They're small design meet up, where you can get a lot closer to the action than your usual conference. And they tend to be more focused on the business aspects rather than typography and the like. As they say in their blurb, they're social and commercial. Which is good.
Probably the best one I went to was John McConnell a few years ago. He gave some good, simple, down to earth advice. The kind of straight forward stuff you could actually take away and do.
Recently they've had, Michael Peters and Mat Hunter from IDEO. And now they've got me.
They've been asking me for a while and I've always said no. I don't know why, really. But I met Pippa and Amanda for breakfast the other day and they convinced me to talk about some of the stuff I've been working on over the past nine months or so. Particularly the differences I've found in working more with non-designers and as a partnership rather than as a limited company. I've had a post brewing for a while about all that sort of stuff but it hasn't worked it's way through the tubes yet. So I thought it might be better to chat about it with some humans.
We're about to start a cool thing with Penguin in this vain, and of course there's the 4ip thing - so I'll talk about that and other fun things. You should come along. Tickets available here and there's only a few left.
You know those Pecha Kucha nights that always sound like such fun? The people at ilovedesign.com are putting on a similar event called 8x8 on 1st July. This one might even be better as 8 creatives have just 8 minutes to talk about what inspires and motivates them. Nice and fast paced.
The speakers are all great and a lovely mix of digital and traditional. Some big names and people you might not have heard of. But you'll be familiar with all of their work. I know a few of them well and I'm really excited about the evening. Doubly excited as I'm going to be hosting, so I can fulfill my life's ambition to be Chris Evans/Terry Wogan/Ant & Dec/Simon Amstell.
You read that right, I'm hosting the event. Please leave any good design jokes in the comments. I'm gonna need them.
It's on 1st July, it's a bloody bargain at £15 and you can buy tickets here.
Here's the full list of brilliant speakers.
1. Iain Tait, Creative Partner at Poke (you all know Iain, right? The best dressed man online.) http://www.pokelondon.com
3. Joel Gethin Lewis & Pete Hellicar (Joel used to be at UVA, I shared an office with him and Pete earlier in the year, very clever guys) http://www.hellicarandlewis.com
4. Richard Hooker, Designer and Art Director at Wieden+Kennedy (I've worked with Richard and he's an amazingly talented designer, you'll be very familiar with his work) http://www.wk.com
Anyway. Last night there was a dinner for speakers. This was billed as a 'Perfume Dinner'. Whatever that means. I'm familiar with the film and the book Perfume (Grenouille and all that) so I was interested to find out if we were all going to be horrifically murdered.
No one was murdered.
Hosted by Chandler Burr who's the perfume critic at the New York Times (I'm not making this up) it was a fascinating evening with a lot of science. In a good way. It's basically a 7 course meal interrupted by scent. Each course of the dinner was preceded by the corresponding smell. For example we smelt some carrots before this lovely carrot soup.
We smelt synthetic scents and natural scents, we found out which popular scents are in which perfumes. How the big perfume houses operate (clue: there's lots of money in it). A perfume 101, if you like. A fabulous, interesting evening.
Chandler would get us to smell something which no-one could quite place and then as soon as he revealed the source we were all taken straight there.
I'm not really getting across how powerful it was. But we all know how a certain smell can take you right back to a particular memory instantly.
Right at the end we smelled, individually, lime, vanilla, cinnamon and clove. We were getting good at guessing the smells by this point, so most people got these. Chandler asked us what all these scents together would make. We had no idea.
Then we placed all four sticks together took a sniff - Coca Cola. Pretty amazing.
I learned a lot. You can't say that for most speakers dinners.
There's a conference on Friday at Central Saint Martins. It's been organised by some of the students and the proceeds go towards the cost of the final show. And for those of you who find conference expensive this one is only £8 for the whole day. Get yer tickets here.
And yes, yes, I'm talking. But I'd go to hear HudsonBec. They're a terrifically talented duo creating all sorts of exciting work and they're the brains behind It's Nice That. Should be a good day.
