Last Saturday I spent the day at the Cruated-by confrence and university where we got to see a range of speakers. First up was Morag Myerscough, se produces large pieces of work for public spaces, a couple of examples are below:
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| [Source] http://studiomyerscough.com/index.php |
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| [Source] http://studiomyerscough.com/index.php |
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| [Source] http://studiomyerscough.com/index.php |
When she spoke about her work she didn't give lots of detail on a selected range of pieces but more of an overview of her portfolio which was ok although Iwould have prefered the first option, she did manage however to give a good back story to her work. In her actual pieces I really liked her use of space particually they way she chose to design gallery displays, I thought it was interesting how she used a sort of unconventional method where you'd expect quite small pieces she was working with prints 4 metres high. Another aspect of her work that I liked was her use of typography.
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The next speaker was Jack Schulze, he works in the tech side of design. I never thought that I'd find something like that interesting but I did. I liked the way that in his talk he explained things and didn't show too much.
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| [Source] http://berglondon.com/projects/ |
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| [Source] http://berglondon.com/projects/ |
I though the Little Printer was a fantastic idea how it printed out a 'personal newspaper' and I think it's a good example of forward thinking although he admits that he didn't create it because he wanted it to be in the world he just did it. I think by far my favourite thing of his was his iPad app called Penki, this creates and image when the iPad is moved using single frames and being photographed with a slow shutter speed you get this light painting effect; as the owner of an iPad, when i get some free time I can't wait to have a go at this myself.
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The third speaker of the day was Jonny Kelly, he is an annimator by trade and works for a company called Nexus in London. I liked how he spoke about his inspirations because it's always nice to see things from start to finish and I liked how he said that previously as a student he never really saw the point in sketchbooks but when he went into industry he realised he was wrong in a way; he said, "sketchbooks are a useful brain-dump and we can use sketchbooks to slow our brains down to the right speed because we often don't have speace to think". I think this was really inspiring and before he said it I'd never really noticed how right he was about that so now i am starting to apply that to my own life.
This advert was designed by Jonny for Chipotle, a food company who were trying to show certain ideas about farming and the environment, I really like the annimation and it could be a possible inspiration for future projects particularly the print to pixel module coming up soon. I also liked what he said about the animation: "The graphic simplification of annimation allows you to tell stories that you otherwise can't" and I think this is definitely true especially when trying to appeal to a family audience.
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To end the day we had Erik Kessels, after flying all the way from Amsterdam his talk was great. He struck me as someone with humour from a country with humour and he was good at expressing his ideas. Personally I'd class him more as an editer than a designer with his more recent work although his earlier work is more graphic. I liked it when asked what he would class his self as creatively he replied "I am not anything, I don't have to choose, why should I choose, you don't have to be just one" and I somewhat agree, although it is great to have one fantastic thing under your belt why should that have to be the only thing.
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| [Source] http://www.abitare.it/en/graphics-2/kk-holiday-in-venice-teachme-7-fast-forward/ |
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| [Source] http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2012/april/erik-kessels-dad-north |
His earlier work I think is great as it used humour to attract an audience and it worked, it is quite simple in design but sometimes simple is better. I liked his approach to his work "sometimes it's better to look in the side streets not where everyone else is looking" and in saying this he was demonstrating that design is all about risks, especially as a couple of his tv adverts caused a bit of contraversy. His more recent work is more focussed on found items and editing, he produced a series of books of found photography which when put together told a story of life. I found this interesting because I also have an interest in photography and I felt inspired.
Overall it was a great day and although the day was focussed on narative I think it was also giving out an overall message of 'do what you want in life', all the speakers had this in common, the took something they liked and made it into what they do for a living. I think the day was a great opportunity to hear people who are out there working, doing the things we want to be doing in a few years time, speak about their experience(s) and i definitely think it would be well worth going to something like that again, especially as these are pretty much one time oportunities.
