Above The Media

I managed to write my summaries of day one and two in a timely fashion, but since the third day fell on a Friday, the weekend happened and I didn’t get around to it. Then Monday happened and the rest of the week followed in typical fashion. Well, better a whole week late than never, right? So here goes a somewhat briefer entry than the previous two.

Friday hosted a fantastic array of speakers, but in my opinion the least mind-blowing of the three days.

Li Edelkoort, a trend forecaster from Paris, France kicked the day off with her predictions on how current social trends will be affecting design in the very near future. Just as everyone was completely soothed by the serene imagery in her slideshow, she changed course and proceeded to share her vision of the “bordello of the future” with us. My thoughts were summed up pretty well on Twitter by someone called shawnroos:

Edelkoort’s whorehouse family mall vision terrifies me.

Some interesting things she said before the bordello tangent:

• There may be a mini baby boom currently happening.
• Relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is becoming important.
• The SMS/email lifestyle is a dangerous tendency. Dialogue is important, we must learn to spar again!
• Individualism is dead, groups are far more important now.
• Individuals/blacksheep will become far more resilient in order to weather the grouping trend.
• Design goes back to (very well engineered) basics. Neutral colours, wood, brushed metal. Nothing too “glamourous”.
• Industrialisation of design is necessary for SA economy.
• Designers work across media now, we don’t care anymore about specialising in a specific discipline.
• Technology and craft are growing together.
• Yellow is the new pink.

Next up was Han Feng, a Chinese fashion designer who rose to prominence in New York during the 80s and 90s and relocated back to Shanghai in 2005. Her big break came in the form of film director Anthony Mingella commissioning her to design a men’s line and hiring her as costume designer for the Madama Butterfly opera production in London. She has since designed costumes for the forthcoming Jackie Chan remake of Karate Kid.

Her story was inspiring and very amusing. Two quotes from Han Feng:

• “I never thought: I’m going to quit. I always thought: I’m going to try so hard!”
• “When time and luck arrives, I grab it.”

After coffee a peculiar young lady from the Netherlands had the floor. Christien Meindertsma is a product designer who has a fascination with the origins of materials. She has undertaken some amazing projects exploring this interest:

• Knitting “one-sheep-cardigans” including an identity document of the particular sheep whose wool was used.
• Using home made giant needles to knit an enormous rug from thick yarn. She fist knitted a tiny prototype using regular wool and needles.
• Thick yarn “urchin ottomans” dyed in the old fashioned way using colour from particular plants, like red from meadow-root.
• Made a rug in collaboration with a USA conservation group using the wool from a single organic flock in the idyllic hills of Idaho.
• Using flax made from the fibre of certain plants to create rope lamps and chandeliers.
• Rope ottomans that look like giant balls of string.

The main project she presented was her recent book chronicling all the products derived from a pig. All photos in the book are printed at life size (1:1 scale).

Martha Stewart. Much has been said about her appearance at Design Indaba 2010, both positive and negative (just Google it to see what I mean). In my opinion she completely missed an opportunity to connect with a very eager and expectant audience. Who did she think she was talking to? But I guess on the other hand, what did we expect?

With our bellies full of steak and ice tea, we returned to the auditorium to be blown away by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. He spoke about the thinking process behind a very successful low cost housing solution called “Elemental”. He calls his operation a “do-tank”!

Some highlights from his presentation:

• Good design gives simple answers without being reductive.
• Creativity is what we do when knowledge does not yet exist. With sufficient knowledge there is no need for creativity.
• An example: the simplest possible chair we might be able to conceive still looks like a chair, but the Guarani Indians sit on the ground using a thin band of material wrapped around their knees and their back, supporting their weight. A chair!
• Find the irreducible solution.
• Urbanisation is good for social upliftment - upgrading lives is easier near cities because of the proximity to everything. The problems lie in the scale and speed of uranisation.
• Why not create social housing that increases in value over time? That way it will be an investment to government instead of an expense.
• Understand that the poor will undertake self-construction to enlarge their living quarters, so make provision for that. Build half a house and allow them to build the other half. Which half should government build? The half that the people will never be able to build themselves (plumbing, infrastructure, fixtures)!
• Elemental housing successfully broke the downward trend - the social housing they created has increased in value over time.
• Quote from Aravena: “It’s amazing how fast bad ideas travel.”

