By Chris Haughton|2020-05-13T12:50:05+00:00July 4th, 2010|Tags: abitlost, childrens, ihanhukassa, littleowllost, mamakwijt, unpeuperdu, 엄마를 잠깐 잃어버렸어요|0 Comments
My OFFSET talk. basically.
The talk I gave in Dublin at the Offset series of talks has been put online.
I get a little bit better after the first few mins…. oh dear….
Thanks so much to everyone at OFFSET for putting on such a great event. Its probably the best series of design talks ive seen together anywhere. It was an amazing honour to speak at it. Many of the other talks are now online. David Shrigley’s one is really funny.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/11102357 w=500&h=281]
People Tree prototypes
I have just been working on some fair trade soft toys here in Nepal with ACP
We still have to iron out a few things …probably going to shrink them in size a little… but hopefully they will be available in autumn 2011 from Peopletree
new nepali words of the day: ‘bandha sukya’ = ‘monkey finished’
kumbeshwar technical school
I went down to visit them for fair trade day (a week late because of the week long Maoist strike here in May)
For fair trade day KTS hired doctors/nurses/dentists for a free health check for the children, the workers as well as local people and children who are not in the school.
They also had a ‘meet up’ day for their knitters. The knitting that KTS produce is??done by the women at home in the villages so that they can can be flexible and remain with their children, so several times a year they meet up to share skills and get technical feedback. Each of the knitters knitted one patch of their own design and the whole lot was sewn together to make a pair of gloves. The gloves are sent to People Tree who may incorporate some of the patterns into their knitware and reward the knitter’s own designs.
You can read more about them and if you look at the rest of the site see (and order) some of the beautiful knitware products they make here
I am getting some carpets made at KTS …..will post something about that soon
Kathmandu University Illustration Workshop
These are some of the images from the illustrators at my workshop at Kathmandu University. We combined images from Nepali folk stories and legends with other images to create new ways of telling the stories. Thanks very much to all the students at KU. The standard of work was really very high.
You can read more about it here
the images below are by (top to bottom) Sadhana Poudel, Aditya and Kanchan Burathoki
read the photo.circle post about it here
Beatrice Alemagna and all the amazing picture books we never see
I think if I was asked to name my favourite picture book illustrator working today it would be Beatrice Alemagna. I first saw her work by chance in an Italian bookshop and ever since i have always followed her work and been blown away by her endlessly inventive drawings and poetic and intelligent stories. I was honoured to actually meet her through a good friend at last years Bologna fair, and i was very surprised to find that she has put a link to my work from her site (wow!!!!) so i wanted to return the favour.
I just quickly googled her to add some English links to her books, but as far as i can see most are still not available in English. I think its kind of amazing…. the standard of English language picture books generally i think is so so weak compared to French and continental Europe. Walk into any good bookshop in France or Italy (or Japan/Korea) and you will just be blown away by the quality and creativity of the picture books, they are not simply aimed at children. There is a depth and poetry that can be read on many levels. Anyone who has ever been to any of my illustration workshops can tell you i love to show Beatrice’s books and images as inspiration, but there are so many intelligent and thoughtful books in that vein that we rarely see.
Publishers like Naive Livres / Gallimard Jeunesse / Editions Memo / Autrement / Planeta Tangerina / Sarbacane / Thierry Magnier / OQO / Corraini / Orecchio Acerbo / Borim all that awe-inspiring quality stuff seems like its everywhere in Europe but is rarely translated or very difficult to find in the English speaking world. A few good designy-bookshops in London (Magma etc) now import the French/Italian/Japanese language versions for the benefit of design savvy fans ….but perhaps more children would benefit from reading them. I always wonder why they arent they translated? I’m always blown away by the high standard of the advertising and design in the UK and the English speaking world, in general way ahead of the advertising coming out of France and Europe but in the world of picture books I think we are far behind in imagination.
The dark shadow in the corner i think is my sock (scusi Beatrice!!!!)
This is out in Korean but not English? Isn’t that a bit weird?
>>>>>>>>
UPDATE Jan 2014:
A LION IN PARIS is now available here in English thanks to the excellent TATE publishing! They do lots of really great other picture books too, many from the publishers i mentioned above.
I was honoured to write a quote for the back of the English version book (wow!!!) and I spoke to Anna Ridley about how the book inspired me here:
http://lookbookreport.com
Kathmandu University Talk
I’m giving a talk tomorrow at Kathmandu University. go here for details. everyone welcome
Jointly organised by KUart and photo.circle
