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Creating something better: Final day of Design Indaba

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In all the conversations we’ve had during Design Indaba, people have mentioned how speakers closed loops for them. Things we knew and in many cases had forgotten was resurrected and given a new, shiny, better  life. To a great extent, the final day closed some loops that were started on the first two days.

Alexandra Daisy Gingsberg is a designer by trade, but she’s morphed herself into a biologist. Without any formal training, she is manipulating bacteria to do all sorts of things. She works from the premise of making things better – making life better. In her version of a better world, nature is manipulated to give us all the things we need – even grow our products. One of her projects, E.Chromi, can be used to test the pollution level of water, but they have much greater plans for this little bit of science fiction, like why not turn our poop different colours to show if we have any diseases?

Their argument is essentially that truly disruptive technologies need to be new creations, they can’t be created from the same things we’ve always had. So in essence they’re building new tools, new bits and pieces to create and design with.

Very much like Alexander Chen and the Google Glass team who create ads for products that don’t exist yet, she believes that carving out this space and predicting or exploring the future is the first step to opening it up to becoming a reality.

If Daisy looks to the future for her inspiration, then type maestro Matthew Carter looks to the past. His all-consuming obsession with types and where they come from, who took part in changing them is the mark of a true craftsman. He taps into old draft books and gravestones for inspiration, meticulously researching fonts and how they were used. Matthew describes it as a “messy interaction”, but the results are quite beautiful:

Illustrator and NY Times columnist Christoph Niemann, is the man who drew/tweeted/ran the New York Marathon (see a video about it here). But that might be a too simplistic description of his work. He has created so many great images that seem to have wit and basic truths fed to them intravenously. Like this video he created for Google Chrome:


He told us his life story, saying that at 25 he was brave and careless – his “pain threshold” was so much higher than it is now. He argues that this is a great quality for creatives. “You take chances that you wouldn’t take when you’re older. Pursuing dead ends is your creative life insurance. You need to make mistakes and fail in order to go to the next step. Being careful and taking care can actually kill your creativity.” Which probably explains that zany idea of run/draw/tweet-ing the marathon.

Another great insight from Christoph was that we all need an inner Artist and Editor. “It can be liberating getting your hands dirty, but you always need to bring it back to its essence. I can’t live with people not understanding what I do. Simplicity doesn’t mean doing something without a lot of ornament or detail. It’s going very complex and then cutting it down to its pure essence.”

He’s also not precious about throwing ideas that just don’t work out. “Even if you’ve brought it down to the essence it still sometimes doesn’t work. Then you have to let it go. No matter how much you’ve fallen in love with that thing, just ignore it.” He says that the most exciting and relevant struggle we can engage in is an “open childlike love for what you do vs a grungy little evil accountant going ‘No it doesn’t work’”.

Spoek Mathambo had to cancel his talk because of a death in the family, but he was quickly replaced by the gutsy (who goes on in front of 3000 people without months of planning!) Daniel Charny. He’s made it his life mission to link skills with imagination, a journey that started with the Power of Making exhibition. The greatest thing he learned from that experience is that we are still learning new skills from people. We’ve essentially come full circle from the stone masons who were taught by masters to online forums where we’re still taught by people.

His newest project, Fixpert, is his answer to the question of whether design is going through a renaissance or requiem. It’s an appeal to normal folk to use their brains to help others, pairing a Fixpert with a Fixpartner, and that’s when the magic happens:

Renowned architect David Adjaye showed us many of his brilliantly designed buildings, really exploring his thinking and references in each of them. One of the most impressive is the Francis George Library in Washington D.C. “Libraries are no longer necessary everyone is going to be online for information, they are no longer the only depository of knowledge.” But, he thinks that “technology is missing something that is engrained in us, this emotional thing of going somewhere to be with people and feel things”. So he’s transformed this library into a space for “doing things together”, whether it be yoga, acupuncture, or doing your home work. These emotive spaces are most important in neighbourhoods that have the least amount of shared public space.

