November 1st, 2013

Thaaaaaaank you!

After one year with so many different artists and designers the project „@createandrotate“ has come to an end. From the beginning the project was planned to end after one year = 52 weeks.

It was a great pleasure for us to meet all of you! Maybe we’ll return with a different creative project to enhance the intercultural communication between designers and artists from around the world.
Be curious!

Oktober 23rd, 2013

week #52 – @tsevis / Charis

9ee7208279d5d9040ae86710eeb02d80

Who are you and where do you come from?
Hi! I am Charis Tsevis.
I am a visual designer living in a small sea side suburb on the southern part of Athens.
I was born and raised in Athens and I have studied in Milan, Italy.
I am in love with the sun and the sea and of course with design.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
Mostly about creativity and design. I like to share great work of the world of design with my followers.
Sometimes I am also tweeting about social or political issues.

Tell us about your creative side:
I have been designing as long as I can remember. I am working as a professional designer since 17years old. Design is in the center of my whole life and it has influenced my whole perception of the world. I am trying to be creative in every other aspect of my life. I love to use what I have learned from design in cooking, teaching, traveling and any other activity I undertake.

What inspires you?
The first answer that comes to my mind is „absolutely everything“. Anything could be the starting point of a creative circle. From a beautiful moment in a day to an interesting taste. If I have to chose my favorite source of inspiration I would say that people are that source. People, stories of people and ideas of people are my favorite subject. Then, comes nature. The beauty that is all around us.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
Very good question. I am afraid I would love to go to many places and times. For sure I would travel to Pericles‘ Athens in the 5th Century B.C. I would love to be part of that society based on philosophy and democracy.
Then I would like to go back to the 20s in Europe. I would love to meet the futurists in Italy or the cubists in France. I would love to live with the artists that have influenced so much of our time.

Name your favorite present book:
My all time favorite book is 1984 by George Orwell. It’s the ultimate political book and the absolute human drama.
If you want a more contemporary one I would mention the books of Mario Vichi like „Donne Donne“ or „Perche‘ dollari?“. Vichi is an Italian novelist from Tuscany describing the post World War II Italy.  Ideals and human feelings are given through the simple form of crime novels. Vichi finds the way to be lyric but also very realistic.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
One of my designers and thinkers is John Maeda @johnmaeda. Besides his great design or educational work John Maeda is also a very good Tweeter. Following him could open many interesting paths for you.

Oktober 13th, 2013

week #51 – @miemo / Miemo

miemo

Who are you and where do you come from?
My name is Miemo Penttinen, I’m a UX designer and photographer from Helsinki, Finland. I used to work as a design director in one of the oldest digital agencies here in Finland, but I’ve gone freelance lately for a change. Recently I’ve also started to venture much more into graphic design and web&mobile development as a part of my role in a startup creating a new kind of social hyperlocal media. Check out http://miemo.net for more about me and http://bornlocal.fi about our startup.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
On my personal Twitter account @miemo I usually tweet about my daily thoughts & findings about all the things that interest me from latest gadgets & apps to design tips and current news etc (mostly in English, sometimes also in Finnish if the topics are local). For @createandrotate I was planning to dig also little deeper into my sources of inspiration – present some of my all-time-favorites from various fields. But I’ll probably also tweet about RIghtNow-topics too.

Tell us about your creative side:
As a designer I always want to create something that is purposeful and meaningful for the people on a deeper level, not just something that looks&feels good. Digital media is my native environment, and I love how it’s become much more intimate and closer to people’s daily lives in recent years with the post-PC world. I feel there’s still much to be done in creating services and apps that don’t just waste people’s time but provide real value to their lives.
As a photographer I’m trying to capture some specific mood or atmosphere of a place, an object or a person. I’m a sort of documentarist in a sense that I don’t do much preplanning for the shoots, but at the same time I’m not very interested in creating an objective documentary of the subject but rather my own interpretation based on how I felt there & then.What inspires you?
For general inspiration & creativity boosts I tend to draw from those art forms that I don’t personally work with directly: cinema, music, architecture, industrial design, painting, … I guess there’s a bit more magic & fascination in the art if you’re not fully immersed into the craft of it.
Of course if I’m trying to tackle some specific design challenge, then I’ll look more closely into that field and what has been done before, but I find that’s more of a learning process than about inspiration as such.Time travel: Where would you go to?
Mid 1960s, and most specifically USA of that time – amazingly creative time&place in culture, technology & politics. I love the  modernistic style from that era in architecture, painting,  typography, advertising, product design, music and the overall feeling of the era of changing the world together for the better.

Name your favorite present book:
From fiction the most memorable reading experience in recent years has been „Kafka on the shore“ by Haruki Murakami. A fascinatingly weird book! I’m currently reading Murakami’s massive „1Q84“ which also seems to be interestingly off-angle with the real world.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
You should ask @HenrikRydberg – he’s deeply involved in the next (or should I say current?) hot topic in design, 3D printing, on top of being a top-notch UX-designer and a design teacher.

