aspire to enquire

Alison Czajkowskyj: Final Phase

One of the great things about being at art school is the amazing variety of work you can see going on in other courses running at UWIC. Picking out a few that run here; Illustration, Broadcast Media & Popular Culture, Product Design, or Architectural Technology, probably wouldn't be fair, because the course titles are so nebulous that they don't really do justice to the teaching content, and also, we're on a split site, so all the really funky ones like printmaking, ceramics and such, they all go on somewhere else. They have a better bar too :(

But on my campus we do have Contemporary Textile Practice, a fascinating and diverse course which is apparently one of the few of its kind in the country, and that always puts on an amazing degree show.

My girlfriend Alison is in her final year of BA CTP and has just finished the first stage of one of her major projects.

Titled Final Phase, Alison's project is re-imagining existing and often mundane objects to bring more relevance to contemporary life. 

She's focussing specifically on umbrellas. Alison's explorations of shelter and water brought her to the natural canopies that once sheltered humans from the elements – trees. Over time, these living, natural barriers have been cut back, not only causing a lack of shelter but also contributing to a changing climate, causing increased water shortages. The themes of decay, rust and mould became increasingly important as the boundary between the natural and synthetic was questioned.

She says:

"The umbrella appealed to me because being an object we are all familiar with, most of us own one, they become mundane and are overlooked.  When in fact umbrellas have an interesting history, reminiscent of many architectural constructions, both natural and man-made.  The dome like structure provides shelter and in some cultures is used to construct boats. Historically umbrellas were a sign of status and wealth, often extremely decorative and beautifully embellished.  It is this element of the umbrella I wanted to re develop, exploring the contemporary issues relating to water.  I began to explore the possibility of using an umbrella as a vessel to collect water where there is excess, conserving it for those who are without."

There are a number of materials used, including copper, felt, latex, pewter, cotton and wool. 

Final Phase questions what the next stage in the evolution of shelter will be, perhaps once humankind loses it's opportunity to nurture the natural world back to the situation we found it in. Will our own creations begin to decay beyond our own control? If we survive, what will daily life be like, and what kinds of (anti)technologies will we use?

It's a really beautiful piece of work. Ironically, Final Phase is only Alison's response to the first part of this project, with the next stage encouraging students to delve deeper into the themes they've uncovered, towards their final degree shows next June. If you're interested in following developments, you can follow Alison on twitter through @ali_chi

More Interesting

As I might have mentioned before, I was able to go along to Interesting NYC while I was there over the summer. It was a far more serious affair than the London Interesting, but no less interesting.

There's good news: full videos of all the speakers are now online! I would thoroughly recommend Grant McCracken, who pretty much confirmed for me that Planning was the way to go, Morgan Friedman, who gives some fascinating tips for visiting new cities, and Scott Ballum, who is only buying products from people he's met. Dallas Penn's funny but serious expose on Bodegas (corner shops) was awesome too. And Dipti Bramhandkar was bonkers.

There was a whole mixed bag of other speakers, none more or less interesting than the next. It's definitely worth clicking through to the 'speakers' page on the website and having a look through.

It's kind of sad though, that they only went up this week, because there's one speech that I'd been hoping to watch again right the way through the Presidential campaign. Charles Rosen's speech about the Democratic Campaign is well worth a watch, even now, just in case anyone needed convincing about the choice that was made. 

You can view all the speakers here.

Festival of Ideas

In more Cambridge related news, if you're in the town between now and November 2nd, you should definitely try to get along to some of the events of the Cambridge festival of Ideas. It's an opportunity 'to understand more about the world we live in, on a global and local scale - from politics to the study of different cultures to the stories behind paintings, hidden trails around the city of Cambridge and beyond. There will be talks, performances and discussions to get you thinking.'

Well worth a look!

AW08-09's key trend: bad powerpoint

Yesterday creative students from around South Wales went to the Odeon in Swansea for a Design Wales event that was introducing the ffres awards, a national student awards scheme, and hoping to shed some light on the competition briefs. We also had talks from trend forecasters and designers about general working method stuff. 

I've been to a few Design Wales events before, and this one was no different. But I guess I've never really noticed a theme before now. 

I started to get a feeling for it when heading into the auditorium:

This might look like some sort of crazy walkway, it's actually a cable that's been taped down discreetly, coming out of the theatre.

Then there were slides like this from the opening chap from DW...

And I liked the irony of this one - tell me again about ergonomics? 

And don't get me started on this chap...

Those are my word-inspired wiggly red lines. I should also apologise for the poor picture quality throughout, I was trying to be stealth.

I guess there are two points. Firstly, I don't think I can go a week without seeing a new guide or fact sheet on effective presentations popping up on the internet somewhere. Even since I've come back I've seen this, this and this. So, why are crimes like the above still going on? Especially at an organisation that claims to encourage good design in Welsh business. So that's my first point.

The second point relates back to the theme I mentioned in the first paragraph, the one I'm beginning to pick up from nearly every Design Wales event I've been to. We look like amateurs, us Welsh. I don't think we are, and every time we go into companies for college collaborations or talks, it's proved to me that there are some brilliant people here doing creative work. But whenever we get together and invite some Londoners over, we put up 200 word powerpoint slides and talk about the importance of design. 

This event was exactly the same. As expected, the visitors did what they'd travelled 3+ hours to do. We had two amazing talks. The first, an engrossing trends prediction for AW09-10 from Alison Hughes of Carlin International The second was from William Hall, who it turns out is featured in a Grafik magazine I have here. I'm glad he was last to talk, it pretty much saved the morning. Here he is engaging in a 'live' interview via powerpoint, with Matt Dent, the designer of the fantastic new UK coin series (Except it's not live now, it's just a photo. There's a similar video here though):

That was a presentation. 