And there's more next week. I'm very excited about Thinking Digital, an event over three days in Newcastle. Again, there are some great speakers including Mike Southon from the FT, Matt Mason author of The Pirates Dilemma and Erik Huggers the Director of BBC Future Media & Technology.
We'll be speaking at that and hopefully we'll have some new news. Something I'm pretty excited about. All will be revealed next week.
The conference was really good. And not because the coffee was good, or the venue was good, or the speakers were polished eloquent speakers - because it had talented people talking about one thing. Graphic design.
These pictures are from David Pearson's talk. I don't need to explain who he is, do I? He talked about lots of things, but one thing I liked a lot was this collection of covers he found in the Penguin archives which all feature circles in the design. There were hundreds of them.
That's Tom Harle, by the way. Far left, purple jumper. Back to the circles.
Another highlight wasYulia Brodskaya who spoke about her gorgeous typographic paper quilling. She even discussed the best way to light them which was good. Good graphic design chat.
There were lots of other good bits.
Kath and Julia from johnson banks were good and it was nice to see some more detail about their work.
I think that's Kath and Julia. It might be Julia and Kath.
And this chap, whose name escapes me, who read through Paul Stiff's paper, because Paul was ill. Anyway. Some great stuff about the earliest tariff documents and distance maps for taxi drivers. Fascinating and with some great maps.
This map is from 1850 something. It has circles at half mile intervals. That way it's easy to work out how far away a destination is. I thought it looked easy, I'm not sure the rest of the audience did.
There are some great people speaking. David Pearson of Penguin fame, Yulia Brodskay who
does that amazing paper craft lettering and Officina Tipográfica São Paulo who did
that lovely Creative Review cover in January. That's a pretty amazing line
up (and us). Tickets are a very reasonable £100 (look at the speakers, that's great value for money) and are available now.
The work of David Pearson, Yulia Brodskay and Officina Tipográfica São Paulo. Note to self; it's worth not being shit.
Picture borrowed from and copyright of Moleitau, with many thanks.
We'll also be talking at This Happened on the 12th March at the BFI. This Happened is a series of events focusing on the stories behind interaction design. Past speakers have included Troika, Semitransparent and UVA. Speaking with us are Universal Everything and Artwise. That's a pretty amazing line
up (and us). Tickets usually sell out on the day they're issued so keep your fingers on your buzzer.
There's a post in my drafts folder called 'The difference between an advertising business and a design business'. It's been there for over a year. Look there it is.
It's about the differences in the businesses, not the industries. The things an advertising business is good at and the things a design business is good at. It will be a great post. I may never finish it.
But I was reminded of one thing an advertising business is good at the other day. Something design businesses don't ever do properly. (Well, packaging companies sort of do it, but it's different.) Strategy, trends, consumer research, call it what you want. It's looking outside of your field at the wider world and, most importantly, real people. Those last sentences sound very clumsy but you know what I mean.
Luckily for all you designers Piers from PSFK is putting on a brilliant thing called Good Ideas Salon London. You should go. Here's some people from the speaker list.
Jeremy Ettinghausen \ Director of Digital \\ Penguin Kate Moross \\ Designer Eva Rucki \ Founding Partner \\ Troika Design Paul Graham \ Partner \\ Anomaly UK Kevin Anderson \ Blogs Editor \\ The Guardian
...and 20 or so others. I'd like to hear what all that lot have to say. Wouldn't you?
Lots of agencies are freezing pay but increasing training at the moment. You could do worse than to book a ticket for this and write training on your expenses form. You can buy tickets here.
Whilst we're on the subject. Here's another thing you should do.
Ruby Pseudo is speaking at the above event (that's reason to go in itself).
