There’s something fresh and new in town and is Spazio Riviera. The Simple Flair couple opened their first and new creative space in June before the summer. Simona and Riccardo have translated in a physical place all the work that they have done in these ten years of Simple Flair (they founded it in 2009). Everything started from the idea of ​​“a physical space in Milan that was not only ours but a place to share with the creatives that every day we are lucky to meet in our work and personal path”.

But why this name? “Because it’s a word from the Italian vocabulary but able to be communicated abroad; because it wants to remember an imaginary, an informal and concrete reality, which is synonymous of simple and real values; because it gives us a positive thought; because it sounds familiar and we want everyone to feel at home here; because it’s an authentic word, rooted in the memories of many”.

Creative people, are you ready? “Riviera is an informal place, devoted to the non-spectacular, stimulating and light, Italian but international, where design and lifestyle find a meeting point; Riviera conceives simplicity as a point of arrival: in relationships, in the mechanisms of sharing and building collaborations; Riviera was born with a collaborative approach, welcomes and hosts a workspace that does not want to be canonical, where to meet sitting on a sofa or around a table to share ideas and a coffee, animated daily but also with a series of events between exhibitions, talks, events, workshops, pop up spaces; Riviera is a meeting point for creatives with different backgrounds, from design to fashion, from art to photography, with an ever-growing network of smart people, a meeting place for sector pioneers different “.

Well Milan has a new creative hotspot, in the heart of the 5 VIEE area, “a point of arrival and passage for the creative community” that Simona Flacco and Riccardo Crenna always want to keep open “towards new suggestions, new ideas, brought to its inside by the creatives who will animate it “

Text by Bianca Felicori

In the 1960s Europe is being overwhelmed by a revolution wave. Girls start to wear miniskirts for the first time and women wear trousers and the trend of the short, sleeveless trapeze dress breaks out. The world of art is freaking out: it comes the Op Art, the Minimalism Art, the Hippies phenomenon and the wave of political and social struggles invests all the society. The most famous designers are Yves Saint Laurent, Emilio Pucci, Paco Rabanne, the iconic model is Twiggy, the sweet girl with an exaggerated make-up.

People dance and dance, and many Italian clubs are in vogue, Romagna’s nightlife is the best one. The Romagna Riviera is always celebrating and among the most popular places is the Altromondo Club, designed in 1967 by architects Pietro De Rossi and Giorgio Ceretti. A paradise of colors and an image of celebration and joy. “The Altromondo Club in Rimini wants to be a multipurpose venue, that is suitable to meet the needs of many forms of entertainment. The room is composed of a container (main structure of possibilities) and equipment that can be adapted to the various intended uses. The container is a large light blue enameled metal box that provides different services (light, electricity, control cabin for lights and sounds); the equipment is made of objects placed in the container with different degrees of complexity and flexibility, corresponding to variations in use, obsolescence, and adaptability. The ambition was to create with these functional “openings” a new sense of space without falling into the scenography, in visual stunning or in the search for magical effects; but, on the contrary, underlining the availability of the equipment to a collective and variable definition of the place“.

I wonder if such clubs will ever be designed again!

Text by Bianca Felicori

Christophe Guinet was born in Paris and spending his adolescence between the city and the countryside developed a strong interest in the world of plants, an interest that soon became a passion and, today, his work. Christophe, better known as Monsieur Plant, creates fantastic installations and sculptures by bringing together objects of everyday use with different types of plants. Three years ago, with the project Plant your Mac! transformed Apple products into flower boxes and a few days ago he returned with a series of equally ambitious and original “sculptures”. The new project is called Sneakerium and the starting object is nothing more than a pair of old and used Nike, rather five pairs of old and used Nike.  

Instead of throwing them away, Monsieur Plant has taken them and transformed them into exhibition objects by immersing them in an aquarium and surrounding them with different types of plants. The most difficult part, in the artist’s words, was precisely the positioning of the shoe, so as not to make it float. 

Through his works, Monsieur Plant seeks to raise public awareness of issues related to recycling and recovery of waste. 

Discover Sneakerium in our gallery and in the video below!

The approximation is not contemplated in the world of graphics, everything must be perfect and calculated to the millimeter. That’s why the two creative directors Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward thought it was a good idea to pull a prank on graphic designers all over the world by playing with the famous Helvetica font and transforming it into Hellvetica, a character with serious problems related to kerning. 

For those who are not in the industry, with kerning we mean the reduction of the space between one letter and another in order to minimize the white spaces.  

Starting to write with Hellvetica you will notice immediately that the space between the letters seems purely random and if this inaccuracy in the graphics makes you crazy, imagine the insiders. 

Moreover, the choice to modify the iconic Helvetica character is not accidental, in fact, the font invented in 1960 by Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miedinger is famous for its precision and cleanliness. 

If you want to try to write with Hellvetica you can download it on the official site, if not look at some examples in our gallery.