Just as a side-note - Aravena’s presentation was interrupted for a while by a medical emergency in the auditorium.

The next presentation was entitled Protofarm 5050. Several designers from across the world were invited to imagine farming solutions for the future. I found this to be a bit superfluous albeit quite entertaining, especially 5.5 Designers from France who presented their guide to “free farming” in the urban environment.

I don’t think anyone knew what to expect from Handspring Puppet Company from Kalk Bay. A puppet company? At Design Indaba? However, what Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler presented, converted an auditorium of cynics to a standing ovation. Starting with the innovation of a moving limb for a small heyena puppet they evolved this to anatomically correct life-size horses and giraffes. These “puppets” are able to convey the subtlest emotions through life-like movements - right down to apprehensive flicks of the tail. I am not sure exactly how to describe it all, but try and find some pictures or video online to see what I mean. Search for “War Horse”, a British theatre production centering around their fantastic horse puppet.

The event finale came in the form of Zapiro and Thierry Cassuto’s ZA News, a puppet based satire revolving around South African politics. The live Q and A fascilitated by “Nelson Mandela” and “Desmond Tutu” had everyone in stitches. Since SABC declined the show, you are able to watch Season 2 of ZA News online.

Design Indaba wrapped up. All considered, a fantastic and well organised event which I will be sure to attend in future if the opportunity presents itself again. A big thanks to Mocality (my work) for sending me!

Oh dear, I started something yesterday by writing about my experience at Design Indaba and now I have no choice but to continue.

After getting to bed late last night due to blogging, I was tired this morning and didn’t quite manage to get out of bed as early as I hoped to. This necessitated parking in the CTICC and paying the price for the second day in a row. Once again I found a seat in the auditorium with mere moments to spare before the show commenced.

Today’s first speaker was Bruce Nussbaum, a Professor at Parson’s School for Design. He explained that his background was in financial journalism, and that one day he experienced somewhat of an epiphany on a plane when he saw a little girl squirt milk at people from her drinking bottle. He realized that it was the ring shaped design of the bottle that empowered this little girl to feed herself and “terrorise adults” on the plane to her own delight.

Nussbaum started investigating the impact of design, especially at the junction with economics. This ultimately swung his career in a new direction. He spoke about the influence of different generations and Gen Y’s trend of designing social systems rather than “artifacts”. In answering a question from the audience, he observed that our value system is being forced to change from “owning” to “sharing”, especially in the urban environment. This ties in with the concept of “co-creating” he introduced earlier in the talk. A couple of other points he made:

• “The black swan” (a rare sight) is the concept of expecting the unexpected in today’s world and economy.
• Design is optimistic, future-facing and concerned with creating the “new”.

The next item saw six graduate students from across the world share their latest projects in the so-called Pecha Kucha style. This means a quick time-limited presentation of slides. Apparently.

Three of these presentations stood out to me:

Inspired by a part in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the lead character finds himself on a planet far more primitive than earth, Thomas Thwaites of the Royal College of Art in England, decided to attempt building a toaster from absolute scratch. He started by reverse engineering an existing toaster -  the cheapest one he could find, categorizing the parts by the material they are made of and then going in search of them in their rawest form. He documented all the processes he went through extracting the materials needed and processing them by hand. Fascinating! Did he manage to make a toaster? Well, not really. He made something that vaguely resembles a toaster, but that’s not the point, is it?

Sonja Baumel, a designer from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands is challenging the boundaries between our bodies and the clothes we wear. Is a symbiosis possible with the invisible layers of bacteria already living on our skins? “Clothes” that automatically adjust to climate and temperature… Hmmm. She has even interned as a microbiologist to assist her studies. I’m not sure I completely followed her thinking, but it pretty much seemed that she was suggesting we wear mould. Seriously?!