But you should definitely subscribe to the Ruby Pseudo Chat Chat blog. Ruby Pseudo is essentially a youth consultancy. And a brilliant one. They have a network of over 250 kids and they offer genuine, unfiltered, raw research. "If you want it told like it is, with some very real and useable strategy recommendations, then you have found the right person..." Simon Pestridge said that and he's Marketing Director of Nike UK. So he probably knows what he's on about.
I've just worked with them on a project and it the stuff they provided was superb. And I definitely probably knows what I'm on about.
If you still think the kids wear chambray shirts, dance to Deacon Blue
at discos and say "wicked" (like I do) then you should start reading that
blog. This post, for example, rounds up 23 brilliant, talented teenage photographers on Flickr . Not two, or five. But twenty three.
Again, as designers we don't really get exposed to this kind of stuff very often. Nowhere near as often as we should, and it's a revelation when we do.
So. Subscribe to Ruby and go to Ideas Salon London.
Also whilst in Portland (this is turning into 'and one time, in Portland'...) I went to chat to the good folks at Ziba. They showed me around and I spoke to them about what I'm up to at the moment.
Ziba are a product design firm in working in the same area as IDEO and people like that. Probably most famous for their great work on Umpaqua bank. They also did that new(ish) Wacom Pad that everyone goes on about.
When you're a graphic designer, product designers make you very jealous. They have workshops and lathe and cutters and machines. Again I couldn't take pictures, but let me take one of this. I asked what it was and they replied, "Oh it's just resin".
It may be just resin, but it looks very cool.
Thanks to Paul who showed me around and Simon who helped set it up.
I was on a panel last week talking about design to 800 design and technology A level students. Some younger ones too.
Wayne Hemingway was up first. Always good value for money. Nice and provocative too. Although he made me realise that the Big Breakfast was well over 10 years ago. So the audience were probably 5 years old when his slot on BB used to air.
And he slagged off Bros which upset me. Because Bros were great. Honestly. Watch this and tell me you're not dancing round the office.
Jason Iftakhar was also there and he was brilliant. He had lots of 'Ooh I wish I'd done that' work. This chair/bench for example.
This is made from compacted cardboard. He persuaded Sainsburys (and other supermarkets I think) to let him put a tool inside their waste cardboard compacters that cuts these chairs. For free! Obviously they give him the cardboard for free, they let him cut the chairs and then he does them a favour by taking the chairs away! Something like that anyway. Brilliant.
He's also got some great packaging that's made from the old cardbaord boxes Argos Direct use. He has a factory in Manchester that's across the way from Argos Direct and they give him all their waste cardboard. For nothing! All clever stuff. Have a look at his site, there's lots of really interesting bits in there.
He had this great quote, "If you want to make a product cheaper, reduce the number of parts". That seems true of many, many things.
I had a really good day. And it made me realise (again) how important it is to get out and talk to students. They get so little contact with industry and they are so happy and enthusiastic when you go and speak to them.
So I want to do more of this. If you're a college or a school, drop me a line I'd be more than happy to come and talk to some of your students. (Is that arrogant of me? Too late, I've said it now...)
I'm sorry I haven't done a review of the D&AD Annual like I have in previous years. It feels a bit late now you've all seen it haven't you? It's online anyway for members and non-members alike. Which is fantastic.
Now, some other D&AD news. They've started putting lectures online as podcasts, which is brilliant. Easy and accessible and the quality is good.
Lots of people leave comments on my review of the Ivan Chermayeff lecture saying they wish they could watch it. Well now you can.
Tony Davidson is up there as well, as is Irma Boom and Paul Davis. You can subscribe straight through iTunes (opens link in iTunes).
Last but not least you can now enter the D&AD Awards. After all the fuss last year it's important that us graphic designers enter some bloody good work and that we win. There's only one way to win and that's to enter. So enter. They've made it cheaper this year too!
He didn't speak, he only chaired a session. But he was very well briefed, very well prepared and he spoke persuasively and intelligently. He had this great quote from Paul Saffo, "Just because something is inevitably going to happen, it doesn't mean it's going to happen any time soon".
