I recently spent three days inside Melbourne’s Hamer Hall attending this years AGideas conference, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest design conference. This was my first time attending AGideas (I kept meaning to go in previous years, but either forgot or missed the registration). It was certainly a unique experience. Prior to the conference I was initially planning on doing a ‘live’ coverage of the conference via twitter and on Design Droplets. However this did not work out due to some technical difficulties (a dead iPhone included). And AGideas were not particularly responsive to my requests for some form of media pass (since they have several large media sponsors such as IdN and (inside) – Australian Design Review). Other professional commitments around the conference (in the evening and early mornings) also made it difficult to have time to transfer thoughts on the conference from my diary to Design Droplets. Thus I have decided that the best way to share my AGideas experience and thoughts is through this review style article.
This article is part one of a three part series. Read Part Two | Read Part Three.
Photos by Ben Landau (The Design Droplets Photographer)
The AGideas conference was held over three days and the majority of it was spent inside Hamer Hall listening to a wide range of speakers, all of varying talent in both speaking skills and professional ability. The speakers included design industry greats such as Stefan Sagmeister and Harry Pearce, as well as little known/local professionals and non-designers such as Campbell Milligan and Adrian Paterson.
So to kick off this review I think the best place to start is with a short history lesson. AGideas was initially conceived by the conference’s chairman Ken Cato (Cato Purnell Partners) and the first was held in 1991. Cato convinced fellow members of Alliance Graphique Internationale to back his idea for an annual international design conference in Melbourne, Australia. While AGideas pitches itself as a broadly focused design conference it is still at its very core graphic design oriented and it is highly geared to students as oppose to professional designers (The high pitched screams of “groupie” students at the conference are still ringing in my head). While the conference does have a strong student focus it does cater in some form to professionals by hosting masters classes and a business breakfast on the second day of the conference.
I originally booked my tickets to AGideas just prior to the closing date for the early bird special and even then it must have been pretty booked out. A few days later it was completely booked out. Apparently this years conference was the first one to completely sell out prior to the event and around 2000 people attended. Throughout the conference I constantly overheard people saying how well organized the conference is, personally I do not think it is that well organized. Overall organization was good but attention to detail was poor. One example occurred when I ordered my tickets. I ordered online and chose to collect my tickets from the venue. However the day of the conference comes along and apart from a message saying I have paid for my tickets there is no indication of the when or where I need to go to collect my tickets on the day. The only reason I know what time it starts and the overall schedule is because a friend who is attending gets a piece of paper with a basic timetable of the conference floating across his desk while working at the Melbourne Museum! I rock up and there is no clear directions or prominent signage on how to collect tickets, eventually someone sets up a table (about 5 minutes before the first speaker is supposed to start) where they hand out tickets to people like me who specified collection on the day.
The conference theme for this year was ‘Design is Difference’.
AGideas Day One
The opening speaker for the conference was Stefan Sagmeister. I didn’t think much of Stefan’s talk as the majority of it was the same as his previous talks, including the ones done for TED. One of which you can view here. This is a little disappointing as everyone at the conference has forked out money to see a talk that is freely avaliable online. However for those unable to attend the conference it is fantastic as you didn’t have to shell out money to see it. Stefan’s presentation was lacking energy and any enthusiasm for his profession. Apparently he is now living in Indonesia somewhere.
Shannon Bennett is a restaurateur from Melbourne who runs the amazing French Restaurant Vue De Monde. His talk revolved around his restaurant and the many aspects of design that are contained within the creation of a unique dining experience. It was an interesting talk, that made many people in the auditorium hungry. Many of the cooking methods he shared with us were amazing and there must have been at least half the audience with jaws hanging in amazement at some of his more inetresting methods including the use of liquid nitrogen to create various dishes and a plasma storage fridge to create JUS AU VERJUS (Liquid verjus at – 8°C) which is poured in front of you. Basically a liquid comes out of the bottle and turns to ice as it hits the glass.
