[Design Indaba conf] Overview of day two

"From owning to sharing, from stuff to experience," was the phrase coined by Bruce Nussbaum, opening speaker of the second day of the 2010 Allstars Design Indaba currently on the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The quest for the new lifestyle models that design thinking can bring continues... [view twitterfall]

Bruce Nussbaum - Designomics

In his "initimate dialogue with 1000 people" Bruce Nussbaum - academic, blogger, design evangelist and professor at the Parsons School of Design in New York - unpacked the personal journey of "how he became a design guru".

He loves the new term designomics, which describes design as a key economic driver, and cites two changes which will have a major influence in the near future - the first being the rise and fall of nations which sees the new BASIC acronym describing the entry of emerging markets Brazil, South Africa, India and China etc into the global playing field; the second being the new, transnational trans-cultural mindsets of Generation Y.

He questions how one can market to 40 000 villages in India, when there are 40 000 new "villages" on the internet, predicting that the end of English as the dominant language in the web will cause the most dramatic cultural shifts, and ends on a high note:

design is always optimistic because its whole purpose is to make the new

Pecha Kucha

Design Indaba sponsored six top design students from around the globe to participate in a Pecha Kucha style presentation format, allowing each to show 20 images of their work in 20 seconds. The results were humbling and, although all presentations were amazing in their maturity scope and mastery one, stands out:

Thomas Thwaites
Masters in Design Interactions - Royal College Of Art - London

Inspired by the Douglas Adams quote from Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, "Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich...", Thomas takes on the task to build a toaster, a hilarious comedy in which he uncovers that the cheapest toaster comprises 100 materials and 450 component parts and decides to rebuild a simpler one - using crushed iron ore rocks brought home in a suitcase from a disused Welsh iron mine, mixing his own plastic polymer and shaping the casing on moulds roughly carved out of tree stumps.

Hot off the keyboard news is that I overheard trends forecaster Li Edelkoort ask him if she could borrow the toaster for two months for an Issey Miyake exhibition. It's in Lancaster at the moment, he replied, but it would be no problem. Say hullo to one of the world's soon to be most famous appliances at www.thetoasterproject.org.

Piyush Pandey - minister of fun at O&M Advertising, Mumbai

The first Asian ever to be president of a Cannes jury called designers "brave because they are always exploring uncharted waters".

His approach to cracking advertising concepts is via the Indian Mythology of nine basic human emotions or Navrassas. In a country of 1 billion people, 30 languages, 33 000 dialects and 3.3million assorted gods and goddesses, the only way you can make a singular message is by talking to the human emotions - often with very few words.

The results? Some of the funniest, most entertaining and cinematographically pleasing ads you've ever seen - bringing real emotion to ads for Fevicol adhesives, Mentos, India vs Pakistan cricket tests, Vodaphone and even Life Insurance.

Stefan G Bucher - "Flush left is like a warm bath"

Up there with legendary Design Indaba comic presentations of yore - such as Ze Frank, who incidentally wrote the forward to his book 100 days of Monsters, with the chiselled features of a shop mannequin and a slightly manic Germanic demeanour, Bucher peppers his presentation with insider typographic jokes such as "Flush left is like a warm bath", "the client wanted the title bigger, so I gave them Stymie with a 3D drop shadow", "Dude, I don't use Trixie for anybody " and "Who says no to the logo for a time travel store?!", generating massive applause and value for the Indaba dollar.

In rare moments of seriousness, he describes the designer's "job description" - "to take what's in your head and get on with it in the real world" and to find what will allow you to bring the "utmost energy and fun" to what you do. His pinstriped, platform-shod monsters are the fruits of his own advice.

When someone says design doesn't serve a purpose, we might remind them that we don't go to museums to look at Sumerian accounting packages [although it struck me after that one might argue that's exactly what clay tablets were] but to find out what it meant to be human at that point in history. Design is what endures.

The Bouroullec Brother - Ronan without Erwan, who'd just become a father

This is the presentation that got me sketching. More or less the first presentation of the type of Euro-chair-and-vase parade that usually divides Design indaba audiences - I fall into the camp that can happily sit through any amount of furniture prototyping presentations and these, especially the highlight of the Vegetal, did not disappoint.

Just loving their Vitra office systems - playing with spaces within space, sectioning and screening, with plastic cages, textile walls and cardboard islands that office workers do not even realise are the things for which their souls long.

Ronan's design advice: to "have a lot of doubt" as a means to avoid becoming too satisfied with what you have done. For more, go to www.bouroullec.com.

Tord Boontje - "Embroidery is an act of vandalism against modernism"

I must admit, I am a huge Tord fan; I believe I might even have been one of the first people in ZA to own a garland light.

Tord is the perfect DIY guy, the kind you don't want to get caught in a global recession without: he makes his own furniture, knits, weaves, embroiders, recycles, makes clothes out of grass and collaborates with craftspeople from emerging economies such as Colombia, Gautamala, Brazil and Senegal to produce the most exquisite woven garden furniture, homely foliage-embossed clay pots and flowers strewn lounging rugs.

Of all he is probably best known for bringing light - his garlands, icarus, blossom and crystal, ice branch, shadow and black chandeliers enchant. Besides running a commercially successful design practice, this year see him take up the prestigious position as Professor of Design Products at his Alma mater the Royal College of Art.