Oktober 6th, 2013

week #50 – @gigiben / Gilad

Gilad Fried

Who are you and where do you come from?
Hi all! My name is Gilad Fried and I’m a graphic designer based in Tel-Aviv, Israel. I do both print and web design and occasionally some illustration. Recently I also started teaching.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
My usual Twitter account is @gigiben  You will usually find there inspiring stuff I collect from around the web and to post to one of my various Tumblr accounts  During my time with @createandrotate I plan on also trying to share things i’m working on and my creative process.

Tell us about your creative side:
Since graduating from design school I have been working part time in a design studio and part time as a freelancer. It is crucial for me to try and do everything: designing for print and web, branding, illustration, curating and even some typeface design.
Last summer I did the Type@Cooper program in Cooper Union in NYC, an intense 6 week type design program. Focussing on a single project for more than a month was refreshing and showed me that as much as I like juggling between multiple projects at a time, delving deep into one thing could be as inspiring.

What inspires you?
I’m mostly inspired by stories and characters. Historical characters and mythological beings are fascinating to me. Telling a story in a single image, as opposed to animation or cinema, is a challenge I always like and the bigger the restraints are the more fun it is (that’s why I like drawing icons so much!).

Time travel: Where would you go to?
Austria in the mid-late 1800’s. I was always curious to be in the Austro-Hungarian empire in the time of Kaiser Franz Josef and Sissi.

Name your favorite present book:
I’m currently reading a new Hebrew translation of The Canterbury Tales and really enjoying it. Just before that I read It Chooses You by Miranda July and it went straight to my all time favourites.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
I love following @olmocs  Me and Manuel did the Type@Cooper program together and I can testify that he is as interesting, knowledgeable and kind in person as he is on Twitter.

September 29th, 2013

week #49 – @sbakkum / Suzanne

sbakkum_selfie

Who are you and where do you come from?
My name is Suzanne Bakkum I am a graphic designer living in Amsterdam.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
@sbakkum, I tweet about photography and other things that inspire me, mostly arty things. Once in a while I might retweet a little glitch.

Tell us about your creative side:
I’m a graphic designer and I love photographing. I’m in my final year studying Graphic Design in The Hague, writing my thesis as we speak. It’s about mundane things.

What inspires you?
Photographing really inspires me and makes me think in other ways and look at the world and everything around me differently. But also: everyday life, the city, the countryside, movies, music. You can check my blog http://dirtypixel.tumblr.com where I share what inspires me, I also try to elaborate on WHY it inspires me or catches my eye.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
I would probably go back to the eighties, I was born in the eighties, but now I would relive it being much older. I would bring with me the internet though :)

Name your favorite present book:
On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz, great book on how to notice things you normally walk past and it’s very well written, I love her style.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
@thijsremie, he brings a good mix of informative and funny.

September 22nd, 2013

week #48 – @vektorgarten / Monika

mg-portrait

Who are you and where do you come from?
I’m a graphic designer and I write books. I’m based in Hamburg, Germany.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
I’m interested in a couple of things. I will be tweeting about vectorgraphics, which is what I’m interested in most at the moment. But also about teaching and learning, graphic design in general, books – both paper and electronic and maybe some crafting stuff. My main Twitter account is @vektorgarten

Tell us about your creative side:
I like intellegent design. Works that not only want to do great graphic, but that give input for second thought. Some detail that people can discover. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to also create it. At the moment I’m mostly creating stuff with Adobe Illustrator and later write about it. I want to discover anything that drives this software and explain it to people. So I create artwork in order to explore Illustrators possibilities.

What inspires you?
The ways people in different times and places do artistic work.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
I would have liked to attend the original Bauhaus school of design.

Name your favorite present book:
A book  about the German language that I already read a while back „Was heißt hier Deutsch?“. That was not only interesting, but also entertaining.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
Von Glitschka (#Vonster) for his witty, funny, great design and his precise vector artwork – all of which apply to his tweets as well.

September 15th, 2013

week #47 – @StringStory / Suzanne

Screen shot 2013-09-05 at 12.18.24 AM

Who are you and where do you come from?
G’day, my name is Suzanne Nguyen. I’ve recently moved to Sydney from Melbourne (Australia). I’m a story collector and artist.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
During my time with @createandrotate, I plan to tweet about: Melbourne, coffee & cafes, my story collecting sessions and some crowdfunding projects.  My newest project is @TheTwoChairs. Other than that, you can always connect with me on @StringStory.

Tell us about your creative side:
I build a collection of stories and story-maps and use it as a basis for my art-making process. The collected stories inspires me to create various artworks, including drawings, installations, furniture and community-based projects. The plus side of what I do, is that I often travel and meet new people.

