I spent my Saturday this week at uni watching four very interesting people from the big wide world of design.
I always enjoy going to these sorts of events because there is just something about a person stood before you giving you a guided tour along their personal path, and through the turns they made before they became who they are today.
Morag Mysercough was first to take to the stage and opened with the words: "I'm going to spend the next hour telling you stories about my life" and I was captivated already. From a young age she was always exposed to a creative world and pooled every aspect of it together into her own work. Started off with Graphic Design but found it too 'limiting', Morag went onto to find her niche in using Graphic Design in the architectural sense. This began when she did some work purely for herself and displayed pieces in a makeshift exhibition called 'My House'. Since, she has formed 'Supergroup' based in London and has worked individually on projects varying from creating exhibitions at the Design Museum and more recently designing the interiors of schools and hospitals (slight touch of being star struck, she designed the new Kirk Balk, I know that school!) with a love of bright colours and flare for giving every piece a back story (note: getting children to create patterns to then merge them and use one super pattern).
Jack Schulze came up next with his entertaining presentation of his technical and electrical background. Him and his team 'Berg' have worked on so many ingenious projects, the world's favourite being 'Little Printer', and spoke honestly about the way him and his team would approach a project, learn about the subject by researching it as far as flying out to China to watch how it's made! I found his talk particularly reassuring because he spoke so honestly about long nights surviving only on Relentless (because it's cheaper than Red Bull) and made us all feel better about our future paths. Such a down to Earth designer in one of the fastest moving areas of 'production design' or, 'design for internet things', as he so quaintly put.
Jonny Kelly had the difficult job of keeping us entertained whilst we were digesting. He works for Nexus as a director of animations and has made some beautiful pieces for some really big name companies, (Adobe, Chipotle, Google/Youtube). He fed us with some videos that he himself found inspirational which was very interesting to see how his mind actually works, and picks up ideas. He mostly works with stop animation and the work within them varies across disciplines and creates a wonderfully handmade and unique feel to it.
After a long wait, Erik Kramer finally arrived (through our flash-blizzard) from Amsterdam to present to us his hilarious approach to producing quality Graphic Design. From the anti-advertising of possibly the worst hotel in Amsterdam to producing endless books of found photographs (of a woman through her life, a woman always in water and a woman shooting her own photos) all telling an open story of their lives that leave so many possibilities that we become the storyteller. He left us all in a cheery mood after watching him flick through pictures of his bunny with objects on his head. A brilliant end to a fantastic day. Left feeling so inspired and dreaming of a day when I might be able to present to fresh-faced designers my story!
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