The Times, Tuesday 18th March '08
Design Studio an online blogbuster
By Robert McKay
Published: Mar 18, 2008
If there was ever a doubt about Cape Town’s status as the capital of cool South Africa, it was before Justin Rhodes and Cameron Munro founded Whatiftheworld.
Established in 2005, the gallery was voted one of the Top 50 Emerging Galleries from Around the World by London’s Contemporary Magazine last year.
The gallery’s success gave rise to two spin-off projects that have proved just as popular: the Neighbour Goods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill — conceived as both a marketplace for fresh, organic foods and locally produced goods, and a meeting point — and the Design Studio, which provides a platform for emerging designers to showcase their wares.
All of the brands under the Whatiftheworld umbrella are represented online.
But it’s the Design Studio’s online journal — maintained by its creative director and blogger-in- the-making, Liam Mooney, who’s also a designer — which gives people a chance to take the pulse of the country’s creative industries.
Though Mooney doesn’t post often enough, his archived entries look like a catalogue, albeit a slightly abridged one, of the exciting events, people and places in local design.
Readers can track the career trajectory of one of the Design Studio’s biggest discoveries, Adriaan Hugo — from his first showing of his signature brightly coloured lamps at the studio to the opening of the flagship store that he co- owns with designers Katy Taplin and Joe Paine.
But, more than just a diary of past events — whether it’s the Design Indaba Expo or one of Whatiftheworld’s own “Number” parties (there have been two so far, Number One and Number Two) — the burgeoning blog also gives readers a chance to contribute to what might become the next big thing in design.
Or even, as per Mooney’s March 12 call for the donation of building material, a humble rickshaw.