Circa 2008. It was my first time attending this massive design event following the company’s entourage as a co-exhibitor. I would never forget how the whole glory of the event made me feel even after the event was over. I know, ‘glory’ seemed like an overestimation but I really was like an awe-struck 3 year old stepping into a Cinderella’s ball for the first time! I was floored by all these bunch of big named speakers I haven’t heard before but I know, they really do walk the talk.
Weeks before I complete serving my leaving notice period with the company, I had been searching for this event summary I wrote 3 years ago so I could take them with me when I left and share it out here.
Please pay attention to Paul Hughes because I find his design solution to be the simplest approach that every common person like you and I can learn from. :)
Kyoorius Designyatra was held in Kuala Lumpur for the first time in 2008, where a total of 12 international speakers came from all over the world participated in the international conference to share their insights and exchange professional views on the creative industry. The theme this year is to explore how culture plays a role in designing on the scale of globalization.
Wally Olins (Saffron Brand Consultants) is a leading practitioner in corporate identity and branding, and has published books on branding. Most people identify branding to logo attached to expensive things but that is superficial, he says. What people are willing to pay for is the value of the brand. According to him, there are 4 vectors that associate with branding; the product, behavior, communication, environment. These 4 vectors lead to the brand idea. To distinguish the same product, one of the ways to use is country of origin effect which is what people think of the product originated from when they think of the product. Eg. Scotch Whisky
Neville Brody (Research Studios) is a famous British designer and art director, showcased some of his recent works. Most of his design is ambiguous and open to interpretation. He believes that differences are what makes us individual and trend-observing around the world, particularly in Asia, there have been so much culture generic and clone of brands.
Rohan Thomas (Senior Web Platform and UX Tech Advisor) – shared about Microsoft Silverlight, enriching user-experience, focus on user interface eg. Photosynth.com – 3D overview of picture – indoor & outdoor, Hard Rock memorabilia (zoom out)
DixonBaxi – shown most of their works for MTV, ad campaign on TV, motion graphic.
Vince Frost – designer who moved to Australia and talked about how it brings a whole new chapter of his life, his design mostly environmental-conscious.
Christ Lee (Asylum) – involved in commercial and non-commercial projects, Yoghurt, also came up with own chocolate, packaging design, flavors, size of choc bar.
William Harold-Wong (WHW Associates) – philosophical approach, explains how a simple creature Naga place influence in design and culture, from the word itself to the shape of the building that resembles Naga…
Andy Altman (WHY net associates)– loves experimenting with words, typography, illustrates how something that is useless/junk can inspire something new and creative, brings words larger than life as most of his works are engraved/embossed.
Kath Tudball – senior designer in London for Johnson Banks, of mixed parentage. Fascinated with Manglish and mixing the traditional and modern elements in her design. Eg. Stamp design – UK
Kenya Hara – leading designer of Japan Muji concept (his talk was particularly harder for me to digest because of the philosophical nature of the concept)
Paul Hughes (Lava, NL) – Stressed on going back to the process/motion/essence of designing instead of design. How?
When designers design, they would think of the outcome of the product. There are 3 things/practice you can apply to solve a problem as a designer. An open approach of ‘think outside the box’.
Say, a client wants you to come up with an ad campaign, and they say they don’t want to the same thing again. They want something new:
1. Problem. Designer’s first road block. So you listen to them, and ask what do you want instead? This is when you reach to the outcome, an understanding of what the client wants.
2. You come up with a suggestion on things you’d like to do for the client. But the client says it’s impossible! (maybe because of budget/time restraint) So you ask them back, what would it be if we were to do this or that… by asking this question you are giving them a ‘sense of possibility’. You act as if it were to happen this way.
3. Then the client would say, the last time they did the ad campaign, they failed. Nevermind again. You ask again, so what do they learn from the failure? From there, you get feedback, on what works and what not.
Paul’s method not only for designer but applies to anyone too even in relationship. Surprise, surprise.
Hughes was trying to show the motion of thinking process, from problem space to opportunity space, from limited space to liberation. Great ideas come to mind when you open up yourself to possibilities, and from my understanding on Paul’s lecture was that the challenge is often how we train ourselves to get to the open-ended space/solution space, which is the ‘think outside the box’ space.
Design is a collaboration; not an isolation.
Knowledge is not static. When scientists want to study a butterfly, they would pin it down but they realize it’s no use to study something that is dead so they start to study its movements.
And after all is done, the hardest challenge is to stay true to yourself, because of all this external influence that keeps driving you away. So the question becomes, how do you get back to yourself?
