Who’s your cereal bar?

Wild Bar

Wild Bar

Whether you missed breakfast, need a workout power boost or a mid-afternoon snack, there’s always a cereal bar to get you going.  Despite their crunchy, hippie origins, cereal, granola or power bars are today a billion-dollar industry of highly sophisticated, designed foodstuffs. But what does this food group really look like?

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[SUM]one

Convite [SUM]one

Eu tive o prazer de escrever o texto que acompanha a peça do atelier Miguel Rios Design nesta exposição, a qual traz à mesma sala – e à mesma mesa – uma artista (Ângela Ferreira) e um atelier de design.

Design on Trial · Abitare

Page from issue 493 of Abitare

Konstantin Grcic’s 360ºC chair for Magis is a product that defies classification. It’s a chair that doesn’t look like anything we have around us these days. It’s a bit like stool, but it has a sort of a small back. It looks hard, but it’s actually much softer to the touch than one would thing. As with other of Grcic’s creations, it doesn’t look pretty, luxurious or particularly comfortable.

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Metropolis magazine, redesigned: when less is still too much

Metropolis magazine, September 2009

Metropolis magazine, September 2009

The printed version of Metropolis magazine has shrunk as of last September. The result of a publishing crisis-induced redesign (in corner-cutting times, every inch counts), the magazine’s new size did not resolve its two other most pressing ills: an unclear international ambition and an art direction that doesn’t seem to know its place.

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Speed Limits

CCA

I first wrote a 600-word review of Speed Limits for icon magazine in late May of 2009. It ended up being edited down to just over 450 words, losing in my view some of the details that I liked best. In late June I sent my original piece (with a few changes) to the frieze Writer’s Prize, a yearly award for art criticism. I had previously asked the editors of frieze (who don’t usually accept design exhibition reviews) if Speed Limits would be eligible, as it had as starting point Marinetti’s manifesto. They agreed, and I sent it. In late August I got news from Jennifer Higgie, who said I had been selected, among over 300 entries, as one of the jury’ 8 commended writers.

Both texts are now available here, the first under icon, the second under unpublished.