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Recent Topics November 2016

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Birmingham City University - Sign In. It Girls The Next Wave. What toys will sell well this Christmas? Presents are stacked round a huge gift wrapping machine in the centre of the room and there's a palpable air of excitement, mostly from the adults.

What toys will sell well this Christmas?

It's early November and in what has now become something of a toy industry institution, St Mary's Church in central London is playing host to the unveiling of the Dream Toys Top 12 list. The dozen items represent the Toy Retailers Association's pick of what they think will be the most coveted items this Christmas. Lego's Star Wars Rebel U-Wing Fighter features, as does a Thomas and Friends train set from Mattel, but self-styled "toyologist" Peter Jenkinson says that not everyone's Christmas purchases will be geared towards film and TV shows.

"There's a big demand for craft items and STEMS - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. " He adds that small, pocket-friendly collectable lines such as Shopkins grocery characters, should fly off the shelves. "Kids want something they can compare and share with friends. " Traditional sellers. Cinematic Makeup Palettes : Sola Look. Coolhunting. Collaborating with Tumi is always an iterative process of refinement.

coolhunting

For this, our second backpack, we began by looking back at the first one—a military-inspired black canvas rucksack—and chose a few key elements to carry over. But from there we reset the brief. We wanted to create a bag versatile enough to serve as the ultimate carry-on, yet with a sophistication that feels right in any environment. Debuting today, the Otis Backpack, delivers on that promise by bringing together thoughtful design, considered materials, high-quality fabrication and room for just about everything. Kicking off in January of this year with our Tumi co-conspirators, Creative Director Victor Sanz and Senior Designer Peter Wu, our mutual love of bags and obsession for detail served as the perfect starting point. We settled on a design direction with a large main storage compartment and a single front panel pocket that zips on three sides. NØRDIC NEWS. Magda di Siena is an architect, an interior stylist and an art consultant.

NØRDIC NEWS

Her work is focused on projecting and setting exhibitions, fair stands, paper advertisements. She visited the Venice Architecture Biennale and shares with us the Nordic Pavilion. One of the most interesting pavilions at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale is undoubtedly the Nordic pavilion (representing Norway, Finland and Sweden), built in a 1962 design by Sverre Fehn, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year. To mark the occasion the curator, Peter MacKeith, has commissioned 32 architects, all born after 1962, to present their concepts of architecture as common ground.

FASHION STATEMENT. “It is a tough industry out there, and to be honest, one that seems built on a dying model, thanks to the digital age we are in,” comments Rebecca Morter, one half of London based fashion house: Rein.

FASHION STATEMENT

An echo, resoundingly in tune, with the overarching sentiment outlined in Li Edelkoort’s Anti-Fashion Manifesto: asking the fashion industry to suit-up, and accept that the once entrenched, tumultuous turnover of “fast-fashion” systems are obsolete, as we embrace a brave new world of personal expression, within a savvy, socially connected, digitally driven, marketplace; one with increasingly elevated expectations. Here, #ootd and #fwis hashtags become the building blocks of brand stories, and for the consumer, self-actualisation is as valuable as any monetary currency: the “statusphere” of aligning oneself to a cause, or belief, by wearing and sharing; clothing as a vehicle for expression, that goes beyond the aesthetic.

Redesigned "austerity Toblerone" prompts outrage from consumers. A savings-driven redesign of the iconic, triangular Toblerone chocolate bar has not gone down well with the British public.

Redesigned "austerity Toblerone" prompts outrage from consumers

Toblerone manufacturer Mondelez International levelled some of the bar's signature peaks in the update, which has hit store shelves in the UK. The US-based confectionary company had earlier stated it would be changing the size of the bars in order to avoid raising the price. Public reaction has not been kind to the Toblerone redesign, which altered a product so recognisable it features among the 999 objects in Phaidon's book of Design Classics. Twitter users dubbed the new-look, widely spaced bar "wrong" and "austerity Toblerone". #Toblerone quickly became the social platform's second-highest trending hashtag after #Election2016 – the umbrella for discussion about today's US presidential election.

Mondelez International had initially signalled the change to Toblerone's shape in a Facebook post back on 15 October 2016. IKEA installs replica of Syrian home inside flagship store. IKEA has worked with the Red Cross to build a replica of a real Syrian home inside its Norwegian flagship store.

IKEA installs replica of Syrian home inside flagship store

The 25 Square Metres of Syria apartment is based on that of a refugee woman named Rana, a mother of four young children who all live in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Damascus. Designed with the input of creative agency Pol, the apartment is unlike the other display rooms in the store and is built from rough concrete blocks. Instead of the typical aspirational interior laden with IKEA products, it is intended to give customers a realistic glimpse of what life is like in the war-torn country. "We had been working with the Red Cross for months, so we had a lot of footage from Syria," said Pol. "But no matter how emotional it was, nothing got close to the experience of visiting people in a war zone. " "We realised we could give Norwegians that experience at IKEA.

Instead of sofas are a few scattered rugs, while beds are made from thin sponge mats and old blankets.