Recycling the Holidays!

            Number one on your list for Santa: an iPad, a Kindle, or maybe a Nook?  Whatever tablet device is on your wish list, what will you do with all the clunky books that are soon to just be dust collectors on the shelf?  Here’s a project that will put your favorite book to good use after you’ve downloaded it onto that future slim tablet.  This simple step by step tutorial shows you how to make a unique holiday wreath that can be showcased year round.

Materials Needed:

-old book

-12 x 12” square cardboard

-scotch tape

-hot glue gun

-exacto knife

• Start by taking your 12 x 12” square of cardboard and draw a vertical and horizontal line down the middle of the square.  Draw lines across the diagonals of the square as well breaking the circle into 8 sections.  Draw a circle to connect all the lines as an outline.
• Cut out a 3” diameter circle with an exacto knife.  This will serve as a base.

• Cut the pages out of your book close to the binding with your exacto knife.  If you don’t want to use a book you already have, check your local dollar store for a thick hard cover!

• Roll each individual page into your cone shapes taping the end with a small piece of scotch tape to hold the shape.  You are going to need a lot of cones so I recommend making a good amount to start off with.

• Using a dab of hot glue, glue the points of eight cones to the eight points of the circle.

• In each section, glue 3 more cones onto the base closer to the center hole of the base.  Repeat around the entire base.  This will complete your outermost layer of the wreath.

• You can now move onto the second layer of the wreath.  Draw a circle around the hole of your base to serve as the outline for your second layer.  Glue cones around the outline you have just created.  Repeat around entire circle.

• The last layer will be your final layer.  In order to make a clean center, fold about an 1 ½” of your cone through the hole of the base and to the back and glue.  You will also need to glue a small dot of the open end of the cone to the previous layer for structure stability.  Repeat around the whole circle.

In just eight easy steps you have created a beautiful holiday wreath!  This can also be used as decoration year-round as a floral structure.

Enjoy! Happy Recycling!

How to "Sell Out" In America

Jillian Fragetti

Making a great connection to what we do as Design & Merchandising students at Drexel, HBO has produced a show based around the eager attempt to establish a clothing line in New York City. How To Make It In America just finishing off season number two, follows two young men who are trying to survive “making it” in the city and create a clothing line that sells. By the end of the second season they have found buyers so selling has finally become easy. The hard part was not selling out.

            They created a brand. Crisp. They went with a streetwear edge that was to attract hip New Yorkers with style. With a lack of steady cash flow, they didn’t have a great business plan with steady money to put into the line until they met a millionaire friend to fund their whole project. Super unlikely to happen in real life, the men lucked out and continued on their venture. They were on their way but things were moving slowly. Rather than selling 800 pieces to a store, they sold 8. The men struggled every step of the way until they came across some buyers for a huge chain store, something like a Pac Sun. Selling Out: step 1. Once you sell to a chain you are selling to the mass public. You took away any hip exclusivity you were trying to portray, but what that does mean is the big bucks come rolling in. Then their manufacturer decided to alter their name from “Crisp” to “Crisp by Yosi” (adding the manufacturer’s name to gain credit) Selling Out: Step 2. Once you’ve let the big companies change parts of your company that went far in a different direction than you originally wanted, you have lost your brand to the man.

            Lots of money and a name brand in a big chain store. Or, broke with your bag of t-shirts and original dream. This is a conflict anyone trying to make it in a city will come across (if your company is good enough). Creating a clothing line not only focuses on branding but reaching your target market with the right strategies. That can significantly change once you’re eating ramen noodles every night in a 2x4 apartment and a big $10,000 check gets put in your hand. Fortunately, the men backed out of the brand, changing contracts and they went back to square one with their dream intact. It won’t be easy but they might find a way to make it in America without selling out.  

Design Philadelphia @ Joan Shepp

 Design Philadelphia at Joan Shepp Boutique

"Getting Dressed" with Artist Denise Fike
by Eun Han Jeon and Christy Lucca

Passersby stopped to get a glimpse of the Design Philadelphia event, Getting Dressed, held recently at the Joan Shepp Boutique. This event highlighted the talented abilities and creations of local artist, Denise Fike, and fashion designer, Bela Shehu. On a Saturday afternoon, Fike painted a model getting dressed in the boutique window. The model wore multiple designs from Shehu’s NINO Brand, along with over the top hats and accessories from Joan Shepp.

Bela Shehu is a young designer who serves as the head designer of her own NINO Brand and creative director and founder of SHEHU. She hires Drexel design students to assist and learn from her while fulfilling their co-op, and she also offered a design award for a fashion design student this year. Her NINO Brand collection features sophisticated and unusual silhouettes with a muted color palette. Denise Fike is one of Shehu’s good friends, and they work together on many projects and events. She enjoys capturing female forms, florals and fashion in her paintings.

At the Getting Dressed event, Fike illustrated life-size portraits of a model wearing the NINO Brand collection on large sheets of white fabric. After she finished, the black and white linear drawings were hung in the store window to be viewed onlookers from the sidewalk. The event brought attention to the two local artists, and it attracted customers to the store itself. Bela Shehu and Denise File are not very well known, but both possess extreme creative talent. It was inspiring to see their work recognized in Philadelphia.