What struck me most was how he never once said, err.
Granted, Peter Day is a professional broadcaster and he's been doing it for years and years, but still, he never once said "err". Not once. No umm's, no erm's, no you know's. I was so startled by this I counted erms and umms for the other speakers. On average (and my survey wasn't very scientific admittedly) no speaker could get through one minute without and an erm or an umm or a you know.
I realise that dropping countless 'you knows' into a presentation is mainly a stylistic issue and in the right circumstances it can be effective, but more often than not it's just lazy. It's very easy in this industry to convince yourself that you're a good presenter when actually you're just average. Good speakers are people like Peter Day, Tony Blair or Winston Churchill. As Jon Steel points out in his brilliant book (you have read that book haven't you?) Winston never needed any PowerPoint to get his point across. Neither did Peter Day.
I know Blair and Churchill and the like are talking about much more important things than the difference between Arial and Helvetica, but even your local MP could stand up for 45 minutes and give a competent speech about the local door knob society. No notes, no PowerPoint, no erms. John Dodds once saw Seth Godin stand on a char (in the middle of Buckingham Palace or somewhere) and talk about funny coloured cows for nearly an hour. Could you do that?
Next time you speak, try and do it without any erms.
Next week Kingsley and I will be honoured to be going back to Romania again. We're helping judge the Filter design competition for the second year running, we'll be giving a little talk and we'll be running a workshop. Razvan has started calling us the 'Godfathers' of the competition, which is pretty cool.
I really should have written about this before but I haven't got round to it. Filter is organised by the guys at Oricum. You'll probably never meet a more energetic, committed bunch of people.
A few weeks ago they had Dick Powell out to present. Doesn't that hall look gorgeous? It's the same place we presented at last year, the National Theatre.
Anyway. If you want to know more about Filter get in touch with Razvan or anyone at Oricum.
That is a picture of me, watching a video I downloaded from the internet of my brother giving a talk at a conference in Las Vegas, on my iPod, on a train journey to Maidenhead.
That's good isn't it? The digital world, my friends, is your friend.
(I'm also reading a horrendous supplement about design that I shall hopefully write about later.)
I thought you might like it if I posted my talk here. For the first time ever I've followed Jon Steel's advice and written my talk down, in long hand. One of the benefits of this is that I can post the whole shooting match, here, for you wonderful people.
Hello. My name is (etc, etc, I'll skip that bit here. You lot know who I am.)
Today I’m going to lay out a case for how I think designers, and the design industry, can help with the challenges facing us. I’d love to know what you think about these ideas.
But before we do all that, let’s start with some fun.
Let’s be honest, all this Green / Sustainability stuff can get a bit heavy, can’t it?
I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear someone say Sustainability, it reminds me of Phil Collins. You know, sus sus sustainability, like sus sus sussudio. So in the spirit of that Gorilla ad I wanted to play you this little film I made especially for today.
Seriously, we hear a lot of talk about sustainability in the design industry. Sometimes it even says “sustainability” in client briefs.
According to the Design Council, 95% of design consultancies have less than 5 staff and a turnover of less than £250k a year. So the problem is that when you mention sustainability to 95% of designers they’re not thinking about saving the planet, they’re thinking about next years Annual Report & Accounts.
And that’s part of the problem.
I’m a designer, I run a design company and I accept pounds. We all do.
As an industry we’ve learnt that more stuff equals more pounds. And pounds are good for our sustainability. That’s a pretty simple business model.
If a client asks us to design two postcards; we think, a lot of the time subconsciously, if I can get them to do three postcards that will be great, four will be even better. Because more stuff equals more pounds.
If a client asks us to design a brochure; we say silly things like, “Wouldn’t it be a great idea to send them a letter with the brochure. Yeah, and let’s send them a postcard before we send them the brochure so they know the brochure is coming. And if we send them a postcard before we send them the brochure we really ought to send them a postcard after we send them the brochure.” Much nodding of heads.
