Friday, February 17th, 2012

2012 Food Trends

Mobile Vendors
High streets cluttered with chains are meaning opportunities for street food, pop-ups and food trucks. Little capital, resources, or planning are required. Chefs have greater freedom to try out menu items, restaurant themes and are able to showcases brands in unusual locations including public areas, art galleries and festivals. With even the big names such as Wahaca (pictured), Wagamama and Jamies Italian joining in, look for a lot more through 2012.

Casual Dining
Great food and service are non-negotiable in a restaurant but with cash short, few people are prepared to shell out for swags and tails. There’ll be more small “front room” style eateries like London’s Roti Chai (pictured) and Duck Soup and New York’s Prune, with chairs crammed in, no table cloths, sharing plates and plate licking de rigeur.

Packaging Innovations
As costs are being cut across the food & drink industry supply chain, packaging will become a focus for brand owners keen to improve margins from production to market. Reducing packaging weight/size, also known as lightweighting, is not only an environmentally-friendly move, but it can result in cost savings over the long term.

Healthy Food on the Go
As impulse sales are forecast to continue …

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Today we ❤
Minakani Walls

Minakani, is the Paris-based studio by Frédéric Bonnin and Cécile Figuette, who create wonderful whimsical patterns, mainly for textile but not exclusively. 2 years ago, they’ve launched their walldecor offering custom size, made to order, exclusive motifs printed onto high quality non-woven paper.
Keeping a fresh and unique approach to colour and graphics they produce strong and simple designs, with a candid, vintage quirky, optimistic and poetic feel.
They’ve created fabric patterns for well known brands such as Anthropologie, Kenzo, La Redoute, Le Sportsac, Oxbow, Organic Stereo and Chez Monoprix to name a few.

Their website: http://www.minakaniwalls.com…

Sunday, February 12th, 2012

Fashion meets Architecture

Looking for a break from the London cold to the even chillier Amsterdam the team at DC London stumbled across the following…

Located at Amsterdam’s Damrak, hotel The Exchange opened her doors last December. The project, leaded by Otto Nan en Suzanne Oxenaar, brings a unique collaboration between fashion and architecture, where one to five star rooms are fit up like models. The duo is known from the Llove hotel in Tokyo, and the Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy in Amsterdam. Through collaboration with Amsterdam Fashion Institute’s students and alumni, the hotel provides rooms named Unaware Reality, Building a View and Tailor’s Dummy. Fashion meets architecture in the most unexpected and inspiring way.

Eight AMFI students and alumni were selected to drive the vision of the hotel rooms. They created designs using fashion metaphors out of the designworld. Each room is individually designed, but all with one vision: ‘the room is a body, a model’. From this perspective, the AMFI designers all created one or more unique and exceptional two-person suites. We picked our favourites:

Room 522 – Building a View by Anne Wolters
This room is dressed in a minimalist decoration, a sketch of a typical Amsterdam sight in …