After publishing with a blackletter logo since 2007, Fashionista decided it was time to reconside and redesign its stoic face as well as swap its back-end CMS from Movable Type to Wordpress.

The old logo was this oversized, domineering, gothic lettering thing that said “spiky, aggressive, old-school news brand.” That’s not what Fashionista is. The editors of Fashionista are excellent journalists who will be critical when it’s called for, but they’re also unashamedly fashion lovers. They might poke fun from time to time, but they’re not spiky or unnecessarily aggressive. And they’re also inherently new-generation when it comes to how they go about their business — they use a blog platform, Flip cameras, smartphones and various social media to deliver their content and engage their audience — so unless we were being very ironic with the gothic, old-school newspaper font thing it just wasn’t really appropriate. I’m also a big believer that the logo and furniture on the site should be a little subservient to the content — it’s the content that engages and the content travels well beyond the site too — so we also needed something a little less imposing.
— Jonah Bloom, CEO/Editor-in-Chief, Breaking Media

More treatments of the new logo at Brand New.

LAIKA from Michael Flückiger on Vimeo.

Michael Lebovitz pointed me to this cool dynamic typography tool where you manually stretch and contort the typeface. There’s a dial that controls the LAIKA typeface to elongate or widen the font. On Sputnik, the typeface is influenced by people’s swaying motions against the wall. The project is part of Michael Flückiger’s bachelor thesis and he explains his idea behind the concept:

Since not much work has been done in this field, we devised a system in which a typeface would not be defined static font styles anymore but would be able to change it‘s shape and appearance at any moment reacting to a broad spectrum of inputs.

Here are more of his typography experiments:

Details Pandoras Box from Michael Flückiger on Vimeo.

Typocraphic Spiderweb from Michael Flückiger on Vimeo.

The fashion and art publication Visionaire has continuously used a variety of unique formats to present its content. For the 57th issue, the publication draws inspiration from the two-seater Smart Fortwo car. Visionaire 57 “2010″ will be the first plug-in electric issue in the publication’s history. As seen in the photo above, the plug is shaped like Daimler’s compact automobile. The magazine uses electricity to illuminate 365 pieces of art displayed in the form of a daily calendar.

Visionaire 57 was assembled by 52 renowned guest curators and culture icons, including artist John Baldessari, museum curator Klaus Biesenbach (MoMA), fashion designers Raf Simons and Marc Jacobs, and the architect Zaha Hadid. Natalie Portman and Tilda Swinton also contributed to the publication. Visionaire began in 1991 and now publishes three times a year, each issue with a drastically different format for delivering avant-garde and cutting edge artistic presentations. Visionaire 2010 is limited-edition with only 4,000 copies and will be available for $295 in October.

[Via Design Crave and Auto Blog Green]

Thonet, the oldest furniture brand in the world and the German manufacturer of high-quality furnishings, is producing a simplified form of bentwood and tubular steel furniture for the Japanese retail chain Muji. The products are manufactured entirely at Thonet’s headquarters in Frankenberg, Germany to the company’s customary high quality standards.

The first models are reminiscent of those bentwood chairs that were the cornerstone on which the Thonet success story was established. The most famous bentwood chair, No. 14 is celebrating its 150th birthday and is probably the oldest industrial product still in production today. The chair is sold with range of tables that has a convincingly understated elegance, and it marries perfectly with the expressively styled chair. The English designer James Irvine, who is now working and living in Milan as creative director at Thonet, is responsible for the reinterpretation of the bentwood furniture.

In addition to the bentwood tradition, the “Muji manufactured by Thonet” collection also features the second revolutionary trend of the Thonet brand, the company’s tubular steel furniture tradition dating back to the 1920s. An iconographic tubular steel cantilever chair is sold alongside a desk and a range of side tables that have a convincingly effortless style and cool beauty like the original models. This collection was created by the German designer Konstantin Grcic.

Some cute tunics by Rabbit on the Run from Los Angeles. They remind me of cut-out shapes characteristic of Native Japan.

With a peculiar sculpture piece based on a system of “Dendroids,” American artist Roxy Paine has created a 130-foot-long by 45-foot-wide stainless-steel sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Roof Garden. It is an interesting combination of concepts – Paine uses both mechanical means and the innate logic of natural forms to create his “Dendroid” tree-like sculptures. Like in nature, these are a series of vascular networks, tree roots, mushrooms, and fungal mycelia. His meticulous research and observation of a variety of tree species help him to understand the nuances of how a tree grows. Paine has said:

“I’ve processed the idea of a tree and created a system for its form. I take this organic majestic being and break it down into components and rules. The branches are translated into pipe and rod.”

Employing the “language” that he has invented for each of these fictive species, Paine’s trees are “grown” through a laborious process of welding together the cylindrical piping and rods and manifests itself with the green and concrete surroundings of New York.

Maelstrom (2009) is Paine’s largest and most ambitious work to date and is showing now until October 25 at The Metroplitan Museum of Art Rooftop Garden.

Installation images of Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom

Installation footage of Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom
[via The Met]