Oliver Hermanus is a passionate filmmaker from Cape Town. He started off  studying Film and Media at UCT, furthered his studies in California, worked as a Newspaper photographer back in SA, then went to London Film School on a scholarship. He discussed his process of designing complex characters using his past and present observations of friends and people in general. His graduation film Shirley Adams, set in the Cape Flats, has been well received and awarded.

Wow, all this happened before our first coffee break! After a well deserved caffeine boost, we re-filled the auditorium for the next session.

Design Indaba Projects were discussed next. These are socially conscious design initiatives. First Carleton School of Industrial Design in Canada presenting their ideas for furnishing the 10×10 housing project completed last year. Next up was Jurgen Bey from the Royal College of Arts in London. The Design Indaba website explains his involvement:

Jurgen Bey will be leading a delegation of 10 students to visit the Design Indaba Expo 2010. As part of their product design course, each of the students will be seeking to collaborate with one of the Design Indaba Expo exhibitors to design, develop and produce a new product. Working from the theme of “form follows fiction” and engaging with the topic of “manufactured landscapes”, the collaboration will be about more than simply the final “thing”. The eventual outcomes of the project will form part of a new Design Indaba range, which will go on to launch at the Milan Furniture Fair.

A few interesting comments from Bey:

• Why is so much money and human resources being spent on exploring the Moon and Mars for possible future colonization when we have so many uninhabited desert areas on earth?
• He observed women in, umm, I think it was Egypt, “farming” vegetables in bags so they could physically move the farm to safety away from thieves!

Michael Beirut took to the stage along with three filmmakers whom he interviewed about design related films they have recently made:

Doug Pray on Art & Copy, a film about advertising and creativity.

• Good advertising might actually reflect the personality of its creator, much like books, movies etc.
• Start with something “seemingly outrageous”.
• His movie features George Lois, legendary art director from the 50s and 60s saying that great advertising makes food taste better and cars run better, it’s all about perception.
• Lois and Tommy Hilfiger are featured explaining how Lois turned Hilfiger from a complete unknown into a fashion superpower overnight.

Eames Demetrios - as director of the Eames Office, founded by his grandparents, Charles and Ray Eames, he communicates, preserves and extends their work.

• See the 9 minute film “Powers of Ten”
• “Do not delegate understanding.” In other words, a DIY approach is the best way to gain insight into the materials, tools, processes and subject matter of your work.
• “Design is a willingness to surrender to the journey”.
• He showed a video clip of a fascinating “musical tower” made by his grandparents. It works with marbles rolling down metal plates.
• Find (or make) the tools to achieve your vision.
• The role of a designer is that of a host - to anticipate the needs of your “guest” (the audience/client/end user)
• Strive not to have a “design style”, rather leave a legacy of “problems well solved”!

Gary Hustwit on Helvetica and Objectified.

• “I made it because I wanted to watch it!”

Beirut concluded by commenting on the surprising amount of showmanship exhibited by creatives featured in the films - they are not actors after all.

Lunch was served. There were enough wraps to feed an army and I did not need a second invitation. They were much easier to eat standing than yesterday’s chopstick challenge, yet unlike yesterday, a lot of people sat down on the floor to eat. Even the dessert was finger friendly - Italian kisses on sticks!

A very impressive moustache took to the floor next. Behind this moustache was Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy & Mather, India’s most influential man in advertising (according to the Economic Times). He spoke about finding common ground across the boundaries of culture and language: the human heart. He told of an Indian belief that there are nine emotions, his favourite is humour and he incorporates it into a lot of his work. Because of the vast cultural and language diversity in India, the commercials he directs often use little or no spoken language, rather communicating purely visually. He showed a few of the television commercials he has directed, many of them were hilarious. Another groundbreaking achievement was the introduction of animated commercials during the 2009 Indian Premier League cricket. This campaign defied the common Indian notion that “cartoons” are meant for children only, and the effect was that many adults embraced the simple “zoozoo” character,  they had created for the Vodafone commercials.

