The past weekend 15th and 16th August marked that massive design affair, Semi Permanent, a two day conference where leading 12 international and local designers of various mediums - Graphic Design, Film, Art, Illustration, Web Design, Photography, Interactive Design to name a few, are invited to speak to Auckland's design heads.
I went along on Saturday and found the seminars to be heart, brain and soul fodder. Naturally some speakers were better than others, choosing not only to show off their portfolios but also to explain at length, their preferences, inspirations and processes as well as offer insights on both the design industry and life's lessons.
Dumbo Feather, Pass It On magazine founder and editor Kate Bezar told an inspiring story of her industry journey, photographer Derek Henderson was refreshing in his simple and honest approach to taking photos, Debaser proudly showed off their music artwork skills and procedures and Danny Yount his impressive TV title portfolio and I won a gorgeous, huge typography poster from brand identity agency Sea Design which I can't wait to get mounted and display on my wall.
But like many others, my favourite on the day was undoubtedly Stefan Sagmeister who enthralled with a humourous, awe inspiring and touching presentation based on his book 'Things I have learned in my life so far'. See his website http://thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com where you too can contribute to his project of art and learning.
The event has a festival vibe with the Curvy and Misery gallery exhibitions opening a day prior, a goodie bag with a beautiful Semi Permanent 2008 book for a keepsake and an after-party to wrap it all up. A incredibly useful and successful multi-discipline design forum for creatives.
Last year after I attended a playful and colourful interactive gallery exhibition in Melbourne, Experimenta Playground which completely blew my mind, I was terribly curious about the logistics of interactive. So on Tuesday I actually attended a sort of continuation of Semi Permanent, an intimate interactive design workshop with two speakers from Day 1 of Semi Permanent I'd missed because I was ill.
Joel Gethin Lewis and Toxi explained the advantages of open source frameworks and processing, of the community aspects, commercial viability and the kind of DIY nature of creating interactive pieces such as repurposing webcams for a couple of dollars to create magnificent new technological tools. I was amazed by how fun, effective and dare I say it, simple, interactive designing could be.
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