I once sat in a meeting where someone said, “I always say, if you’ve got a full colour RPC you should have a full colour envelope”. Yes, they said, “I always say.”
OK, so by default as an industry we produce more stuff because that’s gets us paid more. We all get that, right?
But as an industry we don’t just do that, we also do this:
and this
in case you didn’t spot it
that’s freshly prepared crispy potato slices.
Yes, freshly prepared.
That’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?
It’s easy to stand up here and slag off unnecessary packaging, but it’s not just packaging designers who are at fault. Designers, by default, just produce lots of stuff.
Here’s our letterhead.
(I'll skip through these pictures to save pixels...)
Nice isn’t it? Nice big arrow. Bit of Helvetica. You know. That’s the one we use for short messages. This is the one we use for longer letters. Oh and there’s this one as well. We use that, er, when we’re bored of the orange one. And there’s this one too. We use this one for invoices.
So here they are all together. Hands up - I designed these. But it’s ridiculous isn’t it? How can we justify 4 different letterheads? You can’t.
And it’s not just packaging and it’s not just self indulgent self promotional stuff.
It’s classics like this.
Is there really a need for this nowadays?
I know there’s more than a designer involved here, marketing managers and brand managers and account managers can all take their share of the blame; but seriously, as designers we could have stopped this. Really, someone should have stood up and said, “Excuse me, but isn’t that a little unnecessary?”
So, the climate change elephant in the industry is, designers, it’s our fault.
I honestly think we have to admit that before we can move on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, as I already mentioned there are loads of other people involved, but whose fault is it that a swede comes wrapped in cellophane? That potatoes come, freshly prepared, in a great big fucking plastic box?
It’s the designers fault.
And if you won’t agree that it’s the designers fault at the very least you’ve got to admit that the designer has done nothing to stop it – which in my view makes it the designers fault.
Now, I don’t want to stand up here and say all designers are bad and we should just get everyone to make less stuff. That’s lovely and everything, but it’s very unrealistic and it’s not gonna help with this bit.
If more stuff equals more pounds, than less stuff equals less pounds, right?
Now you might think that a gas guzzling 4.8 litre car can never be environmentally friendly, but just think about that stat for a bit. What they’re saying is that 60% of the stuff we’ve made is so desirable, so well put together, so well designed, that people are still using them.
Imagine if 60% of other stuff was still in use. I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy if 60% of the iPods I’d owned were still working.
Imagine if 60% of carrier bags were still being used. Imagine if 60% of computers were still in use today. 60% of food packaging was still in use.
Lewis Mumford, the historian said “Why should we so gratuitously assume, as we constantly do, that the mere existence of a mechanism for manifolding or of mass production carries with it an obligation to use it to the fullest capacity?”
Or why do constantly we make as much stuff as we can, rather than as much stuff as we need?
Now. Take a look at this:
This is a video simulation of all planes flying across America in 24 hours.
These are the flight paths from a Heathrow take off.
The designer in me says wouldn’t it be nicer if some of those lines were, y’know, a little bit straighter. I could drop those flight paths into Freehand, mess about with the Bezier curves and straighten that mess out in no time at all.
A report in June in that well known design journal The Economist found that “if air traffic control systems were reorganized” a fuel efficiency gain of 12% could be made. Fuel efficiency gain of 12%.
What do they mean by reorganized? A continuous gentle descent into the airport (as opposed to a stepped descend, hold, descend again approach) could save around $100k per year, per aircraft. British Airways have 235 planes so that’s a saving of $23.5M every year just by redesigning the flight paths. 23 million dollars just with a bit of Freehand work!
And obviously, not only are we saving money, we’re saving fuel.
Ok, I’m aware that all sounds a bit naive.
So I spoke to some air traffic controllers. They said that whilst that would work, you can’t just go around redesigning flight paths. There are all sort of restrictions. For example you can’t fly over Buckingham Palace.
