Issue 1, still with that creamy, slightly toxic smell of freshly printed uncoated paper, mmm....

The stand-out feature is the conversation between critic Justin McGuirk and Gui Bonsiepe about design, its role in society and the recent mania for ‘design thinking’. Bonsiepe is one of those behind-the-scenes, understated and fame-averse thinkers that exist within our industry, quietly talking nothing but common sense and indirectly influencing the mouthier players (we hope). And that’s why it was so lovely that Disegno have provided greater access to some of his latest observations. The added bonus is that Bonsiepe is mature, smart and experienced enough to elicit a reverent and respectful tone from McGuirk which, as you may know is a rare occurence because he’s not easy to impress.

Anyway, go forth and read it for yourselves. There’s plenty of time, Disegno 2 is out in the summer.

The exhibition comprises a group of photographs that play with, and confuse our perception of moments in time, the pictures were taken at the same, single moment using remote-controlled shutter releases. It’s clever stuff, some of the images reminiscent of Philip-Lorca dicorcia, another creator of observatory, slightly unsettling and secret portraits from New York’s streets. But her studio and landscape shots are equally arresting. Fresh, provocative and unexpected, which is what contemporary art should be.

Barbara Probst is in the lower gallery at Wilkinson until 26th February.
50-58 Vyner Street
London E2 9DQ
+44 20 8980 2662

Every single one of them was taking a picture!

Yawn...

Sadly, it’s a rather recessionised site, home to a collection of buildings that seem to have been value-engineered beyond recognition, nestled next to a giant, soulless cathedral to retail, surrounded by Barratt-style apartment blocks of the atheletes village ; in the cold light of January none of it feels or looks particularly inspiring, even Anish Kapoor’s has misfired here.

More inspiring is The Shard, just visible in the distance

And as for the Cultural Olympiad and/or the London 2012 Festival, (most of us don’t know the difference, The Guardian’s hoping to explain it all today)? Time will tell. There’s a real possibility of simply being swept along in the atmosphere come July. Either that or it’ll be hello Heathrow and time for a holiday!

Naturally it will be filled up with glamorous parties, trips overseas, hot dates and very important meetings

Even the packaging is lovely

There’s nothing like brand new stationery to make one feel organised.

Happy new year everyone, hopefully it’ll be delightful for you.

Without Whitman we wouldn’t have had the incredible and lasting pleasure of Shakespeare and Company. Picking up the baton from Sylvia Beach it was both a sancturary for writers, a little hub for ideas and debates, and more recently, a personal saviour when it came to last minute wild goose chases around Paris for the more obscure texts on our MA reading lists.

As for Kim Jong-il, one word; ‘ronery’ (watch Team America)

David Adjaye, Jorge Otero-Pailos and Nikolaus Hirsch got together to chew over the fiddly issue of the role of the architect in the 21st century. Are they lofty author, humble service provider or both? That old chestnut you may think but it’s a stimulating debate and still relevant.  Here, it’s pretty long and wide-ranging so grab a cup of tea and digest. Well worth it.

Woo-hoo! Embracing their inner-Priscilla at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

Clearly someone decided that black polo necks were out and pink feather boas are in. It’s lovely to see that architects are having fun in these tricky times.

Gehl is an easy raconteur, peppering his talk with irreverent jokes and observations that indicate a bemusement at the city planning messes he’s tried to clean up. He pointed  a finger at traffic engineers who ran amok and pro-car lobbyists that ruled the roost, particularly during the 60s and 70s but was generous enough to recognise that perhaps their attitudes are softening.

By being such a clear thinking and plain speaking consultant, he has the ability to  navigate his way through all the self-interest, politicking and petty-mindedness so characteristic of  local councils and mayoral departments across the globe, no doubt charming them all in the process. Some of the theories and recommendations are perhaps not revelatory but are pure good sense which makes them difficult to dispute.

Copenhagen was used as his flagship example, his home town, where the shift in priority from car to bike is most marked and now a city where ‘they want to be sweet to pedestrians and cyclists.’

On two counts Gehl was especially funny; gently he poked fun at those new to cycling who ‘dress up in survival gear’. And on London he finds our pedestrial push-button crossings especially ridiculous, saying ‘you push and push and nothing happens. It’s so humiliating!’ urging us to adopt a computerised system instead. Indeed, being made to feel foolish by a set of traffic lights does little for one’s self-esteem. Luckily London and New York are already feeling the benefits of Gehl’s intervention. Now we just have to get him in front of Bertrand Delanoë and perhaps discuss that rather undemocratic disaster which is Paris – a city that since the 19th century has progressively done as much as possible to make itself unintegrated, precious and regressive.

But in a good way

It was literally packed to the rafters (if you’ll been inside the building that will make more sense) and orange-related things were everywhere; fruit, cocktails, illustrations.

If nothing else, being surrounded by some much orangeness was a good reminder to take some Vitamin C. You know, damp days, cold nights…

Hello, I'm your friendly Macintosh!

Moving to London in 1994, Pentagram, like many other design companies, was Apple-powered. And that was only in the ‘inter-Steve’ years.

Being given the bronze keyboard, curvaceous black laptops at Deepend made us feel we were at the cutting edge of cool and the graphics teams delighted in their sleek G3 towers. Apple crept further into our personal lives with the advent of the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. Suddenly it’s iEverything. And we rather love it.

How was such prevalence achieved? The return to Apple in 1997 of the single-minded visionary Steve Jobs has much to do with it. An unyielding seer and no doubt a pain-in-the-ass control freak was somehow able to dream up products that were an expensive but seductive delight, all from his own remarkable intuition. As he put it “a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”, most of the time he was right. Turns out that he was right enough, often enough to execute one of the most astonishing corporate combebacks in business history.  And now Jobs, King of the Cupe has died.

So is this a case of ‘the king is dead, long live the king’? You have to hope so. Jony Ive, Tim Cook and the rest of the girls and boys at One Infinite Loop are no slouches and have absorbed much of Jobs’ DNA. But it was the persona, personality and most importantly a person that made Apple what it is. He is gone, but will never be forgotten.

Co-founder and chairman of Apple, Steve Jobs.