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.