But listen to their other ideas for making flight paths shorter, this is the exact words,
“Better airport signage = better retrieval of baggage = better turn around time for aircraft loading and unloading = more gates available through operating hours = more aircraft can be landed in a given time period = less aircraft time in the air waiting to land = less fuel wastage from circling aircraft.”
“Even better carry on luggage storage may mean less time loading/unloading = more gates available for a new plane to land at = less time in the air waiting to land. Maybe it's not better storage but better carry on luggage.”
“Maybe it's better exits in an aircraft - could the side of the aircraft just roll up?”
“Maybe the aircraft could be a "canister" carrier, unload the canister, pickup a new one and away you go.”
Let’s look at what they said there: Better airport signage. Better luggage storage. Better carry on luggage. Better exits. Just better aircraft. Aren’t these all design problems? Are you starting to see what I mean?
That other esteemed design publication, BBC News online, reported in February that Belkin, the people that make USB sticks etc, reviewed the packaging on one of its network card products.
“The alternative design signified a 50% reduction in box volume, which will boost transport efficiency and cut material costs.
The new design saved more than 18,000 kilograms of paper and 2,400 kilograms of plastics each year and reduce packaging-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 104 tonnes annually - with clear financial and environmental benefits.”
18,000 kilograms of paper. 2,400 kilograms of plastic. 104 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Clear financial and environmental benefits. Ahh ha, we’re back to pounds again. Good.
You see - I want designers and the design industry to move towards a business model where design is a way of thinking rather than a way of creating more billable units.
Someone with a designer’s brain can spot these problems and can go about solving them.
Someone with a designer’s brain can be invaluable in the fight against climate change.
I keep having this thought that the best design minds in history would see Climate Change as amazing opportunity. Don’t you get the feeling Da Vinci could have knocked up an alternative fuel in his spare time? Don’t you think that Raymond Loewy would have found an efficient way to package some of Tesco’s Finest Swede before his elevenses?
I want this speech to be a rallying call to the design industry. We ought to say to companies don’t use us to implement your shit ideas, use us at a much higher level.
Now, I don’t just mean chuck loads of designers into every boardroom in the country, that wouldn’t work. I mean that people who think like designers think, can see these solutions more easily than others.
In the FTSE 100 38% of CEO’s have an accounting background, 23% sales 18% general management (whatever that means) 0% have design backgrounds.
I want people with design backgrounds to be CEO’s and CFO’s and CMO’s and town planners and air traffic controllers and European Commissioners.
European Commissioners?
You’ll probably have noticed recently that Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, and Nokia have all agreed to standardize their mobile phone chargers. Everyone can agree that’s a brilliant idea. And I’m sure some designer at Nokia or Motorola had the idea ages ago, but why have they only done this now?
Because the EU's WEEE directive makes manufacturers responsible for some of the costs associated with recycling their equipment, and a broadly applied standard removes the need for a new charger to be distributed with every phone.
This is cheaper (ahhh pounds again) for the manufacturer, and also results in a smaller, less heavy box, which reduces on shipping costs, storage costs, warehouse costs and so on.
So regulation forced them to do it. Wouldn’t it have been nice if it was the other way round? Wouldn’t it have been nice if the CEO of Samsung had a design brain and stuck his neck out and they’d done this off their own back?
I want design to be a management tool. I want designers to get paid (more) for brilliant thinking.
“Reuse, reduce, use less, make smaller, make clever, we're running out of resources can you still do something clever?”
Well to me, that’s a design brief.
All these climate change issues look like design problems to me.
Maybe we won’t be able to get people to change their behaviour so we’ll have to work around that.
My brother lives in America and so I got over there quite a lot. Am I going to stop flying out to see him? Well, yeah, I might but my Mum and Dad won’t. And they’re not gonna miss the opportunity to fly out and see their grand children. So may we have to redesign the planes so that they use 50% less fuel. Maybe boats were the answer? We just need to design them so they’re a little bit faster…
Maybe we need to design a communications system that means they can get the sensation of holding that grandchild from their lounge. I don’t know the answers, but I know that the problems are design problems.