Matthew Carter spoke about how something you do, see or hear lies dormant in your brain and then it jumps on you much later, prompted by a new thing you learn. It helps to close the loop and understand or do a new project. In this sense, Adjaye completed Jeanne van Heeswijks thought on collectively creating neighbourhoods; Daniel Charny continued Ben Terrett’s idea of open discourse and joint ventures of improvement.

The day ended off with Sir John Hegarty, who believes  that you cannot be a successful creator if you do not have some fundamental beliefs and if you don’t put those beliefs into the work you do. “Creative people are syphons:  they take in all sorts of information and they feed it back. Your fundamental beliefs are central to your creative output. What is it that drives you to do what you do? If you don’t know what the answer is you can’t be successful in your work.

“I was driven by irreverence. World of art didn’t always appreciate irreverence, in fact it was about revering.”

He doesn’t see irreverence as a negative trait though. ” The nihilism of punk made it fail as a philosophical premise. They were all about tearing down, but not putting something new up again. Unless you propose, you can’t just destroy.”

Ultimately, he says, humour is the enemy of authority and he believes that the quality of our work has gone down. “It’s not my opinion  empirical evidence exists that proves that our audience thinks the work we do now is not as good as it used to be. It’s like we’re trying to find new ways of tripping people up, instead of making the product better.” He also attributes it to the fact that creatives aren’t leading the industry and taking charge.

The day ended with this massive call to action – to take charge, to take on the world and shape it into what we want it to be. But really, that was what the whole conference was about: educating yourself; moving beyond your boundaries; trying and failing; working collectively; and most importantly, doing all of this with a conscience, doing it for good and for better rather than “selling more”.

 

Collective Passion: Day Two of Design Indaba

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So Day One was undoubtedly about embracing the process of creating and everything that comes with it. Today, speakers once again made reference to understanding the context of the work you’re creating, but the focus fell heavily on trans-media creatives. People who transcend the normal boundaries we set for what a particular designer should or can do.

The day started with an intimate look at the obsessive collecting habits of Steven Heller. He has single-handedly chronicled the growth of design through more than 150 books on the subject. He freely admits that he’s trying to justify his collecting compulsion by saying that it’s about “understanding what visual code needs to be cracked for successful consumption”. Whether that does the trick in explaining the impressive selection of Mao figurines he’s amassed we’ll leave up to your own collecting urges to judge.

There’s also an element of lifting seemingly “low art” to a higher level. He argues that mass produced porcelain figurines will possibly be revealed as the modern day version of Greek sculpture. And we tend to believe him.

A lot of mention was made today about work growing from passion. Some things are hard to sell to clients as ideas or prototypes, and as Jeanne van Heeswijk pointed out, we have to “commission ourselves”. Heller loves counter culture publishing, because he says they’re all “acts of passion”. The same goes for the logo and menu designs that his wife, Louise Fili creates. She loves food and type, so she’s carved out a niche for herself where she can live these two passions in her daily work. She says that even if you’ve got a full-time job, doing personal work and projects is essential to finding your own voice.

It might’ve been all the passion talk or perhaps just the conviction and bravery of Jeanne van Heeswijk, but her talk was as emotionally stirring as it was a rousing call to arms. “The artist has to decide whom to serve,” she said and it became very clear that she serves the communities that desperately need her help. Through seemingly simple co-opts and working together, she helps some of the most neglected and forgotten communities open a debate on who’s job it actually is to take care of the spaces they inhabit. Inevitably, the answer is that it’s up to each of us, and us as a collective.

She’s brave in her defiance of regulations and norms – suggesting that together a community can come up with better policies than the ones created for us by government, correctly surmising that housing is the battlefield of our time.

