Introducing Voices, a new magazine on wine culture

VOICES by Spinach Branding for Maze Row

Voices is a new publication dedicated to the world of wine, and I’ve been involved in helping form its editorial direction on behalf of Spinach Branding. Our client is Maze Row, a new brand in the fine wine scene. They represent a select group of artisan producers who craft wines that are made with passion, respect the environment and speak of a time and place.

As a print publication and digital platform, Voices fosters their work and shares their stories. We see it as a place, a space, for storytelling that involves the wider world of wine, one that includes arts and ideas, culture, design, travel.

And it’s been an extremely exciting adventure, rewarding in both subject matter and the people – winemakers, chefs, creatives, writers, photographers, artists, adventurers – encountered along this colourful journey.

What I’ve come to realise is that wine is a symbol of so much more than just a drink. Away from the supermarket sold soul-less produce, fine wine is a celebration of life, of this beautiful planet. It is a distillation of what it means to be human.

And at the core of our concept is to actively encourage diverse storytelling, multiple viewpoints. After all, inviting different voices is to be not only inclusive but also expansive and enriching. Maybe even change the direction of our gaze.

The Maze Row guiding philosophy is: In wine, we find life. It’s a lovely term coined in collaboration with Spinach Branding which defines everything we do with Voices. Ultimately, we’re looking at the world through the lens of wine.

This is how some brands are approaching circularity

The BMW i Vision Circular (theoretically) at the end of its life as a car

Earlier this month I had a candid conversation with Daniela Bohlinger who leads sustainability design at BMW Group. There are huge challenges ahead especially for giant heritage brands like hers to develop a fully circular system. But (a big But) there is also an exciting story unfolding ahead of us. If we’re able to adapt to change under covid and so rapidly, why can’t we take it further and redefine and rethink how we make, consume, treat this fragile planet and reconsider our interconnectivity to all other beings. We just need to shift the narrative from negative to positive. And it has to be a global effort (this is where it gets a little tricky). But (another big But) I’m a rational optimist and remain genuinely excited about the possibilities of change.

Take a closer look at the BMW i Vision Circular, a research project designed to communicate the company’s ideas, ethos and inventions internally and externally, and with some inventive sound ideas here

Jeff Koons is the latest artist to work with BMW on limited-edition collectable art cars

JEFF KOONS x BMW

Jeff Koons is creating a limited-edition collectable car collection for BMW. The American artist is using the M850i Gran Coupé as his canvas, with the ‘8X Jeff Koons’ cars to be revealed at Frieze Los Angeles in February 2022 and thereafter sold as collector’s editions. See the full story here.

Images (c) Enes Kucevic Jeff Koons/BMW AG

See fashion designer Paul Smith’s imaginative and sustainable MINI Strip

The body is left raw and unpainted revealing scratches from the manufacturing process. The panoramic roof is made of recycled and recyclable light Perspex. The cabin is entirely leather and chrome-free with seats covered in reusable knitted fabric, dashboard made of salvaged cork and seatbelts from repurposed climbing rope — all of which are fully recyclable. This is the MINI Strip, a custom-built unique electric car exploring ideas around design for circularity.

Read the full report here

Beauty, love, lust, sex, death, ‘The Age of Combustion’ is an ode and a farewell to the motor car

James Dean in his Porsche 550, Vine Street, 1955 © Bettmann via Getty Images

In 1920 F Scott Fitzgerald took what turned out to be a rather rocky road trip from Connecticut to Alabama in a used Marmon so Zelda could rekindle with her childhood in the south. His upbeat account of the eight day adventure were later published in book form as The Cruise of the Rolling Junk. Zelda was less generous with the journey writing simply: ‘the joys of motoring are more-or-less fictional’. When building his 1924 Type 35, Ettore Bugatti modelled the engine first in wood to make sure the proportions were right for the car. In 1933 the racing driver Francis Turner was killed while testing Buckminster Fuller’s crazy-shaped three-wheeled Dymaxion since the architect and inventor didn’t bother too much with mastering aerodynamics and proper engineering so his prototype lifted at speed making it impossible to steer or brake as Turner was to tragically discover. The Fiat Lingotto Turin facility and its cinematic pista were the work of a naval architect by the name of Giacomo Matté-Trucco who was inspired by the theories of the Italian Futurists.

These are just some of the myriad of topics gathered from the car-besotted century by Stephen Bayley in his latest book The Age of Combustion – an edited selection of his Octane column, The Aesthete. This is a hugely engaging book and Bayley is a natural raconteur. His writing is erudite but also light and fun – forever weaving his immense pool of knowledge on architecture and design and cinema and literature and life into multiple narratives. Or to quote the industrial designer J Mays: ‘No one articulates the Theatre of Design like Stephen Bayley.’

Take a closer look here