Design 2005

Among the most beautiful books of 2005 was a volume celebrating the most beautiful books of the previous year. Produced by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2004 is a collection of reproduced spreads and actual pages from 33 award-winning publications by designers including Julia Born, Aude Lehmann, COMA and NORM. Showing books at their actual size and on appropriate paper, the art director Laurent Benner not only suggests their materiality but also recalls the processes involved in their making. Bound in a plain white cover with a spine of exposed tape, TMBSB’s modest exterior belies its complexity and scope.

Last year’s brightest new magazine was the fantastic Fantastic Man. Also arriving in an understated cover – textured matt paper bearing a mint-tinged image of ‘Mr Rupert Everett’ – its 124 pages include images of wonderful men, flirtatious interviews with the likes of Malcolm McLaren and Dennis Freedman, sparely styled photographs by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, arch grooming advice, striped pyjamas, 35mm cameras and a De Rijke and De Rooij bouquet. Designed by Jop Van Bennekom and edited by Van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers, it is a glorious biannual addition to the Butt and Re-Magazine empire.

From niche print to mainstream publishing, The Guardian newspaper launched its long-awaited redesign in September. Scaled down to a size that hovers between tabloid and broadsheet – proportions exoticized by the name Berliner – the guiding factors behind the revisions were the elbow width available to British commuters and the same travellers’ preference for feature above bald fact. In spite of irritations such as the undistinguished masthead, with an assured family of new typefaces designed by frieze’s own font wizard Paul Barnes and an abundance of colour and open space, it makes its rivals look positively Dickensian.

Faced by the threat of hard-disk television recording, the new generation of small-screen advertisers strive to generate the must-see murmur. Hoping to restrain our fast-forwarding fingers, the crew behind the new advertisement for Sony’s Bravia LCD TV dropped a quarter of a million bouncy balls down the streets of San Francisco on a July day. Of course, they let people know about it, and the blog-driven buzz around the advertisement grew until it became available on the Web (www.bravia-advert.com) at the end of October. Accompanied by a gentle acoustic guitar track by Jose Gonzalez, it’s an extremely watchable piece of film that ironically brings to mind promotions made in the golden age of captive audiences and sky-high budgets.

Another July-to-October tale is that of the Galaxy dress. The French-born, London-based designer Roland Mouret’s corseted creation received blanket coverage in the fashion pages and red-carpet photographs in summer’s magazines. Epitomizing the cinch-waist trend and turning women into a two-dimensional icon somewhere between the 1930s’ female isotype and Jessica Rabbit, it was the most desired dress of the season. It ran through the celebrity hierarchy like castor oil, but by autumn the quiz show host Carol Vorderman had spoilt it for everyone by wearing it to Des Lynam’s book launch. Possibly unconnected to this débâcle, Mouret recently announced that he had fallen out with his muse-cum-backer Sharai Meyers and was leaving the company.

Where the success of Mouret’s dress hinged on its distinctive yet familiar silhouette, so the fate of Konstantin Grcic’s Miura barstool depends on the acceptance (or not) of an equally characteristic yet this time entirely novel outline. Manufactured in eight shades of recyclable polypropylene by the Italian furniture company Plank, Miura has the potential to transform the appearance of any aspirational drinking environment. These stools may flock like gaunt, open-mouthed space creatures, but they have a pared-down solidity that generates a strong sense of physical comfort.