Design Walk 2010 / Poles Apart

Since 2007 there has been a distinctive reason to come to Athens in February and wander around the historic center of the city: the Design Walk. Each year, graphic design studios open their doors to visitors, inviting them to follow a trail that brings them closer to the most functional and everyday applied art.

The walk takes place in the most vibrant area of the city next to the Acropolis, leading the visitors between cult shops and hip bars to discover works by award-winning graphic designers. For the 2010 walk, double-decker, the London-based curating agency, is challenging 13 Graphic Design Studios to create a piece of work inspired by the contradictions / oppositions with which every designer has to deal, and which arise from fundamental questions in design methodology. The resulting exhibition, POLES APART, will give a unique visual insight into the creative process – as well as its curious contradictions.

Participants: 3 in a Box, Bios, The Design Shop, Designpark, G, Geometry, I AM Design etc., Indyvisuals, Mums Design, Pi6, Poor Designers, Sereal Designers, The Switch Place Identity.

For more information visit the official Design Walk site of the Facebook Design Walk group.

Picture by Alexandros Gavrilakis during the press conference in Bios.

Last days in Heaven

The 2nd Athens Biennale 2009 HEAVEN closes on Sunday 4 October. The Athens Biennale consists of six exhibitions with more than 150 artists from all over the world. The picture above is from an installation by Miltos Manetas.

Keywords

Commercial or public display signs, are meant to sign collectively. In Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio area (ΚΜ), new and old signages, functional and derelict, hand crafted or guerrilla like, all blend in various languages.

Neither meaningful nor meaningless, they appear like keywords. Revealing an internal structure, sometimes a rhetoric or a reasoning, they stand out as autonomous clusters of aesthetics, cultures and personal trajectories, signposting a fragile diversity in transit.

The installation by design agency busybuilding presents over 600 different images of signages as found in the KM area during ReMap 2.

KEYWORDS is part of Remap 2, an international art programme parallel to the Athens Biennale.

Pi6 wins IF

Pi6 (π6) belongs to the new generation of design studios in Athens. The design studios that have managed to make things moving in Greece. They design all sorts of communication material, from branding to art books. This work, designed earlier this year to record the Athens Design Walk 2008, just won an IF Communication Design Award.

Flower Power

Greek graphic designer Paris Koutsikos started posting gigantic photocopied flowers on the walls of Athens about a year ago. I like these urban-romantic details in the city but most of all I'm enjoying this fresh use of a cliché!