Confessions of an industry pariah.

Dual Control rules:

Overall competition rules:

Teams are required to register a maximum squad of 8.

During group stages, 3pts will be awarded for a win, 1pt for a draw and 0pts for a lose - this is the same across both formats of the event.

The top 2 teams from each group will go through to the knockout stages.

In the event 2 or more teams are level on points, progress will be decided by goal difference then goals scored (combined across both formats).

During the knockout stages, if the aggregate score is level, the tie will be decided by a penalty shootout in which ever format the 2nd fixture is played.

Analogue rules:

Rules for the “analogue” element of the tournament can be found here:
http://www.goalsfootball.co.uk/PageProducer.aspx?Page=33

It’s each team captain’s responsibility to read these and make sure his team abide by them - for goodness sake, make sure everyone’s got shin pads and no studs!

Digital rules:

All games will be played 2 on 2.

Players are allowed to play once in the group stages and once in the knockout stages. Any player found to be breaking this rule will have that fixture voided and 3-0 victory will be awarded to the apposing team.

Games will be played in “exhibition mode” and players will be able to play as any international side they choose (opposing players may play as the same teams if they choose to (e.g. Spain vs Spain)).

Players will have 2 minutes before KO to make any lineup and/or formation changes.

Games will each last 10 mins with a 1 min pause at half time for any changes to be made.

Players may make up to 3 substitutions during games with players given 30 secs for each substitution.

Any changes to formation must be made during substitutions and no further time will be allocated.

Dual Control - Press Release.

A Unique digital AND analogue football tournament launches in Leeds as part of the city’s digital festival.

Throughout November Leeds’ digital sector will be coming together to celebrate all that;s great and good in the digital markets and part of the celebrations will include a one of a kind 5-a-side football tournament.

On Saturday the 26th of November at Goals Soccer Centre, just off Kirkstall Rd, 16 teams will first battle it out in group stages, playing each other on the pitch (analogue) and then again on the screen (digital) using the recently released PES2012 by Konami games on the Playstation3.

Across both platforms, 3pts will be awarded for a win and 1pt for a draw which will then see the top 2 sides from each group progress to the knock out stages. Those Knock-out stages will be decided over by an aggregate score after the sides have played each other in both formats.

All the action will take place in a single day with the winning team crowned the Dual Control 2011 Champions! They’ll also be golden boot prizes for the competition’s leading scorer on the pitch and the highest scoring team on the screen.

Goals Soccer Centre have over 15 3G pitches for hire and run 5-a-side tournaments most weeks; they’ve also run Playstation3 based competitions in the past but Dual Control will be the first time ever the formats have been combined.

Event organisers Darren and Duncan - both part of Leeds’ digital scene - think Dual Control is the perfect marriage of their passions and hope the event will provide a stern test the sides both physically and mentally.

Manchester Design Symposium…

Symposiums seem to be all the rage these days, first Liverpool (now known as, “Design Symposium North”) and now Manchester so for those of you that couldn’t/didn’t make it, I thought I’d offer you the (debatable) value of my opinion…

So yesterday, some 300 or so people crammed into a a fairly tight entrance lobby before taking their places in Manchester Uni’s biggest lecture theatre to listen to a gaggle of (mostly) middle aged men talk for hours about design - more specifically, type - and the value of of it. Sound like fun? Well actually, it was… sort of.

The day’s event had an over arching theme of “the value of design” and the first speaker up was the popular and much imitated designer/illustrator Si Scott - well known for his hand drawn, ornamental type - amongst other things.

(Mmmmm… hand drawn, ornamental type…)

Si’s pretty well known in design circles these days so it was great to put a face to the name and let’s face it, ornate or not, his work is stunning.

Perhaps it was the heavy painkillers he told us he was on but appeared to me he wasn’t the most natural of public speakers. Nevertheless, he came across as a sound guy and as mate commented, someone it’d be good to chat to over a pint or two.

So Si set about trying to tell us the story of how he’d got to where he is today and showed us a fair amount of the work that has helped him become so well known - perhaps his most quotable line of the talk was on the subject of computers, “they don’t like me and I don’t like them..” he said and that explained why he does what he does.

When attempting to explain his success, it was less clear but he did let us know that when he first became self employed he had a list of agencies and brands that he really wanted to work with and so far he’s managed to tick a stack load off it - Madonna wasn’t one of them but he worked with her anyway, though he came to realise she was a, “bit of a dick!”

Not getting on with computers seemed to extend to other technology for Si too as he stated, “I don’t do blogs. I try not to read them and I don’t really know how to write one…”

I very much suspect he appreciates those of us that do though - his work has been picked up by tonnes of them over the last few years and I reckon that’ll have more than a bit to do with helping him open some of those doors.

To tie things up Si left us with some sage advice - battle to be original - that’s what adds the value and that’s what’ll get you to where you need to be.

Next up was Editor and part owner of Eye Magazine - a beautifully put together quarterly journal reviewing the best of graphic design - John Walters.

John’s presentation was an immediate contrast to Si’s. He read almost word for word from his notes and so, as a presentation, it was much more structured but lacked the improvisation and humor Si delivered.

John’s a writer, Journalist, editor and former musician. He is not and has never been a designer so his was a different perspective to the other speakers and helped to make MDS a more rounded, less self-indulgent event.

He talked openly about about the difficulties the publishing industry faces and his experience of leading the management buy out of eye a couple of years back.

John is clearly a man that enjoys good design and spending time with designers. In terms of eye, he highlighted the fact that they use a more expensive printer, heavier paper stock, different inks etc because it adds value to their readers - thing’s that were always a battle to justify when they were owned by a larger publishing house.

