Popular culture

On a recent trip to the Museum of Design in Plastics, I was reminded of my first visit to LEGO headquarters in Billund, Denmark. I have been lucky enough to work with LEGO over the past eight years, producing games for their new LEGO sets. My first project was updating the mobile game LEGO City for...

The Merle Norman cosmetics box bag features in the current MoDiP Reuse exhibition as part of the Another Life case, which looks at other uses for packaging in which some products are offered for sale. AIBDC : 009526 Image credit: MoDiP The Merle Norman brand of cosmetics is not familiar in the UK...

Architecture and industrial design are two separate fields of study, but they do share similarities. In essence, both architects and industrial designers are problem solvers and focus on the way people live, but through the lens of different scales and perspectives. Many trained and/or practising...

In 1995 Dyson launched the Recyclone, the first vacuum cleaner to be made entirely of recycled plastics (refer image below). The DC02 Recyclone Image credit: https://www.dyson.co.uk/james-dyson/invention-a-life/07 Initially the cleaners were made from waste materials of the DC01 and DC02...

In the late 1950s, furniture manufacturer Hille approached Robin Day with the idea of producing a one-piece chair shell to add to their range. Up to that point, there were a limited number of materials that could achieve such a design, such as pressed metal, structural ply or glass-reinforced...

AIBDC : 008605 Image credit: MoDiP This bright and sunny, yellow coloured frisbee is in an amazing condition given that it is over 70 years old. That is largely due to the fact that it has been unused: 1600 of these Arcuate Vanes were discovered in a warehouse in 1977, where this example is believed...

Given that it is Nordic Day tomorrow, Thursday 23rd March 2023, I thought it would be apt for this blog to celebrate a lovely piece of Danish design from the MoDiP collections. AIBDC : 008850 and 008849 Image credit: https://www.modip.ac.uk/collections?columbo%5B0%5D=person%3A14306 The Margrethe...

Short answer: no, certainly not in my house! And certainly not in MoDiP either as we have some great objects linked to this tasty desert which I would like to share with you here. Image credit: Katherine Pell First up is this child’s toy in the shape of a football (refer image above). What does that...

Last week MoDiP opened its latest exhibition, Designated Design: A collection of national importance. It celebrates the wonderful accolade we received earlier this year when Arts Council England awarded the museum Designated Outstanding Collection status. The exhibition is based upon themes taken...

MoDiP has several pieces in the collection by Anna Castelli Ferrieri (1918 – 2006), the leading female industrial designer in Italy throughout the 1960s-1980s. She began as an architect, studying at the Politecnico di Milano and becoming its first female graduate in 1943. Her husband, Giulio...

MoDiP recently visited the Yunex Traffic manufacturing facility in Poole to talk about traffic lights. The company supply, install and maintain traffic signal and control equipment for the BCP council, and had kindly offered to donate some plastics objects to the museum. We were treated to a tour of...

MoDiP has three different examples of plastics NAAFI tokens in the collection. With reference to the image below, on the left is a circular ½ d token, in the centre an octagonal ½ franc token and on the right, a circular green coloured token valid in NAAFI Egypt only. MoDiP’s three NAAFI tokens...