What inspires you?
People. Place. Time. are the three things that continually fascinates me.  My work continually explore way of connecting them together.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
If I had to time travel? I am actually content where I am now. I will be in Melbourne. How about we explore my hometown? I be planning to eat and visit all my favourite cafes, and I show you some of the famous laneways too.

Name your favorite present book:
I haven’t read a good book for quite a while. I am more of a film buff. I especially love foreign films. Amelie – Pan’s labyrinth – Old Boy – Spirited Away are my favourites.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
Have you had a writer on board yet? Let me have a think and I shall to the list of recommends  – follow @tom_cho or there’s a poet that regularly writes poems everyday @tinylittlepoems

September 8th, 2013

week #46 – @alessio_joseph / Joseph

profile

Who are you and where do you come from?
I’m Joseph Alessio, a designer and letterer from Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are twittering about:
I tweet from @alessio_joseph, where you can usually find me sharing snippets of what fellow letterers are working on, typeface releases, helpful articles, and other design-related news.

Tell us about your creative side:
I’ve always wanted to work in the visual arts. I have dabbled in a variety of aspects including calligraphy, and when I discovered the world of lettering it captured my interest. While I still work in many areas of design, lettering is the most enjoyable work I do. Other areas I also work in are illustration, print and packaging design, and branding. When I’m not designing, I play music with friends and professionally, as part of multiple local orchestras and a string quartet.

What inspires you?
I’ve learned to appreciate the old and the new, the traditional and the cutting edge, and to learn from both. I listen to a lot of classical music, from the 1600s all the way up to recent compositions. One way I have found inspiration recently is by reading classic literature – from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy to Chesterton and Hemingway. I have several shelves of volumes, many 50+ years old, acquired at a used book sale. There is something special about turning the stiff, yellowed pages, reading the penciled notes in the margins, and imagining many types of people who might have read these books over the years.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
Most likely the late 19th to the early 20th century. Much of the best music in history, in my opinion, was written during this time period, and there were many exciting things going on in the design world as well, with the Arts & Crafts movement to Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession.

Name your favorite present book:
This is a very difficult question. For a design book, I recently have been reading a book on the history of Irish type design, by Dermot McGuinne, which would be very dry to most, but fascinating to type nerds like myself! In terms of fiction, a long–standing favorite has been G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, a sort of modern fairy tale in which you’re never quite sure what is going on.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
Possibly Matt Vergotis (@VERGadvertising). He is a great letterer and brand designer who is always tweeting great new work that he is doing!

 

September 1st, 2013

week #45 – @miloszklimek / Milosz

 

Who are you and where do you come from?
My name is Milosz Klimek and I’m a graphic designer from Poland. I focus on brand identity design, logo design and typography. I graduated from specialization in Graphic, Design & Multimedia back in 2011. Nowadays I run small branding studio called Undefined Space, and I’m always looking for nice people to work with.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are tweeting about:
I’m mainly tweeting about: Design / Music / Movies / My life. You know the usual stuff.

Tell us about your creative side:
As a kid I was always amazed about the outer space. I’m pretty sure it gives a big boost to young mind and imagination at all, so these were probably the times where my creative side was evolving, as I was sketching a lot of stars, planets, space-ships, etc.

What inspires you?
Wes Anderson’s world perception / Thurston Moore’s song attitude / Japanese precision. In a nutshell, things that are non-cliché and propose something new.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
Back to the future.

Name your favorite present book:
That would probably be Woody Allen’s „The Insanity Defense“ which I read during holidays. Although, I still can’t get Philip K. Dick’s „Ubik“ out of my head.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
@f1irebrand

August 25th, 2013

week #44 – @hjalti / Hjalti

headshot

Who are you and where do you come from?
My name is Hjalti Hjálmarsson and I’m a 29 year old animator from Iceland.

Share your twitter account with us and tell us what you are tweeting about:
My twitter handle is @hjalti and I tweet usually about stuff that I find interesting (usually something regarding design, animation, board games or science) or stuff I’m working on as a hobby.

Tell us about your creative side:
My favorite toy as a kid were lego bricks, with them you could just build your own toys and create engineering/deisgn experiments. This need to build things and experiment only grew as I got older. Programming, sculpting, game design, animation, drawing… It pretty much doesn’t matter what the craft is, it’s all fascinating and I love experimenting with it.

What inspires you?
Watching other creative people’s work and passion for their craft.

Time travel: Where would you go to?
Deep into the future to find out what scientists have discovered more about this bizarre universe we find ourselves in.

Name your favorite present book:
‚A Short History of Nearly Everything‘ by Bill Bryson.

Which tweeter would you recommend for @createandrotate and why?
I think @zefrank is the most sincere and creative person I follow on Twitter. His love for making stuff that connects people is very inspirational.
I even participated in one of Ze Frank’s project where you reenact a photograph from your childhood and write a little true story to go along with it:
http://www.zefrank.com/youngmenowme/blog/index.php/2010/12/foot-forward/