGonagle
Benne Ochs
Franziska Sinn
Chelsee Ivan
Jeff Luker
Irina Rozovsky
Lars Borges
Delaney Allen

The museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden combines the two american artists Duane Hanson and Gregory Crewdson in the exhibition »Unheimliche Wirklichkeiten«. Each in his own media, they deal with reality in an irritating way: Crewdson creates elaborate sets in which he freezes weird moments of pseudo-reality and Hanson builds hyperrealistic life-sized clothed fiberglass figures. Might be an interesting combination, there is time until the 6th of march 2011 to find out.