Design Indaba was quite an experience! And, as you’ll see from this blog post, I’ve returned with more questions than answers.
There were lots of firsts:
• Given’s first trip to Cape Town
• Our first time attending Design Indaba
• My first time drinking out of a bottle that will be used to build classrooms!
• And my first time experiencing the Cape Town wind!
Let’s hope the wind allows better photo opps today! #immediaAtIndaba #DesignIndaba2016 @DI_Festival #DI2016 @immedia pic.twitter.com/zJHpQAsfOB
— Selene Shah (@selenish) 17 February 2016
I’m no stranger to design. I was hired at immedia as a studio intern, being handed the opportunity to learn the principles of both web design and web development from some of the best.
These days, I play around more with presentation-making, data visualisation, but I enjoy the challenge of what good design can do, then the challenge of design.
In the Culture part of my accountability, we need to make sure who we are and what we do is documented, described and depicted so that the outside world can access us and collaborate with us.
So Design is pretty important to me, and I work quite closely with the design team within immedia Studio. I think a lot about how things should work, about efficiency, about the message.
At Design Indaba, I now had the chance to learn about the function of art vs design. Thomas Poulsen aka FOS, an artist from Denmark says:
A second thing that I learnt: designers LOVE selfies!
And by the last day, I was even taking #bandpose selfies
So, is this design?
Or is this art?
Tony Gum has learnt that it is.
Tony is a Cape Town-based student who, like all of us, started taking pictures of herself and then shared them with her friends on social media. Now she has over 19 000 Insta followers, produces content for Icon Endemol and exhibits her self portraits in art galleries internationally.
Her message is simple but universal: Liberate your art. Celebrate yourself as an artist. Be vulnerable.
Through her selfies, Tony found not only her self, but how to bring delight to others.
And what is a selfie if not an affirmation of your identity and your place in the world.
The idea of selflessness was pervasive in almost everyone’s talk at Design Indaba, with passion and talent being used to create transformation for the people around them.
On a global scale, designers like Vera de Pont are challenging long-established and idolised industries for the betterment of the earth.
Through her drive to “open source” fashion, we can start reducing the environmental impact of creating and selling clothing.
What’s even more exciting to me (as a geek) is the idea that the designer of the future will work with programmers to provide an adjustable blueprint for “prosumers” to adapt to their needs.
But in a world where we want more and more control and convenience, should this still sound like such a radical idea?
In Africa, artists are challenging long-held points of view through playful but powerful medium like cartoons.
Twins Cartoon and their comics community are discussing difficult realities that their people have to face, interlaced with the humorous side of everyday life – all the while evangelising design, comic book culture and satire within their communities.
And right here at home, Local Studio is making a difference right here within Gauteng.
Thomas Chapman and his team at Local Studio have been bringing renewal to areas within Johannesburg city, fostering community and sharing
Space is a particularly sensitive issue in South Africa.
People of different backgrounds were physically separated from each other. This means that safe and easy routes between neighbourhoods were not developed.
And then, some types of spaces were denied to some groups of people.
But what this means is that only a generation ago, you could attend a school where you didn’t have a school hall – and that was normal!
Or that some districts don’t have communal spaces for education, or the performing arts.
Through their conviction that South Africans must “reknit” historically segregated communities using public space, all of Local Studio’s work is inspiring.
The African School for Excellence was built in the East Rand on a tight budget. The classrooms are arranged around a vast central space, roofed with a portal frame to create the school.
Have a look at more of their Local Studio’s transformational work.
My understanding is that design in all its forms (fashion, technology, the comic, architecture) exists to provide a solution. Design for me plays a public purpose.
But art it seems, although it might manifest itself publicly, is an expression of a point of view, or a way of seeing the world.
In his work, artist FOS (Thomas Poulsen) from Denmark aims to connect the material and the social OR the connection of objects and human beings. For me, one of his most striking installations was ‘Tzatziki’.
The shape of reality, the way we physically construct our everyday world, is so subtle that it sometimes disappears completely from our conscience.
This particular piece was a singular example of art wanting to present options. To my mind, there are many ways in which you could interpret this artwork:
For one: in order to succeed, and build a new future for ourselves, we must consciously try to forget who we were yesterday.
Amnesia becomes a survival strategy.
OR could it be that: attaining a level of success transforms us into beings who are no longer concerned with the world or the people around us.
Or perhaps it’s a commentary on the way we respond to our collective success?
As we progress as a society – taller skyscrapers, faster cars, more modern cities – are we chosing to wipe away the historical symbols of our legacy?