You think I’m mad? Remember when people used to think you needed the tactile feeling of an LP to sell music?
I guess I’m saying to you – I’m a designer. Use me better.
Lots of people keeping saying "I'm sure many people will write a lengthy review of Interesting so I'll keep it short". Welcome, my friends, to the long, unedited, directors cut, full length review of Interesting 2007. Well, a bit longer than most at any rate.
Yes, Simon, more chairs.
The Hall was beautiful. It seemed to be constantly bathed in a lovely dappled sunlight. It wasn't of course, but it just felt that way. The bunting was great. The colours of the chairs perfectly in harmony with the hues of the soft drinks and the wooden floor. That kinda colour co-ordination takes a lot of hard work.
The really nice thing about Interesting 2007 was the attitude of the thing was matched by the attitude of the people. Easy going, happy, grateful, friendly and pliable. Everyone and everything; pliable. I thought everyone just got it. Nothing needed explaining. No one needed telling. Everyone found the right way to do things.
Easy going, happy, grateful, friendly and pliable.
There were some really lovely touches. In fact they were everywhere you looked. And it wasn't a PlannersphereWankFest either. Whilst there were lots of people who knew each other, there were loads who didn't. Which was a good thing.
Going back to pliable, the British randomness of the running order worked like a dream. You couldn't have planned that. In fact it's the kind of thing that would have been destroyed by a committee sat around trying to plan a Muppet talking after the editor of The Spectator. It just worked because it just worked.
It was great to see people collect their tshirts. People were really pleased to get them. That was nice.
Personally I loved the three minutes talks. They had an energy that is missing from all traditional presentations and conferences. I found myself saying that the 20 minute ones were too long, but that's an absurd thing to say. The different pace of the speakers was really charming too.
I can't write about all the speakers. I'd like to, but I can't. Really, I can't. So, here's my Top 5. It's my personal Top 5 and in no way means that someone I've missed was rubbish. Someone's gotta be 6th, as Enid Blyton used to say.
DANGER. NO FLOOR.
1. Dave Funny PancakeShowed some of his brilliant photos. Just side splittingly hilarious. He could still be speaking now and I'd still be laughing. No big tricks, just 200 photos and humour. Genuine fun for all the family. He should tour. Brilliant.
2. Rhodri MarsdenPlayed the saw. Or rather he made that saw sing to within an inch of it's jagged life. In a good way. Watch the video here. So good I played it over the studio stereo this morning. And again and again. And what a choice of song too. Brilliant.
3. Fiona RomeoSpoke about how they created The Science Of Spying exhibition. I really, really want to go to this exhibition but I keep missing it. So this was the next best thing. But more than that, I learnt stuff. The two second learning in public rule for example. Brilliant. And she used the logo in her ppt.
4. Anne I LikeWas a 3D version of her lovely blog. You knew she'd be good didn't you? She was. David helped her design the postcards too. Brilliant.
5. Beeker - Shared what the Muppets and Ibsen had taught her. I don't really know/like the Muppets. And I've no idea who the Dutch bloke was, but Beeker really made this come alive. Touching without being soppy. In depth without being boring. Funny without being stand up. Interesting. Brilliant.
"You're all adults, it's only £20, so, you know, don't complain." Russell asking the audience to be kind.
"That's Marcus. Do you know him, he's dead. Well, he used to be dead." Clare trying to explain to a startled helper about Marcus.
"But I am dead." Marcus' response when I told him the above story.
"Thanks. I'm doing a 20 minute slot." Matt's response when I told him I thought the 20 minute ones were too long.
"The Muppets were only interested in the lower numbers." Beeker telling us about Muppet snobbery.
"Knots were invented by Witches." Tom deconstructs and reinvents history again and again and again.
I've got loads and loads to say about the graphics, but that will be another day and another post.
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