The next speaker, Stefan G. Bucher, is a graphic designer originally from Germany but now residing in the USA. He is best known for his series of whimsical characters created from random ink blotches on dailymonster.com. He introduced himself with a fast paced animated montage and went on to entertained us thoroughly with his dry wit and insight into the workings of a designer’s mind. Some of the thought provoking things he shared:

• “My brain is not a team player,”  on self-doubt.
• “Your brain is like an unruly pit-bull - it will chew up the furniture at best.”
• Exercise “greed control” - if money becomes your motivation the quality of your work decreases.
• Understand how your brain works and set up a life for yourself that allows you to do what you love.
• Be useful, don’t be boring. You will never be hungry or lonely.
• Nobody will care about your ideas as much as you do.

It was time for the afternoon coffee break and I made an observation of my own: moist brownie cupcakes: good, raw brownie cupcakes: bad.

The Bouroullec Brothers, Ronan and Erwan from France were next but unfortunately only one of the product design duo could make it since Erwan had become a father three days ago. Ronan Bouroullec spoke about their fantastic and innovative work in a distinct French accent and he was very nervous which made for quite an entertaining talk. I simply had to write down a number of things he said since they were so peculiar- very insightful and brilliant, but some were somewhat bizarre. Remember to read all the following quotes in a French accent omitting the H at the beginning of any word starting on one:

• “Our work is based on a tension between him and me.”
• “We don’t want more clients and hope to do less projects in future.”
• On an office system they designed: “It was a good design because many production companies copied it. Problem is, some of the copies are better than this one.”
• On a modular room-divider screen system: “They stopped production because it was a disaster.”
• Showing a (completely random) rough sketch of an enormous dog lying on a small city, with a tower that looks like it’s impaling the dog: “This is a dog on a city.” Responding to the audience laughing: “It is a very serious drawing, not a joke at all.”
• “Our studio is a research space where we sew a lot.”
• “It’s an interesting challenge producing comfort out of nothing.”
• Referring to a boat-house they designed: “This is a floating house.”
• On an oversized ceiling light they designed: “This is quite an absurd light.”
• “Sometimes it is the dream of a designer to do a full plastic chair. We did it.”
• “For me the project is finished when the picture is good and everything has been done to help it to exist.”
• “It is very important to have a lot of doubt and not be so proud of what you do.”

One particularly intriguing project was an organic looking plastic modular room divider he called the “algae”. Also the “Vegetal” chair designed for Vitra is an outstanding piece of work.

The final speaker for the day was Tord Boontje, a UK product designer, hailing from the Netherlands. He absolutely lives and breathes the “use what you’ve got” approach, creating amazing things from remixing everyday materials. “You don’t need much to be a factory,” he said. He started his career by simply making his own unique minimalist furniture. He now collaborates with craftspeople across the world on exciting design solutions using what they already have at their disposal. Most notably he invigorated a clay pot making industry in the forests of Guatamala and woven garden furniture on the streets of Senegal. Other notable projects were:

• Incredibly detailed lights and chandeliers made from different materials like paper, steel and crochet.
• The offcuts from the steel chandeliers are made into jewellery.
• “Lace” made from grass and raffia.
• A complex “spiderweb sofa”.
• A bizarre thing he calls the “Thick Fig Wardrobe” (correction) covered in enamel leaves and featuring a bronze tree inside.

Boontje had a few odd comments of his own:

• On an embroidery of a crow he did on one of his early pieces of furniture: “Once the crow was on the chair, I knew everything was possible. There were no boundaries anymore.”
• “(My work is) made more with love than with skill.”
• On a rug he designed: ” What’s nicer to lie on than a little field of flowers?”

Phew, that’s all I have to say.

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:

1. Don’t try and be too clever.
2. You get power by giving power to others.
3. 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).
4. Consistency (of say, a design element) is not as important as you might think.
5. 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.

I always feel it’s such a waste to throw away the wooden spatula after stirring my Vida e cappuccino, so I have decided to turn them into fabulous artworks. I use mixed media. Pencil and highlighter.

I have entitled my first series “Real Men”. I hope to become famous for my spatula art. At the moment I am willing to do custom pieces on request @ 99c each.

How awesome is this box? I just love the look of it! I never even had an Atari console, but looking at this I get that childlike excitement, you know the kind of feeling you had at Christmas or your birthday.

Via: Art of the Arcade