Starry design collaborations of 2024: Barbie to Snoop Dogg
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This was a 12 months that design collaborations went super-stellar. Music legends Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre turned to canned drinks, with designer Ini Archibong, whereas singer-songwriter Solange Knowles created glamorous new glassware with Saint Heron, Barbie launched furnishings with Kartell, and former NFL star Michael Bennett created lighting with Gantri. The curiosity these well-known names carry to the design world goes past superstar stardust; every undertaking featured here’s a case research in bringing a recent perspective to a short with another view developed from adjoining business expertise. Right here is our round-up of starry design collaborations of 2024.
A 12 months in assessment: star-studded design collaborations of 2024
Solange Knowles for Saint Heron
(Picture credit score: Rafael Rios for Saint Heron)
In 2024, singer-songwriter Solange Knowles designed and launched an beautiful trio of glasses that had been in the stores from the MoMA Design Retailer. On the time, she spoke to Wallpaper* about her need to democratise good design and its energy to raise mundane gestures into ceremonial moments. The glassware assortment, ‘Small Matter: Type Glassware 001’, sees topaz coupes high three totally different onyx bases, every with a definite persona: there’s a sublime deco stem wine glass, a chunky ribbed trunk goblet, and a squat, graphic counterweight of a base for the cordial glass. Light-weight however sturdy, the glasses really feel ceremonial and glamorous, historical and horny directly.
Author Hugo Macdonald
Barbie x Kartell
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Mattel and Kartell)
Barbie and Kartell teamed as much as current a sequence of chairs, each doll-sized and adult-sized, in collaboration with Mattel Creations. The completely pink sequence brings a contact of the Dreamhouse to your personal residence, and was showcased throughout Milan Design Week 2024. Celebrating Barbie’s sixty fifth anniversary, the design collaboration unites 5 Kartell chairs – ‘AI’, ‘Venice’, ‘Louis Ghost’, ‘Masters’, and ‘Ero|S|’, all by Philippe Starck – in Barbie’s enjoyable model and distinctive bubblegum Mattel pink.
READ: Barbie and Kartell’s pink chairs are match for dreamhouses giant and small
Michael Bennett x Gantri
Michael Bennett and the ‘Ursa Minor Desk Mild’ for Gantri
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Studio Kër and Gantri)
Michael Bennett, former NFL star and founding father of Studio Kër, collaborated with Gantri to showcase the ‘Ursa Minor Desk Mild’, which nods to his ancestry and African structure and design. Drawing inspiration from Bennet’s personal ties to Senegal, the desk gentle echoes the Little Dipper constellation, which comprises the North Star, a guiding gentle for the numerous slaves who escaped the American South, in addition to numerous others all through historical past – an emblem of freedom and unity.
‘African heritage is stuffed with superb artwork and custom that I wished to discover and rejoice with others,’ the previous NFL star and Studio Kër founder informed Wallpaper*. ‘I acquired glimpses of it from my grandmother whereas rising up in Louisiana, and ever since, I’ve been drawn to designs that seize the spirit and energy of those that got here earlier than me. Furnishings is deeply narrative for me – it is the place the tales of my ancestors and my very own come collectively in a tangible approach. I really like how a bit of furnishings can do such job of telling tales which might be each private and common.’
READ: Michael Bennett’s collaboration with Gantri is a up to date tackle African heritage
Tyler, The Creator x Parachute
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of le Fleur* and Parachute)
Tyler, The Creator’s life-style model le Fleur* teamed up with Parachute to current a breezy homeware assortment of pastels and prints. Le Fleur* is thought for garments and equipment that confound conventional and confining gender norms, embracing multi-hyphenate artistic’s personal private strategy to model and id. The model title itself is a refined reference to his album, ‘Flowerboy’.
The preppy life-style model is not afraid to play with color, as evidenced by its assortment of nail polishes, shiny knitwear and baggage traces. But, its newest collaboration with Parachute brings an essence of spa-like tranquillity to the textile bedding designs. The collaboration is an unlikely matrimony that harmonises daring and shiny le Fleur* signatures with Parachute’s laid-back attract, and spans bedding, cushions, and a particularly smooth pair of shearling slippers.
READ: Tyler, The Creator’s new pastel-hued homeware assortment with Parachute
Ini Archibong, Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre
(Picture credit score: Dominic Leon)
When designer Ini Archibong – whose portfolio spans furniture-making, lighting, glass and past – was requested by music legends Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg to design the packaging for his or her canned drink, Gin & Juice, he jumped into the world of 2D design. Celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Snoop’s 1993 debut album, Doggystyle, produced by Dr Dre, the canned gin drink acquired its title from Snoop’s Grammy-nominated music ‘Gin & Juice’, and is available in a wide range of fruity flavours. Archibong observed, when looking the cabinets for a canned tipple, that drinks packaging can typically be stuffed with giant graphics, and daring colors. The California-born designer wished to take this doubtlessly saturated idea and spin it on its head.
Stripping again the design to 4 colors that signify every flavour, Archibong labored with shut college pal and illustrator Wayne Johnson to hand-draw a basic lo-rider that takes centre-stage in opposition to a white background, alongside the ‘Parental Advisory, Specific Content material’ iconography that’s emblematic of the period of the music’s launch.
READ: Ini Archibong explores 2D design with Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg for brand new canned gin drink
Whats up Kitty x Fender
(Picture credit score: Fender / Sanrio Co. Ltd)
There aren’t many merchandise that haven’t been given the Whats up Kitty therapy, and though this new haul from Fender (additionally featured in our decide of the finest devices and tech of 2024) feels novel, it’s not the primary time the cartoon cat has graced the corporate’s guitars. Again in 2006, the corporate’s Squier sub-brand introduced out an ultra-simple Stratocaster, completed in pink, naturally, however with a Whats up Kitty scratchplate and decals. Missed at first, it’s since gone on to turn into a cult merchandise.
Now that Kitty Strat is again. As a part of the cat’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations, Fender Japan teamed up with Sanrio to create an expansive limited-edition assortment of things, culminating in a reissue of the Squier Stratocaster, together with a full-fat, Made in Japan Fender Stratocaster that’ll solely be accessible from Fender’s Flagship Retailer in Tokyo.
Author Jonathan Bell
READ: Fender Whats up Kitty Stratocaster marks 50 years of Sanrio’s most interesting cartoon cat
