MONICA KHEMSUROV

A group of young artists is redefining the formerly folksy medium with sleeker, more sophisticated forms. Continue reading →

In an era when design stars are given TV shows, pal around with Brad Pitt, and collaborate with megaretailers, it’s not immediately clear why any young hopeful would want to join a design collective. Doing so requires putting the name and the needs of a group before one’s own, obscuring any clear path to individual fame. In the past, collectives often had a kind of anti-commercial sheen, even when they were selling things. In the sixties, groups like Archigram and Ant Farm used design and architecture to further shared countercultural agendas. Similarly, Ettore Sottsass founded the Memphis collective in the eighties as a kind of postmodernist manifesto. But when the Droog collective came along in 1993, its more practical, less philosophical mission—promoting talents too new and obscure to make much of an impact on their own—marked a turning point for design collectives. Continue reading →

Before attending London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), Anton Alvarez spent two years at a craft school in Sweden, mastering the techniques of traditional cabinetmaking. Yet it was only after the London- and Stockholm-based designer set aside those time-honored skills that he was able to start his career in earnest, inventing a new joinery method he calls “thread wrapping” for his RCA thesis—a project that made him a breakout design-world star and got his sculptural pieces into a London Design Museum show last fall, alongside works by Arik Levy and Maarten Baas. Continue reading →

After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art’s graphics program in 2006, Anna Karlin took a position at a prominent design firm in her native London. Two days later she quit. “People are not put on earth to work within such a confined, one-dimensional expression of their creativity,” she says. It’s a bold statement, reflecting her refusal to allow her talent — or ambition — to be hemmed in. Continue reading →