Glass semi full

Highlights of Semi-Permanent 2010 included action both on and off the stage, with a design book stall, Wordsby tee-shirts, AUT stand and create your own Auckland Super-City drawing competitions…

Highlights of Semi-Permanent 2010 included action both on and off the stage, with a design book stall, Wordsby tee-shirts, AUT stand and create your own Auckland Super-City drawing competitions.

The Wordsby tee-shirt (www.wordsby.co.nz) stall featured music lyrics by NZ musicians and artists, inlcuding Semi-Permanent speaker Otis Frizzell.

Far and away the favourite speaker of the conference in our informal verbal poll; Jessica Hische. Her whimsical illustrations blossom over her typography with a cursive style. She was a humble and charming presenter whose gently self-deprecating sense of humour – and incredible talent – warmed the audience to her straight away.

Te Radar the MC was a light and entertaining foil for many of the serious speakers and could ad-lib admirably, particularly in dealing with the odd heckler!

The goody bag was excellent, containing Atomic coffee, Jaffas, licorice, a Semi-Permanent design folio, Frankie magazine, Threaded magazine and cool Spicers paper cards with prints of each speaker’s work with which to build your own house of cards.

Wordsby tee-shirts.

Where else are you given the opportunity to create "My Super City?"

The AUT design students’ work on display at the AUT stand.

Design book porn at the Mag Nation stand.

Jessica Hische.

Te Radar.

Spicers paper heart – and the short film/commercial that went with it- was a design highlight created especially for the two days.

Expat Kiwi Gareth O’Brien of US animation studio Buck with his talking puppet.

Grandaddy of album cover artwork, Storm Thorgerson.

The ‘F@ck Avatar’ event with kiwifruit 4D goggles orchestrated by Storm Thorgerson and photographed on stage looking at the audience.

"Cut your kiwifruit latitudinally, not longitudinally" he went to great pains to instruct.

Storm went on to go through the album covers "that your parents will know well" inlcuding this Led Zep classic "which would be deemed indecent nowadays."

The punnily-titled fine art print "Let Your Hare Down" that Storm gave away to the winner with his choice of best answer to his quiz of "Is there extraterrestial life?"

We spoke to people about what they liked best about Semi-Permanent.

Toni Brandso and Liv Harper of Material Creative (www.materialcreative.co.nz) really liked Jessica Hische of NY and Nicolas Roope of Poke London.

Liv said, "My favourite was Jessica Hische; her guts and her confidence. Her process was incredible. Everyone has been really generous with sharing her ideas. Also, Adrian Shaunessey was so nice for us; because we run our own company we rely on each other and we don’t often get to hear these little gems of wisdom and experience from someone who’s been around for years and years."

Toni said, "Nicolas Roope’s philosophy is there’s not enough ‘interesting’ in the world. There’s lots of ‘average’. He thinks that lots of designers – and lots of design – lacks heart."

"Another key point was that of collaboration, which is what our company, Material Creative, is about."

Below: Toni Brandso.

Below: Catie Wilkinson of Geo Skincare (www.geoskincare.com)with Toni. A highlight for Catie again was Jessica Hische, and also Dick Frizzell. "I love that he’s a painter and he’s a full artist but his work is really graphic. He crosses every line and there’s no pretentiousness!"

The audience files into Semi-Permanent, many with their characteristic calico goody bags.

By Megan Robinson, 20 August 2010.