Frame Magazine
Finding stories everywhere

I didn’t know much, ok, anything, about interior design before I started writing for Frame magazine. Five years later I was capable of holding a conversation about chair design with one of its leading exponents, Konstantin Grcic. Along the way I had tea with Beyonce’s stage designer, talked food fights with a couple of jelly babies and debated the future mobility with the Head of BMW Group Design. But perhaps the most important thing I learned was that if you dig deep enough there’s a story to be found anywhere, even in oven and carpet factories.


Over the seven years that Bompas & Parr have been in business jelly has become their signature dish - as I should well know, having been a guest at their very first event in 2008, the Architectural Jelly Banquet. It featured a variety of jellified replicas of buildings designed by luminaries such as Richard Rogers and Sir Norman Foster. Sadly, I didn't cover myself in glory that evening but in jelly. Sam’s reaction to my role at the banquet is, nevertheless, heartwarming. I inadvertently heckled Heston Blumenthal? 'Great!' It was two of my friends who started the food fight? 'Amazing!' Nici and Hannah, all is forgiven.

Taken from an interview with Bompas and Parr, Frame 103.





The French call it the ‘Fridge of France, but the Germans on the other side of the fence feel that it’s one of the warmest parts of their country. Welcome to Lipsheim, where you drink Pinot Blanc with your sauerkraut (or choucroute, for the Francophiles). It’s also where the world of French cuisine and German manufacturing collide in the sleek metallic forms of products by Gaggenau.

Taken from a feature on Gaggenau, Frame 98



Most people passing through Billund Airport don’t make it much further than the few kilometres it takes to get to Legoland. However, if you venture a little further north, you’ll find the home of Ege Carpets nestling between some perfectly manicured lawns outside the picturesque town of Herning. Sadly there’s no red carpet rolled out for me on the bright autumnal day that I visit. Instead I’m treated to the sight of bison happily grazing away in the fields outside the factory. They don’t have much to do with anything made inside (all the wool in Ege carpets comes from New Zealand sheep) but their presence is an early glimpse of the charismatic character of Mads Eg Damgaard, Ege’s founder.

Taken from a feature on Ege Carpets, Frame 102

Italian Design Is Coming Home. To Switzerland.
How to turn the launch of a new office into a cultural movement

In 2011 Polyedra, a leading Italian paper distributor, opened a new branch in Switzerland. Usually it would be enough to announce this via an ad in a couple of industry magazines or broadcast the news through a few trade channels. But that seemed a bit dull and predictable to Tommaso Minnetti and I, especially as the target audience was a group notoriously hard to impress, the graphic design community.

So we proposed creating something that would add value for the client, designers and (we hope) the public.

It all started when we did our typically extensive research and realised that "Italian" graphic design, beloved and respected across the world, owes a substantial debt to Swiss designers for making it so famous; Max Huber, Walter Ballmer, Carlo Vivarelli to name just a few. We saw an opportunity to celebrate this bond between the two countries; to celebrate the past, the present and future of Swiss and Italian design.



'Being an English copywriter working in Amsterdam, albeit with an Italian art director, gives me a unique position on which to comment on Swiss and Italian design.'

Taken from A Beginner's Guide to Swiss and Italian Design

  		We asked 11 of the best designers in both countries to collaborate on new artwork, while to celebrate the future, we organized a competition for students and young designers under the age of 30, offering them the chance to be published in a book alongside the established designers and thus exposure to help further their careers.

And that's how we turned a brief to launch the opening of a new office into a cultural movement involving 22 of the best designers and design agencies from both countries.

The book is now available to buy via Bol.


poster by Mutado and chragokyberneticks