So 2 speakers in and we were let out for a quick coffee break. I don’t think you could say many bad things about Si or John but I was hoping for a few more fireworks from the 2nd half.

In stepped Bruno Maag (Magg according to the MDS slide!).

Bruno is a well known, “Master Typographer”, born in Zurich and now living and working in the UK. He’s worked on some enormous projects including creating banks of typefaces for the BT phonebook, Sparkasse Bank and Nokia and it were these projects in particular he chose to hang his talk off.

I’d bet Bruno’s been delivering these talks for years now. He obviously knows his subject matter like the back of his hand but he was also at ease talking to an audience, funny, opinionated (just enough) and well structured in his delivery.

As you’d expected, Bruno talked specifically about the value of typefaces rather than design more broadly and the best example he gave us was a recent project for Ubunto - the open source Linex operating system that’s aiming to compete with OSX and Windows.

This project demanded Bruno and his team have work on 1000’s of different letterforms across western, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and Indian languages and his success could potentially help millions of people gain access to information via computers that previous wouldn’t have had the means to do so. What better way to demonstrate the value of typography and an open source platform…

He talked about the importance of being able to hand draw letterforms, regaling us with stories of placement students turning up with their shiny new macbooks and looking aghast when told they’d need nothing but a paintbrush and pad for their first 4 weeks - 6 if they weren’t good enough!

I liked Bruno and now I want to spend 4 weeks hand drawing type in his studio…

Next up, Jonathan Barnbrook and I have to admit that whilst I have heard of him an seen some of his studio’s work, he’s one of those names that I knew very little about.

Though he’s famed for much more, Jonathan, in line with the other speakers, focused on typefaces; taking us from his first crack at one as a student though to some of his more recent and commercially successful faces.

Again, clearly used to talking to an audience, Jonathan was really easy to listen to, funny and engaging. He’s a real student of design and type in particular and seemed almost a little coy having to follow Bruno - someone he considers to be a “proper” typographer.

His work seems to have more of an agenda than most - it’s subtle, more tongue in cheek but it’s enough to make you stop and think and this was his over arching message - through your work aim to make the world a better place - even if that only means a slightly prettier place. Nice, I thought.

Closing the day was Tom Dorresteijn, Head of Strategy and Partner of Dutch design house Studio Dumbar.

The first line on Tom’s website tells us he’s “a strategist with the heart of a designer…” and that definitely cam across as he spoke.

Like John earlier on, he offered a slightly different take on things and focused on how to deliver great design to clients, “You’ve got to turn them on…” seemed to become his mantra throughout the presentation, but like “branding”, I reckon the word “strategy” has become a bit of a buzz word around creatives over the last few years and there’s few that can explain what they actually mean by it.

Whilst Tom didn’t explain the full depths of his role (well he might of, I did find myself drifting off a bit in the middle), he did use a good line which I think is worth repeating, “Like management, we should use as much strategy as is needed but as little as possible”.

So with all the speakers done there was just enough time for half an hour of round table action with Manchester Uni’s David Crow chairing.

There were a few set questions and after some vigorous debate around the subject of free pitching in particular, the floor was opened to the audience - one of which suggested we could develop a regulation body akin to the world of architecture - are we really so elitist as an industry? That’s a whole new blog entry there though…

So in short, well done to those involved in organising the event - it’s never easy but you got some great speakers and plenty of bums on seats - get some decent mics next time though.

A trip to the theatre - Yerma.

Now I’ve landed in my 30’s I reckon I’m ready to try some more grown up type stuff. So 1st on my list - a trip to the theatre.

The last time I went to the theatre was around 6-7 years back when I took Sarah to see Fame in the West End for a birthday “treat”. It was far from high brow but none the less I found the whole experience pretty dreary.

Still, time has passed and when the chance came to give it another bash it thought, “why not?” After all I’ve enjoyed things like #BettaKultcha recently so perhaps my tastes have become more sophisti(ma)cated and my horizons broadened?

So Yerma; a Spanish Tragedy written in the 1930’s (thankfully adapted into English for this incarnation) about a young women desperate but unable to conceive a child and as a consequence, going slowly mad - there’s nothing like breaking yourself in gently!

The cast did feature a few familiar faces off the tele - particularly the lass that plays Alisha in Channel 4’s Misfits (Antonia Thomas) - so perhaps it wouldn’t be as full on as I feared.

Opening with Yerma prancing around stage with little, if anything, in the way of staging/props I feared the worst - a full on thesp-fest of the highest order! Low and behold though, an hour passed and I could barely belief we’d hit the interval! Yerma was beginning to show signs of madness and at various points in the hour I had even laughed out loud (I think in the right places). This wasn’t bad!

The second part (act?) began with more action than the first. It’s 3 years on and still without child, Yerma, her husband Juan and “The sisters” are all present on stage to have a ding dong about Yerma’s midnight wanderings and possible infidelities.

From there on the intensity of the play continued to be ratcheted up with Yerma becoming more and more manic and more and more desperate before the final, climatic scene - which I won’t spoil for those of you that fancy seeing it for yourselves (there was a green scarf and and dead husband involved).

So an evening of my life I’ll never get back but in truth I wouldn’t want it. I doubt very much that I’ll become a regular theatre goer but I have to admit to enjoying the experience more than I’d expected and leaving with a new found appreciation of the work that goes into putting on this sort of a show.

In this particular play, the lead character of Yerma, played by Kate Stanley-Brennan, must have put massive demands on the actress - both mentally and physically - she was barely off stage for the whole 2 hours and when she wasn’t running around like a demented madwomen, she was shouting, crying and at one point, flinging herself into a massive bath of cold water! As Sarah put it, “I bet she’s knackered after that!”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyplayhouse/sets/72157626017016842/show/