Review: The Whole Love, Wilco

By Amanda Rodriguez

Close your eyes. You are in a car. The sun is greeting the day warming your skin. The wind is tracing every strand of hair on your head. Your hand slices the morning air in a wave. The empty roads devoured by burnt orange, rust and yellow leaves introduce you to a new world. It’s like a perfect scene to the end of a great indie film that you are staring in, but what song would capture and paint the emotions felt? “The Whole Love,” on Wilco’s eighth album of the same name embodies every sensation experienced.

     Rolling Stone says, “Wilco often specialize in uncomfortable comfort music: Seventies-style melodies submerged in dark, abstract sounds and cloudy emotions,” and if you have seen their documentary released in 2002, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, you would understand why. Jeff Tweedy, as well as Wilco as a band have undergone a great deal of pressure from past record labels.

     After locking themselves in their studio for weeks on end and ultimately losing Jay Bennett to artistic differences, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was conceived. With this album they wanted to bring a different feel and emotion to their work, which resulted in their record label, Reprise, refusing to release the record. Feeling this was the best work he had created, Tweedy left Reprise and signed with Nonesuch Records, making this the best career move Wilco could have made.

     Today Wilco is under their own label, dBpm, which allowed the band to rediscover an independence and freedom they once possessed. This upbeat, psychedelic-meets-folk fusion they have sprinkled throughout the whole, The Whole Love album definitely represents their new freedom. This album to some is considered to have a sense of country waltz, with twists of Dixieland as well as blend of early Beatles sounds. I’m sure you are saying to yourself, what the heck, however the strange union between all of the sounds is what makes this album so enjoyable.

     It’s apparent that Tweedy had issues with his father in the past with lyrics such as “dreamt about killing you again last night, and it felt all right to me,” however it is evident that he is talking about his father in the last song on the album, One Sunday Morning. The 11 minute and 58 second song is a combination of different struggles Tweedy has experienced. This is the only song within the whole record that you will hear the sadness portrayed through the music. Although the other songs do talk about pressing issues and love, there is a sense of relaxation to them, a sort of upbeat manner that they possess.

     With the hard earned freedom, Wilco has created something that most bands try to achieve but will never acquire. Wilco has gained a sense of self and independence that is all their own.

Close your eyes. You are in a field of grass. Let the music engulf your mind.

Eames: The Architect and The Painter

Drexel recently hosted the film Eames: The Architect and the Painter. The film was shown, followed by a question and answer session with one of the directors of the film, Bill Jersey. While it was not an event that I was particularly interested in before attending, my friend studying interior design and architecture dragged me to see it. Within moments of the film starting, I knew I was going to enjoy the film.

The film introduced Charles and Ray Eames, design extraordinaires who worked from 1940s until Charles’ death in 1978, a quirky couple whose photographs show an insanely cute bond of the two, both lovers and partners in design. Their designs flashed across the screen, one after the next, and each one looking equally familiar to me. Charles and Ray Eames, along with their office of associates, appropriately named The Eames Office, were frontrunners in developing the modern American design aesthetic.

Charles’ “Eames Chairs” are regarded to be his most celebrated designs. He stripped away all extraneous elements of a chair, and created the most simplified device for sitting. The chairs were made from plywood, a cheap, easily accessible material, and were about to be mass-produced for a wide audience. These designs are still mimicked today in modern furniture design. Despite being affordable at one time, an Eames Chair truly manufactured by the Eames Office will run a steep bill in current times. One after the next, their designs were celebrated by designers and consumers alike. There was constant pressure to make another great chair, but somehow, Eames always managed to do it.

While Charles was the primary designer of the furniture, Ray was the backbone that held the designs together. Charles knew structure, but Ray knew color. This knowledge of color provided Ray a platform for design patterns for the furniture. Her designs are also still copied today and recognizable without knowing who the couple is.

The film also reveals other design conquests, including film and exhibition design, all while being narrated by James Franco, oddly enough. After the film, Bill Jersey humbly and humorously answered questions about the couple and the research put into developing the film. With hundreds of thousands of reference materials on the couple, the choice of editing what made the film or not provided more work than gathering the actual material. Whether you have an interest in architecture, fashion, painting, or multimedia design, this film offers a great look at amazing designers who impacted multiple industries, and did so beautifully.

Rebellion + Time + Money = Main Stream

“Rebellion + Time + Money = Main Stream.” This simple equation is the square root to rebellious fashion trends. On October 20^th, Design Philadelphia brought the rebel himself, designer and musician Keanan Duffty, to Drexel University to share his new book, Rebel Rebel, Anti-Style. From one legged jump suits to wearing underwear in public, he describes the the ins and outs of rebellious fashion or, non fashion, and how they came about.

His fascinating and illuminating graphics complemented Duffty's comical, diverting and sensational lecture. His cheeky personality made the presentation all the more entertaining. Duffty’s phrase, “rebellion + time + money = main stream” was repeated throughout his presentation about rebellious styles from the 1950s to today. In a basic, very concise, description of his book, Duffty explained his inspiration from icons such as David Bowie, Marlon Brando, and Kurt Kobain, and how their individuality and their desire to move against the mainstream actually began entirely new fashion trends. This movement of non fashion and their rebellious activities were contradictory to their outcome.

For the most part, when people, more specifically students, hear the words “guest speaker” they often sigh  and think of which high score they will break on their iPhone. Keanan Duffty’s presentation was not only entertaining, but it was informational, educational and fun.  I would go to hear Duffty speak anytime, anyplace. And I will always remember, Rebellion + Time + Money = Main Stream.

It looks like Duffty enjoyed his visit to Drexel, too. See his latest blog posting:

http://rebelrebelantistyle.blogspot.com/