After sixteen presentations from incredible creators, my head is full. The one word I take away with me is collaboration, something that nearly every speaker mentioned and something I hope I’ll be doing a lot more of this year…
After sixteen presentations from incredible creators, my head is full.
The one word I take away with me is collaboration, something that nearly every speaker mentioned and something I hope I’ll be doing a lot more of this year.
Read our highlights of Day One at Semi-Permanent Auckland 2012 here and the presentation by Stolen Girlfriends here on Thread.
These were the highlights from Day Two of Semi-Permanent in Auckland on Saturday 19th May 2012…
Below: The fabulous US illustrator and designer Kelli Anderson (below right) talks with Te Radar.
Kelli Anderson was involved in an elaborate scam printing a future – and hopeful – copy of the New York Times with a bold headline ending the Iraq War. The newspaper was given out to 1,200 commuters in New York causing a massive stir and making headlines of its own.
A stunning wedding invite design of Kelli Anderson’s included this diagram of how to get to the wedding via landmarks along the way. The invite that went out to 200 guests was a record player that played a song recorded by the bride and groom and played using a paper cone and a needle. Just stunning. A shiver of appreciation rippled audibly through the audience as it played on the big screen.
Below: Kelli Anderson’s designs for countries – using iconic images of those lands – for an accommodation business.
We had seen Wallpaper earlier in the week but Meirion Pritchard delivered a different presentation that focused on collaborating with artists and the creations that came out of them. One of the international cover series collaborations I loved was ‘The great indoors’ with Noma Bar. It featured rooms painted to look like flat images and intergrates furniture from the countries where the magazine is sold. It was so popular it was made into posters and can still be bought on their website.
Another example of a Wallpaper collaboration was Casa Sutra, a perfect melding of a stretching routine mixed with a home decor spread using a Hans Wegner ‘China’ chair. The videos are hilarous, and you can see them here http://www.wallpaper.com/video/design/casa-sutra-part-i-wallpapers-home-workout/1632298583001
Founder of Hi-ReS, Florian Schmitt, says it’s all about storytelling. Their beautiful work is about helping people tell their stories. As designers we need to respect, listen to, ask questions and know the problem we are trying to solve. I especially loved the stunning interactive online program they created with Economist magazine – a map called ‘Thinking Space’ – which shows where their readers go to think. As readers add more information it becomes an alternative to the regular city map; one that guides tourist through the city’s people and what is important to them.
Another presentation we saw again today was Stefano De Luigi. He gave a history of the photography ‘masters’ who have inspired his work. Sadly, he ran out of time to talk about his latest iPhone photography experiments, I would have loved to hear a little more about that.
A latecomer to the programme was Bec Winnel, an Australian artist whose ethereal portrait illustrations look like delicately-shot photos. She talked about her earlier graphic design study and how she has broken into doing client work. She’s illustrated a campaign lookbook for Danish designer Iben Hoj. She showed slides of her little dog which the canine lovers in the audience oohed and aahed over.
Chris Alzmann, visual effects art director from Industrial Light and Magic, showed us the drawings he made of Star Wars as a kid and said it was a dream come true to work on The Clone Wars film. One thing I loved was how excited he got talking about adding ‘cinematic flair’ to drawings; adding light and extra details to shots made it a more realistic visual experience for the viewer. I don’t think I’d ever get sick of seeing behind the scenes of an animated feature. We saw scenes of Rango dissected into design stages, wireframes, then 3D wireframes, and painted frames, then the final (with cinematic flair, of course). Seeing the process tells a story and gives you a new appreciation of how much work and love goes into those films. There were a few minutes for some questions and Te Radar told Chris that he worried he’d "taken away the magic but instead he’d replaced it with more magic." I agree.
I loved the ease of Ron English’s presentation. The ‘POPaganda’ king talked about billboards he and the Billboard Liberation Front instal to challenge public opinion. For those unfamiliar with his work, his presentation was a great history of what he has done and what he loves. I liked the way he seeks to challenge convention; to put art into places where people aren’t expecting it to be. For instance, he recreated cereal packaging and installed it in supermarkets.
The day finished with the draw of the sponsored prize draw: a Ron English print (along with many other amazing prizes) and the giveaway of the Orcon paintings, a collaboration created by artists at Semi-Permanent and conference goers.
It was a fantastic Semi-Permanent. Thank you to everyone involved, we loved it.
Rebecca Zwitser
Photos Megan Robinson
19 May 2012
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