Clare Jacobson

Jan Wilker

Why would two talented and employable young graphic designers start up their own practice without any clients, in the midst of a recession, and in a city brimming with world-renowned designers? Karlssonwilker inc.'s tellmewhy is the improbable story of such a venture -- or act of bravura or insanity -- on the part of Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker, and offers a telling, humorous, and always human insight into the workings of a young startup design studio, showcasing every single project they did in their first two years. A book as iconoclastic as their designs, tellmewhy features fresh stories of karlssonwilker's ordinary office live and its less-than-romantic tales about rooftop parties, battles with immigration, language obstacles, missed meetings, and money problems. Despite these stories -- and because of others -- karlssonwilker has produced an impressive body of work in two short years. Tellmewhy shows the happy endings, including signage for a Philadelphia restaurant, logo designs for a New York fashion house, and CD packaging for both independent and major music labels. And it presents the few unrealized designs, like an ad campaign for a TV network. All share the designers' creative and humorous take on design. Karlssonwilker intersperses these examples with its singular illustrated diagrams, faux flow charts linking the partners' biographies, work, social lives, and whatever comes to their unique minds. Tellmewhy offers both inspiration and caution for designers everywhere. A foreword by former employer Stefan Sagmeister recalls karlssonwilker's start in his design office.

The First 24 Months of a New York Design Company

Karlssonwilker Inc.'s Tellmewhy

Karin G. Oen

Yuki Morishima

The digital collective teamLab, founded in Tokyo in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko, breaks established boundaries between the gallery and art world. This group--comprised of more than four hundred people including programmers, designers, and animators--creates immersive digital experiences outside of the realm of the traditional art world, navigating the confluence of art, technology, design, and the natural world. In many cases, it roots its imagery in historical Japanese art but uses the visual language of high-tech rendering and animation. Over the past few years, teamLab's projects have kept pace with technology and have evolved from two-dimensional screen-based animations to room-sized interactive installations. This book is a collection of essays, interviews and photographs exploring both the presence of teamLab's installations and the ideas and processes behind them. With a focus on the development of their work rather than the actual public displays, this book takes readers behind-the-scenes of a fascinating and thoroughly modern take on art. See the teamLab exhibit--the inaugural display in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's new 9,500-square-foot exhibition pavilion: April 24 - September 7, 2020.

Continuity

TeamLab

In the fall of 2007, Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012), long admired for his visionary architecture and mastery of drawing, began a blog. Part forum and part public journal, the eclectic mix of articles, drawings, anecdotes, poetry, interviews, and photographic essays explored topics ranging from architectural theory and criticism to education and politics. Amassing more thanv three hundred entries by its end in the summer of 2012, it is regarded by many as the most comprehensive and accessible archive of Woods's prodigious creativity. Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog, an edited volume of the blog's centerpiece entries, stands as a fragmentary essay on the nature of architecture that will be dear to architects, students, and thinkers everywhere. Lebbeus Woods is the author of several PAPress books, including Radical Reconstruction, OneFiveFour, The Storm and the Fall, and two volumes in the Pamphlet Architecture series' Woods's work is held in the collections of major international museums, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, MAK Vienna, and the Getty Research Institute From 2012 to 2014 Lebbeus Woods, Architect, a traveling exhibition organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, made stops at SFMOMA, Michigan's'Broad Art Museum, and the Drawing Center in New York City.

Clare Jacobson

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