Things to do in March: the best design events this month

Book: Milton Glaser: POP

This month Monicelli (Phaidon) will publish Milton Glaser: POP, an overview of the 60s and 70s work from the celebrated illustrator and graphic designer responsible for the I love NY logo and a renowned 1966 Bob Dylan poster.

Covering just a section of Glaser’s long career, the decades in question start a few years after he co-founded Push Pin Studio with Semour Chwast and Edward Sorel, reaching the early years of his eponymous agency Milton Glaser Inc., established in 1974.

As the subtitle indicates, it was also the Pop era, a time of great cultural transformation in which Glaser’s work played a part. The book’s authors – friends, collaborators and design experts Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber – compare Push Pin’s impact to that of The Beatles, writing, “Push Pin redefined the graphic mode […] inventing a new visual grammar of editorial and advertising art and typography”.

Across thematic chapters, the book features 1,100 images displaying Glaser’s influential graphic style of bright flat colour combined with visual wit across book and album covers, posters, magazines and advertisements – many of them not seen since their original publication.

Milton Glaser: Pop will be published on 29 March and is available for pre-order now from Monicelli, Phaidon for £44.95.

Exhibition: Field Notes, Victoria and Albert Museum

As part of ten-year project, Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures, the V&A has collaborated with environmental charity Sylva Foundation on the Field Notes summer school, now showcased in a new display at the museum.

Twelve designers, artists and architects were selected through an open call-out to participate in seminars, forest walks and hands-on making – with the aims of to exploring ways of caring for woodlands and working with locally sourced wood.

Asking “What can the forest teach us?”, discussions ranged from issues of land use and ownership, access and inclusion and the importance of diverse thinking when looking to sustainable futures.

Field Notes is free to visit until 31 August 2023 and can be found in the Furniture Gallery, V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL.

Fair: Collectible Design Fair, Brussels

Established in 2018 by Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg as the first fair to focus on collectible 21^st century design, the sixth edition of Collectible will bring together galleries, design studios, institutions and foundations in central Brussels from 9 to 12 March.

This year sees the launch of three new sections: New Garde, focused on emerging design galleries; Architect <=> Designer, which explores the practice of furniture design by architects and interior designers; and Dialogue, contemporary work which speaks to the past.

A section dedicated to emerging and mid-career independent designers and design studios has been curated by Paris-based designer, artist and curator Leo Orta. Around the theme “What is your story”, it will focus on the networks and communities being built by the current generation of designers, while equally looking to trace supply chains of the works on show.

PAF Atelier will design an inflatable scenography for the fair that mixes references from the natural world and the gaming world, with the structures produced sustainably and planned for reuse afterwards.

Collectible takes place from 9 – 12 March at its new location of the Sheds of Tour & Taxis, Avenue du Port 1000 Brussels, Belgium. For more information visit the website.

Online Talk series: Entrepreneurs Hub, Design Museum, London

This month, the Design Museum, London is holding a series of talks for its Entrepreneurs Hub, created to help emerging designers successfully grow their ideas into businesses.

The first, on 6 March will be Championing Empowerment through Creative Business, with Folake Shasanya and Suhair Khan, drawing on their experience at Silicon Valley Bank and Google.

Monday 13 March sees Alison Orr, IP strategist at Womble Bond Dickinson on how protecting and identifying intellectual property is critical to design businesses.

The third session, on 20 March, hosts writer, founder and mentor James Church and Bartle Bogle Hegarty co-founder Sir John Hegarty, who will introduce the principles of a perfect pitch for design founders looking for investment.

The Entrepreneurs Hub talks will take place online on 6, 13 and 20 March 2023. For more information and to book a ticket, visit the Design Museum website.

Film: Fashion Reimagined

“We all kind of sped up too fast in this generation. We produce 100 billion items of clothing each year, and three out of five of them end up in landfill”, says Amy Powney, creative director of luxury fashion brand Mother of Pearl in the trailer for her new film, Fashion Reimagined.

Released Friday 3 March, the documentary shows Powney reflecting on how her unique childhood, growing up in a caravan without water, electricity or heating, meant she never felt at ease within the fashion industry. It then follows the designer’s in-depth investigation into the complicated and opaque supply chains involved in creating clothes, meeting suppliers and workers as she attempts to develop a clothing line that meets the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) .

Explaining that only a handful of fashion brands have signed up for GOTS certification, over 50% disclose no information about their supply chains at all, citing information from Fashion Revolution’s 2022 Transparency index founded after the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013. Aiming to spread awareness and encourage both individual action and legislation, the team behind the film includes information on current legislation and policy across the globe on the film’s website.

Fashion Reimagined is released on 3 March in cinemas and on 9 April on Sky Documentaries.

Exhibition: Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth

Sixteen contemporary designers and artists will feature in a new exhibition across the house and gardens of Chatsworth in Derbyshire, including Faye Toogood, Fernando Laposse, Formafantasma, Ini Archibong, Najla El Zein, Max Lamb, and Samuel Ross.

Titled Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth, the exhibition builds on a longer design history associated with Chatsworth, with the Cavendish family having commissioned art and design for the family estate across the generations.

Co-curated with writer, historian and curator Glenn Adamson, the exhibition looks for “unexpected connections” in its placement of these new works within the historic building, relating to its architecture, interiors, furniture and ceramics.

Juxtaposed with Chatsworth’s materials of glass, stone, wood and light, material explorations include Fernando Laposse’s cabinet and armchair made using agave and sisal fibres; Dutch designer Joris Laarman’s digitally fabricated and mathematically complex wood benches; and Formafantasma’s Charcoal Series, which references charcoal’s ability to both pollute and purify.

Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth is open 18 March – 1 October 2023, at Chatsworth, Bakewell, Derbyshire, DE45 1PP. For more information and to book, visit the website.

Podcast: New series of On Design with Justyna Green

London-based illustrator and podcaster Justyna Green has released the ninth series of her podcast On Design, where she speaks to “design’s most inspiring figures – from designers and artists to creative directors, entrepreneurs and everybody in between”.

The first episode features Paola Antonelli, senior curator at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the department of Architecture & Design, who is also MoMA’s founding director of Research & Development.

In the conversation, Antonelli discusses her role at MoMA as well as the current exhibition Never Alone: Video Games and Other Interactive Design.

There will also be a special monthly “Green Edit” episode, where Green is joined by her co-host James Greenfield to reflect on news and current issues and share advice for those the creative industries.

On Design with Justyna Green airs weekly, with the first episode released on February 28. You can listen to the series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast platforms.