INVENTORY
A bag, a mag, and
a bookcase
Your Branch Library
Vadim Kibardin finds beauty in
function and simplicity. His
elegant Tree bookcase, seen on
the previous page, eliminates
the need for bookends and makes
it much easier to store oversize
art books. Though its unusual
silhouette is meant to evoke
Eastern calligraphy, Kibardin
says a Renaissance idea helped
inspire the piece: “Books you
return to the shelf are like
leaves growing on branches; as
your library grows, the Tree
becomes full and alive.” This
may be so, but we think the
bookcase looks great when it’s
empty, too.
Trinkets Galore
Any photo of Leonid Brezhnev, so
laden with medals by the end of
his life that he seemed ready to
topple, highlights a key fact
about the Soviets: they loved to
make lapel pins. So much so that
these shiny graphic icons,
called znachki, are still
being sold everywhere in the
country, often at bargain
prices. “This pin here was
designed to honor workers who
were ‘one in a million,’” one
bookstore clerk confides, “but
they made millions of them.
Here, have one.”
Breaking Records
Playing a record is not easy
once you’ve stuck a bunch of
dominoes to it, but as one-woman
design firm Bester demonstrates,
it makes for an attractive wall
clock. The one pictured here is
the “clever” model; there’s also
a less avant-garde version with
one domino for each hour. The
designer, who likes to make
clocks out of all kinds of
everyday materials, sells these
on her web page for about $30.
“Eskvair”
The cover of
Russian Esquire
usually features a gritty,
unflattering headshot of a
Western celebrity who is sort of
a has-been. What’s amazing is
how the photos makes these stars
seem retroactively cooler, so
that one thinks, “That Bruce
Willis was such a bad-ass, and
look, he’s still doing his
thing.” Similarly clever and
counter-intuitive design choices
throughout
each issue help to make
Esquire a touchstone for
graphic
designers in and outside Russia.
In other words, it’s worth
picking up a copy even if the
letters look like gibberish to
you.
Where Cute Is Made
Kawaii Factory is a women’s bag
and accessory label that draws
its inspiration from Japanese
Pop art. Kawaii means “cute” in
Japanese, and is the movement
that spawned Hello Kitty, among
other bizarre cultural
phenomena. The Russian take on
this idea is decidedly edgier,
as evinced by the Factory’s new
collection. Designer Karina
Kino’s change purse, for
instance, features the winged
body of a Playboy vixen
with the head of a dog, a sort
of inverted sphinx. The old
collection, which is still
selling like crazy, features
bigger bags with pictures of
1980s appliances and boxing
gloves.
