Design Indaba, a place where innovative design concepts are trialed, where subject matters ignite and where important local and international collaborations and creative partnerships are born. It creates a platform for inspirational design initiatives. Once you get inspired you get the idea to give birth to beneficial and thought provoking ideas that will provide a sense of direction so you can be aware of what could makes an impact to the world and give you the courage to explore your artistic mind and have a purpose in life.
One shouldn’t be limited to just designing to make things look pretty, but also create something that is more beneficial and thought provoking to the community. Pia Nyakairu ia a young Industrial designer from Toronto. One area of particular interest, in terms of creativity and innovation, is her preparation for decision-making and problem solving where she aims to create valuable products that triggers positive, beneficial and shareable experiences for the users.
Pia Nyakairu is quiet an inspiration; rather than going for your common regular apps she developed a product and app, that allows physiotherapists to monitor the progress of breast cancer patients over a digital platform. One of the learnings I’ve acquired is that important parts of the Design thinking concept is to provide empathy for your audience. It’s often created through a number of activities, which makes means to create an experience of what or how your idea will finally be consumed.
Everywhere you go you’re surrounded by design. Design helps in providing order. Design gives structure and gives some form of direction. After a session with Margaret Calvert it came to my realization that direction is another important element of management.
Margaret Calvert who is a graphic designer, is known for her road sign designs in the United Kingdom, as well as the typefaces Calvert and Transport. Her artwork looks simple but yet plays a very effective role. It shows that a whole lot of thought has to be put into consideration to figure out the purpose of the design in order for it to make an impact to the world. Her road sign systems were easy-to-understand pictograms, including the signs for “men at work”, “farm animals”, and “schoolchildren nearby”, based on pre-existing European road signs. In addition to her road signs she designed commercial fonts for monotype, including the Calvert font, which she created in 1980 for use on the Metro system.
It is important to consider the environmental impact during the earliest stages of design and make sure to create something that will live forever. In that way you will have a purpose in life.
Awareness is one of the necessary basic ingredients to formulate belief. If you are aware, then you will be enriched with knowledge, and if you have knowledge then you’ll know what’s required to be done, and the direction you need to take for you to make changes, to improve and be successful. The programs manager of MASS Design Group in Rwanda, believes that architecture must go beyond the design of the building and into understanding of how buildings impact the lives of users.
Christian Benimana designed the Hospital in Northern Rwanda which provided a dignified space for the patients to heal and, seeing the capabilities of what space can do, it gave the architects at MASS determination to have the same positive impact with all of their projects.
He later designed Umubano Primary School in Kigali. The School consists of nine classrooms and a library on a sloping site. Unique settings for education have been created to occur within a mix of interior rooms, exterior teaching and terraced play spaces for children. Natural ventilation is relied upon to reduce energy consumption. The aim was not only to provide more classrooms, but to improve educational output and once again, a heavy emphasis was put on play.
It made me realize that Awareness allows you to become proactive but you need to be specific, in order to really break down and peel away the layers in order to get to the beliefs that are influencing the behaviors you are portraying. This is hard work which requires the need to allocate time to constantly look at what you do and break this down, baring in mind that improved awareness has a dramatic and positive effect. Awareness is one of the important elements of planning and developing training programs. They are designers who think beyond the building.
I was intrigued by the thought of how far a mind can really go if only one can learn to move away from one’s comfort zone. You needs to remember that your destiny is controlled by you, and you alone, so you can be the only reason things happen, or rather worse, don’t happen.
This thought was triggered by Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, who were in the audience at the Design Indaba in 2014, and got so inspired by one of the speakers, Stefan Sagmeister, that they got the courage to quit everything, from their top positions as creative directors, sell all their valuables so that they can experience things they’d only ever dreamt of, and gain the freedom to pursue their own personal projects in these foreign places they travelled to. It wasn’t an easy journey as Chanel said: “The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity and small pep talks to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits)”.
They captured every moment of their journey with their artistic style through photography. They made sure they marked every moment with a number. It’s amazing how inspiration awakens us to new possibilities by allowing us to rise above our ordinary experiences and limitations. I’ve learned that you must always go for what you believe in and with what brings nothing but joy within yourself and, even though dreams are paved with so much difficulties and restrictions, despite the hardship, the struggle with sweat and toil eventually bares fruits of success.
Art expands across borders and unites the world. Art in its different forms, creates a platform for universal language. It is the great equalizer and thinking agent. Art has capabilities to stirs the imagination, causing us to pause, think and reflect. Art allows our minds to escape into childlike wonder. Being artistic allows for one to express their inner thought. Jaime Hayón is a Spanish artist-designer, whose esteem and knowledge of artistic skills and his inherent creativity has allowed him to push the high limits of different mediums and functions, and as a result a creation of very diverse clients was formed.
His concern for the conservation of craft skills has joined his path with high-end traditional companies concerned with the evolution of their work. Jaime’s work brims over with playfulness. From lively interior spaces, to unusual toys and cheeky subversion of traditional form, Hayón is not afraid to take risks with his designs.
One of his pieces that captured my attention was his large-scale Face Mirror for Funtastico at the Design Museum Holon. The one-of-a-kind piece is a huge hanging mirror, skull-like in shape and inspired by primitive masks. A mask, Hayón explains, is itself a storyteller. It at once both reveals and conceals: hiding the face, yet exposing the culture of the wearer. The Face Mirror does this to an additional level – the mirrored eyes reflect the watchers face, while the stone sections hide it. His works weren’t just based on one theme or subject but it was a variety of things in which he designed, from your stylish clean and unique furniture, to watches, camper’s footwear, hotel interiors and many other things… he makes sure that he explores his creativity in different ways possible. By this, one shouldn’t assume that only one method will work but try pushing your creativity to its maximum potential.
Design Thinking tries to inspire the essential element of creativity, the ability to take an abstract idea and create something with it. It’s based on the fundamental belief that an unfinished idea, one that is not yet realized, is a worthless proposition and that doing is just as valuable as thinking.
It was the greatest pleasure having the opportunity to expose my mind to a whole range of design from the event that brought together a widely varied program from talks, exhibits, film, music and other special performances. It united different creative globally and allowed them to express their amazing talent and mission with the world. It was an honor to find myself surrounded by such awesome talent. It’s collaborated values such as these that universally position the worldwide Creative Industries sector, with design resigning at heart, as well as a powerful force for social and economic development.