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Posted by:
Glenn Adamson

From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 8: Coup de Grace

Postmodernism opens in one short week and we’ve now finalized the exhibition, ready for press previews. I thought I’d write one last post on the exhibition-making...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 7: The Build

Less than a month now ’til opening, and the Postmodernism exhibition is moving rapidly from ‘sketch’ to ‘product’. The past two weeks have been...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 6: Mannequins

OK, here's a seriously cool design process for you: putting together the mannequins for the display of 1980s fashion. With designers like Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo, and Karl...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 5: Birth of a Label

I know I've already posted about the graphic design for our Postmodernism show, but we've just finished the label design for the exhibition and there's a new example...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Paper Architecture

Architects have been drawing for a long time, often without much hope that their ideas will be realized. Some of the most famous images from the history of discipline, like the...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

John Abbott: Portrait of a Plasterworker

This guest post has been contributed by Jenny Saunt, a recent graduate of the V&A/RCA Course in the History of...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Playing God: architects and railway models

This guest post has been contributed by Stephen Knott, a PhD student at the Royal College of Art. Find his own blog...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 4: Lighting and AV

There are many ways to look at an exhibition. For curators like me and my colleague Jane Pavitt, it's mainly a matter of objects, and the narrative we create around them. For...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 3: Graphics

Here's something I've learned while working on the upcoming Postmodernism show at the V&A: there are rough sketches; there are more accurate renderings; there are...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 2: The Model

An exhibition is a three-dimensional experience, so despite all the help that drawings can provide - as discussed in the last post - sometimes what you really need is a model....

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Designing Postmodernism, Part 1: Concept Drawings

Image: April Greiman with Jayme Odgers, poster for Cal Arts,...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Your Name Here

One quick definition of graphic design: putting images and text together. Of course, not every graphic includes words, but most do - and it's one of the most challenging, and...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Signs of the Times

This guest post has been contributed by RCA/V&A History of Design graduate Charlotte Austin. How would you describe your location in a world without house numbers? What if...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Getting Plastered

This guest post has been contributed by Jenny Saunt. As a second-year student on the RCA/V&A History of Design MA course, I’m currently in the thick of dissertation...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Earning their Stripes

Stripes: the simplest design in the world, right? All you need to do is draw straight lines, over and over, and fill in the spaces between. In the below 18th century technical...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Heart on his Sleeve: Vaughan Oliver

I recently paid a visit to the graphic designer Vaughan Oliver, best known for his work over the years for the record label 4AD. As the producer of the Pixies, the Cocteau Twins,...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Tower of Power

As I've mentioned in some previous posts, I am currently working on an exhibition for the V&A entitled Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 to 1990. We've been...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

A Look at 2012

A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the construction site for the new Olympic Stadium, in the company of our students on the V&A/RCA Course in Design...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Lumps of Geometry

As I may have mentioned before, I've been working recently on a big exhibition about Postmodernism here at the V&A. One of the most exciting aspects of the project has...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Trail of Tears

I'm just back from a trip to Madrid, a first for me on many fronts: first time in the city, first time I've seen a country celebrating a World Cup victory (the game...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

A String Theory

How do you create a drawing in space? What you need is a linear element that can be held in tension, left to droop, crossed and tangled - just like a pencil line (which can be...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Adventures Inside the Atom

This guest post has been contributed by Rosie Wanek, of the V&A Exhibitions Department. I have a memory of a poster that hung on my bedroom wall when I was young. I must have...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Circular Logic

In my 2007 book Thinking Through Craft, I related the story of ‘Giotto’s O,’ told by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, as a way of talking about skill....

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Inside the Lines: Richard Kindersley

They say great minds think alike. If the reverse is also true, then the London gallery Contemporary Applied Arts and I should both be flattered. Their current show, guest curated...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Living the Dream: El Lissitzky

In design circles, the Dutch town of Eindhoven is best known for its excellent Design Academy - which has produced some of the biggest names in the field over the past...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Tony Cragg, in profile

Recently Ihad the pleasure of speaking at Lisson Gallery, which has an exhibition of recent work by the British sculptor Tony Cragg. The works on view are astounding from the...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Size Does Matter

`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice. `I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Duly Noted

Among the prize exhibits in the V&A's new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries are the so-called Forster Codices, a trio of notebooks kept by Leonardo da Vinci. They got me...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Disembodied

It's not surprising that when a fashion designer sits down to draw, the emphasis is usually on the clothing. Flip through a couturier's sketchbook and you're likely to...

null Glenn Adamson
From Sketch to Product (2009 - 2011)

Absent Minded 2: Caroline Slotte

After I put up the last post on the subject of erasure a little while back, the artist Caroline Slotte got in touch to show me this new piece of hers, entitled Going Blank Again....

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