In 2006 this poster was elected best political poster of the Netherlands of the past 90 years. It was used in 1971 by the Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), one of the predecessors of GroenLinks, for the lower house elections. The caption reads ‘Disarming PSP’.
The photo was originally taken for sexual reform magazine Sekstant, but designer George Noordanus surmised that it could also help create a storm of protest among Christians whose political parties supported the Vietnam war, but opposed innocent nudity, thereby exposing their hypocrisy.
Although it did just that, the raised profile did not help the PSP as it lost half its seats in the lower house after the elections. Support for the poster was also divided within the party, as some members considered it sexist. Ironically enough, it was the sexist argument that in the end helped seal the deal. As one member put it, “workers like naked chicks.”
Both Ayaan Hirsi Magan (ex VVD, liberal) and Femke Halsema (GroenLinks, ‘green left’), political opposites, see the poster as a symbol of their ideals.
See also this site about election posters in the Netherlands.
Naarden design studio Brand van Egmond (William Brand and Annet van Egmond) came up with these chandeliers. Their website doesn’t say if and where you can buy them. Check out the Milan video, it shows the chandeliers in use.
Dutch Design Studio OOOMS from Eindhoven offers a multipurpose and very elegant puzzleboard to liven up your parties. It can be used as a cutting board or serving plate and more puzzleboards can be placed together like puzzle piece to make a bigger and cooler one.
I like the fact that you can easily free up a hand to greet people, which is usually a problem at parties. My only comment is that most Dutch people drink beer at parties and not wine, so the beer glass has nowhere to go.
The Amsterdam Historical Museum and Mediamatic have teamed up to do something different. Rather than have you look at historical objects from a safe distance, they will let you buy them for 1 or 2 euro each.
The exhibit lasts until August 29, and is accompanied by a really nice website where the background of every object is explained in a video. There are 40 different objects for sale.
Florentijn Hofman, the artist who gave us huge cuddly dolls and huge rubber ducks, now has some very colourful yet huge ‘folded paper boats’ (made of metal) on display in Rotterdam, installed just a few days ago.
There are tons of pictures showing all five boats of different colours, even a pink one.
Filed under: Design,Sports by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am
In a game of ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (‘Find the Dutch person’) and a story we should have run a while back, Radio Netherlands informs us that a Dutch woman at Adidas is behind the design of the World Cup football ball, better known in Zulu as Jabulani.
Senior Designer Football Janneke van Oorschot who works in Germany for Adidas has been around the block when it comes to designing all kinds of high profile balls. Have a look at the Jo’bulani, a gold variant of the Jabulani that will be used in the finals in Johannesburg, also known as the City of Gold (and Jozi, Joburg, etc.)
As for the usual negative comments about every World Cup ball, the Jabulani got its share of criticism to which most people, including Van Oorschot, basically says ‘this too shall pass’.
Have a look at this video with your kids. It’s great to see how these balls are made.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all when it comes to the craziest of bikes, a guy like Wouter van den Bosch, Dutch art student and former mechanical engineer from Arnhem comes up with a monster bike, made from a tractor tyre and some metal parts that took three months to build.
Filed under: Bicycles,Design by Branko Collin @ 10:05 am
This green metal device can be attached to a regular bike’s rack to greatly increase the amount of freight it can carry. Sort of a free-form pannier.
Inventor René Bijsterveld came up with the Vrachtpatser (from the Dutch words krachtpatser, strong man, and vracht, freight) because as a student he has to lug a lot of heavy stuff around on in his bike, and not in the least crates of beer he confided to NOS Headlines.
The design netted him first prize in 2010′s HEMA design contest in which design students were asked to come up with items that make life on the road easier and more fun.
Worthy of their respective second and third prize were the cardboard pet coffin by Toon Welling, and the juice boxes by Annet Bruil that double as toy cars, air planes and boats.
Voting for the audience award will start June 14. HEMA is a retailer which holds a design contest for students each year with the express purpose of including the most marketable designs in their own line-up.
Filed under: Art,Design by Branko Collin @ 12:19 pm
Designer Roeland Otten hopes to mass-market these alphabet chairs, writes Bright. He can see them being used by elementary schools.
The so-called ABChairs were made possible thanks to a grant by Fonds BKVB, the rich government sugar daddy for the visual arts. Otten, a 1999 Design Academy Eindhoven graduate, calls the Naked Alphabet by his teacher Anthon Beeke an inspiration. He is looking for a manufacturer to help him mass produce the chairs in plastic.
Unfortunately Otten uses one of them newfangled and unlinkable Flash sites instead of a real website, I would have linked to his work earlier if he had not. If you go there, see under “recent stuff / transformatie-transformatorhuisje” how he let an ugly electrical substation disappear from his Rotterdam neighbourhood.
In 2006 this poster was elected best political poster of the Netherlands of the past 90 years. It was used in 1971 by the Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), one of the predecessors of GroenLinks, for the lower house elections. The caption reads ‘Disarming PSP’.
The Amsterdam Historical Museum and Mediamatic have teamed up to do something different. Rather than have you look at historical objects from a safe distance, they will let you buy them for 1 or 2 euro each.
Inventor René Bijsterveld came up with the Vrachtpatser (from the Dutch words krachtpatser, strong man, and vracht, freight) because as a student he has to lug a lot of heavy stuff around on in his bike, and not in the least crates of beer 
