Things We Like

Our weekly round up of things we like on the Design Week newsdesk.

Suwappu

Very little can turn the hardened Design Week news desk to mush. Yet, somehow, little plastic square animals with interchangeable torsos set off at least quarter of an hour’s worth of ‘awws’, squeals and other nonsense. The series of eight characters – our favourite is the badger – have swappable top and bottom halves, allowing them to become, say, half deer half tuna fish. Using the Suwappu app, users get access to an augmented reality world where the little guys can speak and perfom actions due to custom software in their heads and legs. Dentsu London created the critters, so if you’re reading, Dentsu, you know where we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBmLWdjtzPw

Doncha wish your birthday was raw, like this?

Salford-based consultancy Raw is celebrating its fifth anniversary tonight in its Islington Mill studio. To mark the occasion the consultancy has commissioned more than 100 illustrators and designers from around the world to create work around the birthday theme – including this cake-themed piece from Jing Wei (pictured). The artworks will be sold to support local charity the Wood Street Mission. Raw has also created a celebratory plate, one of which is currently sitting on the Design Week newsdesk, awaiting its slice of birthday cake…

Wolfgang Tillmans’s The Opiates cover

Photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has created the album artwork for electronic pop duo The Opiates – a band which, apparently, has been dubbed ‘the Carpenters of electro’. Bizarre as this musical comparison may be, the artwork is stunning, with luminescent flowers and dark, eerie backdrops showcasing Tillmans’s Turner Prize winning skill. Entitled Hollywood Under the Knife,  the album sleeve and booklet include nine previously unseen and unpublished photographs; and it’s hoped that a multimedia performance piece using the images will be staged  next year.