Chef Alex Atala spoke beautifully about his evident love for Brazilian food. To him, innovation is creating something surprising. Something you know, but it still surprises you. This idea was echoed by Asif Khan who “discovered” his Cloud Machine while playing with his kids at bath time. By combining helium and bubble bath, he created these magical clouds:

“Sometimes you have a hunch that combining things in a new way will result in something beautiful. And then you just go and try it out. Act on hunches,” was his advice.

Nicholas Hlobo did a performance piece after lunch, leaving everyone absolutely quiet and eyes glued to the stage. It might sound a bit over-the-top, but many delegates described it as a near-spiritual experience. He is undoubtedly one of the most honest, talented and relevant artists we have in South Africa.

What is interesting is that he turned the usual formula of an informally presented collection of ideas on its head. Through hauntingly beautiful music (with him singing) he projected images and text on the screen. These told his story and touched on some of his convictions in such an honest an relatable way, interspersed with imagery of his art. Woven into this visually engrossing tapestry was snippets of meaning and interpretations on both his Xhosa culture and his art.

Initially he was nowhere to be seen on stage, but he lowered himself down to the stage in a womb or calabash-like shaped shroud – all the while singing. Essentially, he never spoke a word, yet his was by far the most inspiring and appreciated talk of the day. As a local artist, he surpassed everything that seasoned and internationally acclaimed presenters and public speakers did before – connecting with people on an emotional and intellectual level like no one else has managed to do.

The last speaker of the day confirmed the idea of extending your skills and thoughts to as many different spheres as you can. Thinking broadly, educating yourself and never losing your sense of awe in simple things are some of the qualities that came through in Daan Roosegaarde’s talk. He likes the idea of design scaring people a bit, making them a bit uncomfortable. At the same time he shares Jeanne’s drive for good: “Technology doesn’t have to have an Orwellian effect on our lives. It can be used in a Da Vinci-way, for helping and growing; for good.”

Lastly, all the speakers today acknowledged the fact that they cannot possibly do any of the things that they do alone. Roosegaarde summed it up nicely, saying that artists of today all work together in teams. This principle of collectivity shone through all the talks thus far in Design Indaba. Design and those plying the trade should never be seen as a thing separate from the context of where it will live; the people who’ll interact with it; or the community of experts who could contribute.

We’re geared for the last day of Design Indaba. It promises to be another riveting ride – here’s who we’re looking forward to hearing speak.

Must-see sessions of Day Three at Design Indaba

In Design Indaba, Inspirational, Social, Trending topics, Uncategorized on

Day Three brings on a long and varied selection of speakers – sure to keep our brains functioning at a high gear as we wrap up this awesome Indaba.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg works in the space where synthetic biology and design meet. She’s worked on projects that programmes bacteria to do useful things, like determine whether water is safe to drink and even diagnose illnesses.

Matthew Carter follows hot on her heels at 9:40. If you haven’t heard of him, how about some of his work. Does Verdana, Georgia and Tahoma sound familiar? Those are all his creations – see all of them here.

At 11:30 two of the most interesting People of the Internet will be doing a joint talk. We’re talking about the awesome “proctastiworker” Jessica Hische and Marian Bantjes. Jessica created this incredible site explaining how Twitter works to her mother. That alone deserves a massive amount of respect. Marian is known for her intricate style of illustration – here’s a great TED talk video from her:

One of the greatest minds of the advertising industry as we know it, Sir John Hegarty, will be speaking next. He’s got a long and illustrious list of accomplishments – founding BBH, coming up with Vorsprung Durch Technik, making Levi’s cool and (most importantly, we feel) essentially finding Brad Pitt. All the Team Red ladies are eternally grateful for that last fact.

Lastly, there’s our hometown boys Spoek Mathambo, Bogosi Sekhukhuni and The Smarteez. They’re sure to add a South African and distinctly Jozi spin to this internationally renowned platform.

Remember to follow the hashtag, #DesignIndaba2013, and us as we wrap up this incredible week.