I must admit, I don’t really feel like typing now, but I am fighting laziness to record my experience of the first day of Design Indaba 2010. Mostly just for the sake of (b)logging it.
I arrived at the R15,50 per day parking lot just down the road from the CTICC, only to find it full. Pressed for time, this left me no choice but to park in the CTICC parking lot and brave the cost of R54. I suppose it’s not all that bad in relative terms but I will try get to the cheap one a little earlier tomorrow.
I took it easy this morning because I had the good sense to pre-register yesterday afternoon, so no rush. Of course a big perk of being a conference delegate is free stuff. So, what did I get? In no particular order: Design Indaba magazine, t-shirt, ABSA pen and note pad, a metal Grolsch pen with an imitation “blast cap” clicker, a sturdy SAPPI wire-back notebook and various other little publications and pamphlets all in a nice sling bag.
I arrived at the auditorium and found a seat with moments to spare before the event was officially opened by Thandiwe January-McLean, CEO of SA Tourism.
First up was graphic designer Michael Beirut of Pentagram New York. He delivered an entertaining talk entitled “My Favourite Project… and How I Almost Blew It”. The project in question was a charity initiative by The Robin Hood Foundation. They got different architects to design and realise libraries in several disadvantaged New York elementary schools. Beirut’s role was to oversee any graphic design requirements. He discussed a few mistakes he made in assuming that he understood the project and underestimating the complexity of the “audience”. He summed it up with five lessons he learned:
- Don’t try and be too clever.
- You get power by giving power to others.
- The real opportunity in a project may not be what it seems at first (an unanticipated design challenge emerged in the wall space between the shelves and the ceilings).
- Consistency (of say, a design element) is not as important as you might think.
- The audience is more wonderful than you think.
The second speaker of the day was a South African architect called Mokena Makeka. His talk was engaging and radiated positivity and sophistication. By way of examples from some of his firm’s (or “Laboratory” as he calls it) recent project he explained that he strives towards design that not only responds to its environment, but transcends it. He sees his speciality as “reading the terrain”. One of the projects he discussed was a Police Station that challenges many of the “traditional” notions of what such an institution should look like. He also spoke about designing innovative dwellings in the Mongolian desert, a futuristic protea-inspired stadium and a community hall in Khayelitsha. I noticed an interesting trend of unexpected diagonal columns in his work.
After a quick coffee break, Japanese Manabu Mizunu, creative director of his “Good Design Company” spoke to us (in Japanese) with the aid of a interpreter. His philosophies about design and the practical application thereof were thought provoking. A few things that stood to me out during his presentation:
- Mizunu designed a full length mirror roughly in the shape of a silhouette, “by removing the parts you don’t look at”.
- When branding, context (the story behind the brand and the product) is just as important as the content (product itself).
- Find new wisdom from the past - he showed an example of branding he created for a hemp clothing company with over 300 years of heritage. They wanted to look modern, but they did not realise that the power of their brand lay in its past.
- Consumers are attracted by context, e.g. iPod - would it be popular if it was not an Apple product?
- Design should be tied up with economical considerations. Design is a vehicle to invigorate economy.
- He showed an interactive campaign he did for Adidas using badges with QR codes.
Mizunu was followed by a London based trio called Troika consisting of Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki and Sebastian Noel. The work they presented was the most inspirational and impressive of the day in my opinion. It is difficult to explain what they do exactly… Hmm, it is a combination of conceptualising, designing and inventing interactive public installations. Examples they showed were:
- A world clock for British Airways featuring a custom typeface design on electronic glow in the dark ink!
- A kinetic “cloud”, also for British Airways, covered in thousands of flip reflectors. Ok, to have any idea what I’m talking about you’d better watch their little video…
- the “Apple Newton Virus” which causes all your desktop icons to fall down
Troika spoke of a love for old technology since the design process in the old days had a very strong subjective influence. They certainly made an impression. I spotted a heart someone drew on the Woolworths fun wall afterwards saying “will the Dutch girl from Troika marre me?” It was not me by the way, I’m happily engaged.
Lunch followed. I’m not going to complain, but all I have to say is the difficulty level of eating oriental food out of little polystyrene containers with chopsticks while navigating a crowded room was ADVANCED. The bow ties were nice.
After lunch William “Bill” Drenttel, a graphic designer from the USA had the floor. He runs a small practice from his home in a picturesque forest with his wife as partner. Drenttel is currently on an extended world tour with his family. He spoke about some projects that seemed interesting at first, but then… I don’t know. Maybe it was just the time of day or something, but I found the rest of his presentation really boring and I have no idea what exactly his point was.
Wooster Collective is another husband and wife team. They took the stage and spoke about street art. I had no idea that I was already so plugged into the street art scene, but I was well familiar with most of the photos they showed. Very interesting and entertaining nonetheless. They call themselves “Street Art Curators” which is a new concept to me. A few standout points:
- Street art is “designed for decay”. It could last anything from a few seconds up.
- Reverse graffiti is the process of cleaning art onto heavily polluted walls in subways etc
- There are many reasons for doing street art. Sometimes it’s to beautify ugly spaces, other times just to evoke a smile.
- Guerilla knitters knit sleeves for lamp posts etc.
- Tampering with posters on illuminated light boxes to reveal a surprise at night, e.g. Desperate Housewives become skeletons
Cape Town’s own Faith47 followed with a presentation of some of her work. She is amazingly talented at lettering, painting at any scale and incredibly detailed illustration work. I was honestly surprised to see her in the flesh. She has always been so enigmatic to me, I thought she might have been a myth!
After another coffee break it was Brazilian Marcelo Rosenbaum’s turn to speak. He did so in Portuguese and his message was relayed by an interpreter. He is an architectural designer of interiors and products. His work is an incredibly colourful fusion of honest Brazilian culture and design with interior spaces, furniture and objects. The phrase he used to describe it was “bringing the slave culture into the master’s house”. Things that were once used by the poor are now used by the rich and vice versa.
Then a surprise speaker made his appearance on the big screen via audio visual conference technology: Dr. J Craig Venter, a leading microbiologist from the USA. He is renowned for being the first person to sequence the complete human genome in 2007. His research is cutting edge and the applications of his institute’s findings hold promise of solutions to energy and resource problems. He spoke about “designing life”. A lot of it went over my and most others’ heads and I must confess I drifted off a couple of times.
Fortunately Harry Pierce, a graphic designer from Pentegram London woke me up with his interesting presentation of typographic work, including his new book of visual conundrums.
Ok, that last guy deserved more than one sentence, but I have written WAY more than I intended to and now I’m done!
I don’t think it was intentional, but the golden thread that ran through all the presentations of the day was the importance of CONTEXT for design.
Nice writeup dude! Keep ‘em coming for us unfortunates still at work.
Haha, thanks man. I wrote an even longer piece for you today!