SOSEVEN
Smart Covers
FRANCE, 2024
Consultant designer
Apple finally changing its camera design was a big event. After five years of almost identical design language, a new opportunity opened up to dress a fundamentally different form factor.
There are few A-brands in phone cases; the closest are luxury licensed products like Hermès or Louis Vuitton cases. It’s always an interesting style exercise to create a premium design that doesn’t compete with the brand power of the device.
Joseph Beuys
As an artist, teacher and political leader, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) and his work are widely recognized as having influenced everything from photography and sculpture to performance and environmental art.
During the Second World War, Beuys served in the German Luftwaffe as a bomber pilot. He was shot down over the Crimea in the winter of 1943–1944, and — by his own account — was discovered in deep snow by a group of nomadic Tatars. According to Beuys, they brought him back to their tent, where they treated his wounds with animal fat and wrapped him in heavy felt to keep him warm. Beuys would go on to use felt, fat and wax often in his sculptural work, describing them as being of universal relevance in the human struggle for survival.
Following the war, Beuys studied sculpture at the Dusseldorf Academy, developing a complex symbology that often featured animals such as swans, sheep, bees and hares. His first solo exhibition was in 1961, the year he also became a professor of sculpture at the Dusseldorf Academy. In 1962, he began participating in the Fluxus movement, and gave the first of his action-performances in 1963. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he founded two student-oriented political parties, and was later fired from his teaching position at the Academy.