Ideas going Gaga

The singer Victoria Beckham's foray into fashion design (own label) and car design (Range Rover) has prompted her footballer husband David to turn designer too (underwear and T-shirts for H&M), two examples that illustrate how design ideas are being launched by celebrities. But lamenting how branding rather than real design thinking is shaping the design industry, product designer Kenneth Grange says that whereas in the past firms like Braun, Pirelli, Olivetti, and Hermann Miller all had powerful design identities now corporations in straight forward heavy duty commerce will bring in someone like Lady Gaga to boost the brand’s image (and the company's share price).

Ideation by Twombly

Cy Twombly was an artist of thinking aloud, of thoughts checked and then resumed, hesitancies and the rush of ideas. He blurred long-held distinctions between drawing and painting depicting refined Classical themes with unidentifiable doodles and splotches. Writing and language served as major conceptual foundations for Twombly's art; the written word, in the form of poems, myths and histories, inspired much of his work. He focused on the process of writing, both by sketching words directly onto the canvas and by creating line- and handwriting-based compositions. Twombly's process illuminates ideation as practised by artists and designers alike.