Maybe instead of inviting students to these events to perpetuate this idea of best practice, Design Wales' next event might be some sort of 'effective presentations for creative professionals' style seminar. Before any more students are allowed anywhere near anything. Because otherwise new people to the industry will just keep following the same techniques.

My two Interesting08 contributions:

Both completely unnecessary, but I'll be taking along some green tea, and contributing a letterform to the Interesting08 font. Can you guess which it is? Pretty obvious isn't it. Go easy, it's my first letter.

Things I have learned from Stefan Sagmeister so far

I was intending to post a little list of things I took away from seeing Sagmeister in Cardiff yesterday, but really the only thing was that it's ok to take your time when you get on stage. You don't have to launch straight into it.

His talk was really interesting though, nice to see more of him than the 'body' of work he's best known for, as it were. Some really interesting projects, especially Casa da Musica.

There's a website that people can contribute to, worth a little look.

To the trains

I've just returned from London, from a President's Lecture at the Logan Hall near Russell Square.

Before the talk, which was in the evening, I had time to visit the London leg of Gregory Crewdson's show. The two prints I picked up on in my earlier post had been separated, and the beautiful scene of the couple on the dirty mattress was now placed in isolation with another image. I thought this was odd because the first way had been really successful for me, and in the book, the plates follow the New York order.

Anyway, next on to the British Museum, which I haven't been in since the new courtyard was done (a long time!) Everything was closing but I really enjoyed a stroll round the courtyard. I spotted this chap:


Having a good old snap at some abstract objects around the courtyard, and since I was doing pretty much the same thing, I was moved to take a picture of him. Perhaps one day someone will take one of me, and on that day I too shall be wearing orange trousers. One can only dream.

Bob Greenberg's talk, for me, didn't really get going until the questions, as I'd seen a lot of his (amazing) showreels whilst researching R/GA in preparation for the talk. But the questions posed were of a very high standard and his answers were equally thought-provoking.

He talked a little about the economics of free, and mentioned the piece written by Chris Anderson that was also quite a nice podcast, although I can't find the link for the audio version. But he talked about it in relation to advertising and magazines. As audiences became harder to define, he said, you would see advertising revenues drop and titles dissapearing. He gave an example of Life magazine, which delivers news content, because 'news is ubiquitous' and the advertising that runs inside is quite broad and from a range of sectors. He imagined these sorts of titles would not last much longer.

I liked, though, that he thought there was still a place for your Vogues, which carry a lot more targeted, market specific advertising, and they're still able to offer something not easy to find elsewhere. I guess this second part is pretty obvious, but I'd never really thought about the Life side before. I guess it raises all sorts of questions about the value of editorship.

He was also asked if TV advertising was dead, and again gave another answer that I'm sure I'll be bearing in mind as I watch play out. He said there would always be a place for linear storytelling, but that it was going to have to evolve: apparently, audiences are now split 50/50 between TV and web, but ad spend is still 95/5 in TV's favour. He predicted that as that money began to balance and match the audience distribution, online advertising would have to get more involving, more innovative etc. There definitely seemed to be a sense of "lets all quit what we're doing and learn Flash" as the session drew to a close.

I don't really have my own insights, but I did find what he said really stimulating. Really looking forward to Experimental Jetset on June 5th.

On the way home, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my Kenco coffee was Rainforest Alliance certified, and then re-connected with a First Great Western reality when the milk was still 'tastes like fresh milk'. I feel like an episode of that Egg advert for clever/stupid balance.

Beauty is the promise of happiness

A little while ago I mentioned that I would post about inspiring talks we had during the last week of last term. One of these, on a quite informal basis, was with a man called David Worthington. I'm not quoting him in the title (that's Stendhal), but what he said really resonated with me and it was along a similar theme.

I have to admit, I had not heard of the man before he came to meet us, in his role as an external examiner to our course. Which is quite fitting, because one of the main things he asked us as a group was who our design heroes were. I kept quiet, seeing as I said a lot at other points in the talk and there were like 20 students there (I might possibly have mentioned Blast, or maybe Poke, but although I think their work is awesome, I'm not sure if they're 'heroes'. tricky. maybe W+K, but hard to assign hero status to a whole agency. Howies? this might be a post in itself). He later criticised the course for having a focus that wasn't 'external' enough.

So then someone asked him who his heroes were, at which point he talked about his work curating something at the London Transport Museum, where he'd had access to the original paintings by people like mcknight kauffer. Awesome in itself, but he then said that his hero was Frank Pick, who had been in charge of pretty much everything on the underground between the 20s-50s.

I should point out that I am massively paraphrasing at this point, and haven't checked my facts, and this was a few weeks ago. The principle remains the same though.

What was awesome, in David Worthington's eyes, was that Pick's motivations for commissioning pretty much anything could be related to the notion of beauty. He brought in big architectural names for the stations, leading artists for the posters, and (eventually, if i recall correctly) took on Beck's infamous diagrammatic Map. It was a united communications plan based on society's notions of beauty and elegance, for a service that at the time must have been more than a little bit grimy. All this over 70 years ago!

I'm a massive fan of all things Underground myself, so this was an awesome insight that I'd not really thought of before. If you think about trying to find a modern example, it's pretty hard.

David mentioned Apple products, but apparently people before have responded in the past by saying 'yes but they're just iPods' and such. Which I probably agree with. Pick's decisions might have single handedly-revolutionised the development of London through persuading people out into the new suburbs and on to the tubes, with everything down to the door handles being bespoke for the Underground and based in beauty.

I think that's awesome, and a convincing argument to stay on top of more than just 'Graphic Communications'. The integrated thinking approach, if you can pull it off, is definitely the way forward.