Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

To what extent a design and a production of pampered and handmade objects, using ancient craft techniques that are revalued, reinterpreted and reinvented, provide the level of excellence to be exhibited as true works of art. The very collection of novelties designed by Arturo Álvarez make up by themselves a corpus worthy of a wonderful exhibition of contemporary art, as in fact took place last March at the Factoría Compostela Art Gallery. The title of this design/art exhibition "The volume of light" invites us to travel to the most intimate concepts from which this designer starts when creating. Throughout his career he has played with light: sifting it, trapping it, blurring it and colouring it. The curvilinear, generous, wide and sometimes stylised forms always refer us to women, to the feminine and also to the most exuberant nature, themes that permeate his work and are always recurrent. The idea of reliving an experience through an object is present with signs of femininity and sophistication.

The tradition in the relationship between design and exhibitions goes back to the very origins of contemporary design if we look at the most accepted historians such as Maldonado, Heskett, Conran and Bürdek, who place the origins of contemporary design with the Universal Exhibition in London in 1851. Without wishing to enter into historicist discussions, what I do consider to be a phenomenon to be highlighted is the conception of design from its beginnings as a cultural and industrial activity that can be converted into a media event. Indeed, the origin of the universal exhibitions themselves already lay in the need to demonstrate to fellow citizens and foreign visitors the industrial and innovative potential of a country. This has not changed so much, because today we still need to constantly demonstrate what we do in order to be visible in society.

Heloisa Crocco developed her artistic talent by being surrounded by the green of the jungle nature, perceiving this enormous garden as the binomial Art-Nature translated as an exaltation of life. In 2010, with more than thirty years of experience, the Brazilian designer brought out her book Topomorfose, which brings together the results of an exhaustive research carried out throughout her career. The protagonist of the text is wood. The book is accompanied by thoughts and concepts as well as poems by Juan Alberto Nemer and photos by Fabio del Re, VivaFoto and Carlos Stein. Topomorfose becomes, page by page, her philosophy and the author's understanding of herself and the world, as well as showing her experience that in some way defines her life's quest.

It has often been said that black is the most elegant colour for attending any social or artistic event; however, white competed against it and sometimes won the battle. It was precisely Coco Chanel, one of the great couturiers of the 20th century, who characterised the first decades of the 20th century with both shades, namely black in the 1920s and white in the 1930s. Now, it is the reinvented tweed suit of 1954, revived from the model she made in 1925, which combines these opposite colours.

The Brand is the Capital of the Company. This statement, which no one disputes and which understands the Brand as a whole, also contains two truths: it places the Company in the foreground as the legal owner, manager and responsible for the Brand as a patrimonial asset (contrary to the belief of some who see brands as autonomous and complete entities in themselves); it stresses that the Company's Capital is none other than the intangible of its Brand Identity, which is part of its Corporate Identity. Indeed, the Brand is the Company's Capital. But it can only be so when both, in symbiosis, unite their strategic talent to mutually enhance each other.

This article lists a series of research groups/centres that participated in the exhibition of panels in this field at the 6th INDITEC2011 Congress, held at the Feria de Valencia from 25 to 28 October.

This book, published by FUNDESARTE with the collaboration of ENISA, will be presented in Madrid on Thursday 19 May as the first free online downloadable manual aimed at academics and professionals, which proposes methodological and creative bridges between craftsmanship and design. The event will be chaired by Ms. Estela Gallego, Director General of SME Policy and will take place at 19.30 at the Central de Diseño, Matadero Madrid. It can be downloaded from the website: www.fundesarte.org The 185-page book will be available for free download on the Fundesarte website. The collaborating autonomous communities, for their part, have produced a small printed edition of the book. For the design of the cover, the renowned designer Isidro Ferrer has collaborated. A regular collaborator with Santillana, Random House and Seix Barral, among other publishing houses, the graphic repertoire he produced for the Spanish National Drama Centre during the four theatre seasons between 2006 and 2009 is considered one of his most important works.

To define graphically what the sketch is, as opposed to the ordinary basic concept we have of drawing proper, involves delving into the actual structuring of the object or idea represented and its relative relationship with the 'unstable' order of its graphic environment. We will speculate, therefore, with the observation that opting for the sketch or the drawing proper for the visual materialisation of an idea -in the context of its graphic reality- would be clearly subjective, given that the final image resulting from the creative process does not always relate the intention or the pure concept of the graphic project with the impression originated in the receiver. However, the field of Design itself delimits with greater precision the iconographic and plastic range that the sketch must possess in the generation of the descriptive image corresponding to the designed object -here the sketch acts in pursuit of a specific need, and it is this that determines its graphic definition-. In this case, considering the sketch as a representative agent in the creative phase of design, the receiver and the designer are seen as the same person, that is to say, every sketch made for this purpose responds to a particularly functional operation destined exclusively to the graphic modulation of the idea in the private context of the designer's own creative process.

The design of the signage for the School of Architecture of the University of Malaga arises as an evolution of the work developed in the subject Aesthetics and global systems of information and orientation, of the Interuniversity Master's Degree in Representation and Design in Engineering and Architecture, during the 2010-2011 academic year. The School of Architecture of Malaga, recently created (2004), has been occupying the old building of the Polytechnic University School on the former El Ejido Campus for the past year. The building, designed by the architect Miguel Fisac in the fifties, maintains the discourse of a commitment to modernity conceived from the rigour and simplicity of composition, and in which architecture arises from the formulation of three questions: What for? Where? How?

The text, subject of a critical review, is PREDICA: methodological guide, whose main theme is design management. This guide was developed by Prodintec Foundation (3) with the consulting support of Mr. Manuel Lecuona. The project PREDICA consisted in editing a simple methods with the aim of promoting design and promoting its implementation within the business strategy of SMEs. This text seeks to address the concept of design management as a business strategy and value the presentation that makes PREDICA guide on design management for entrepreneurs.