Computer Arts- design studios APFEL

After looking at the playlist by Computer Arts featuring several design studios, I strongly think that the APFEL really inspires me.

APFEL, or in full, A Practice for Everyday Life, is a design studio located in London, UK. Both the co-founder, Kirsty Carter and Emma Thomas, are passionate about contemporary arts and also coincidentally, like the same artist.

It is known that APFEL for being reputable internationally for their outstanding work. One thing that I like about them is essentially, every single project that they’ve done together, carries a meaning in them, and of course, originality (Ong, 2018). And this is something that I think me as a designer, should always design something like such, and not blindly design something that brings no message to someone, because at the end of the day, what I want to do with my design is to apply the knowledge that I’ve learnt from designing and apply it in my daily life, and probably through these ways, I am able to tell a story, or convey a message to the public with it.

Homelands : The exhibition represents for the displacement and the transitory notion of home and repercussions of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan and the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

Asia Art Archive (AAA) : In the Asia Art Archive, which is a nonprofit institution that documents contemporary art in Asia, and in order to celebrate the interconnectivity of AAA’s activities, they, APFEL, had a system of lines which connect words with different languages used across Asia as a symbol of representing Asia.

David Hockney : The monograph’s initial design idea was born from the black and white only portraits that are created by David Hockney, which is widely recognisable by everyone.

Besides that, the design of theirs is always seemed to be minimalistic, as their work is united by a confident sense of minimalist intent (Gosling, 2019). In my point of view, being minimalistic is always something that I want, as it gives me a feeling that I wouldn’t be so stressful as there are less things around me when I’m working.

Lastly, when they were asked about what they are going to do in the near future, they’ve told that they would like to keep growing, explore more, and challenge themselves in the field of design (Ong, 2018). This has definitely inspired me to be a designer that doesn’t seek for comfort, but challenge. I want to step out of my comfort zone, because I believe that this is the only way to get a breakthrough in the design field. Without doing so, I will never understand how the world works, and this stops me from gaining more ideas on how to design and so much more, in other words, exploration is everything for me, and as the Internet is so popular nowadays, it definitely helps me a lot with my knowledge expansion.

References

Gosling, E. (2019, April 3). A Practice for Everyday Life Proves Creativity Can Flourish in Limitations. Retrieved from Elephant: https://elephant.art/apfel/?fbclid=IwAR0QzXttQCiGcXDWNaFQ3n59TtpdQTmq5mv1d2C5DMl8QIql4Pp5b8_scM0

Ong, J. (2018, September 12). A Practice for Everyday Life celebrates its 15th birthday and is better than ever. Retrieved from It's Nice That: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/a-practice-for-everyday-life-15-years-graphic-design-120918?fbclid=IwAR1RSuix6Qgy4eMpz9oVFcyp8DNmqbBWb-5-8ESJR5-p0mFuHgvTpddw9gg