Alexia Sinclair is a digital artist who creates absolutely amazing imagery utilizing digital montage and collage. Her images were inspiring, her talk was not really that amazing.
Jill Billcock is an Australian film editor who has edited movies such as The Road to Perdition and Moulin Rouge. She spoke at length on the various types of cuts editors can utilise in films, using much of her own work and some of others as examples. A lot of film examples in the presentation. She was a very monotone speaker who needs to inject some energy into her presentations style.
Detective Sargent Adrian Paterson (Retired) of the Victorian Police gave an extremely interesting talk on utilizing computers to identify offenders. Adrian Paterson was responsible for bringing computers and computer graphics into the process of offender identification in Australia. He gave an excellent talk on the history of criminal identification techniques, from hand sketching right through to modern methods of criminal identification and crime scene reconstruction utilizing digital sketching, 3D modeling and rendering techniques.
Katie Cullinty is a principal at Landscape Architecture firm Taylor Cullinty Lethlean. Taylor Cullinty Lethlean’s work focuses on the Australian landscape and contemporary Australian culture. Her talk revolved around a recent project of theirs, the Australian Garden. A great quote from her talk was “food is important when collaborating in design”.
Étienne Mineur is a founder of incandescence, a french interface design and graphics studio. Despite his heavy french accent it was a great talk. He has worked on eight Issey Miyake websites and is currently developing interactive books that incorporate electronic sensors. A hilarious example was the book where you needed to blow into a sensor that detected alcohol on your breath. Thus you needed to be drunk to read the book. Another was a book that was printed utilizing a special ink that disappeared after exposure to light, so you only have 20 minutes to read the book before it is gone forever.
John Marsden is an award winning Australian writer who wrote the amazing tomorrow series. His talk focused on language, how it conveys status and the journey of knowledge. I grew up not far from where John currently lives and such I have met him briefly on several occasions and thus was heavily steeped in the ‘politics’ of John setting up his own school, Candlebark, (he is originally a teacher) in the area. Which led me to have very particular views on John prior to his talk. However I think John’s talk was one of the more accessible for students as it was filled with stories which most could easily relate to, he also stuck firmly to his philosophy that “every sentence needs to have energy and entertainment value”.
Michael Weldon is an Australian Illustrator who resides in Melbourne with his wife and cat. He has worked for publications such as Time, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. In his talk he discussed his work, ‘The Brief’ and his creative process. A great piece of advice from his talk - “don’t start a job without a good brief”. I thought his work was pretty amazing and thourghly enjoyed his talk.
Chris Bosse was part of the team that designed the Water Cube in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. He works for an architecture laboratory called LAVA who have three offices, across three time zones. The core idea being that their lab could work ‘24 hours’ so work would get done while people slept. However according to Chris this has led to each person in the team working across all three time zones instead of only in their own. He also spoke about how LAVA extensively utilises mathematics and CAD in their work to create complex structures that could once never have been produced using traditional methodologies of Architecture and construction.
Michael Persson is currently the Director of Global Marketing Communications for Volvo Cars and is a Scandinavian branding guru. He is your quintessential swede, who is very patriotic and in love with Sweden. He spoke about crafting three Swedish brands – Volvo, Absolut Vodka and SAS. Initially I though his talk would be interesting, but after about the 10th sentence I got sick of hearing about Sweden. He pretty much distilled all three brands competitive advantage down to the fact that they were Swedish, which is clearly so, but I don’t think it is necessarily THE reason they are so successful. However he did make some excellent points about building design platforms on top of brand values. Which allows brands to transition their design through time periods. A great little branding tool he shared was Brand DNA. D for Do, N for Not and A for Abandon. Basically meaning when doing anything with your brand you should not abandon its core values.
Dave Warren is an Australian yacht designer who began his career in boat design and building as an apprentice in the UK. His yacht design and building business Dave Warren Australia was sold in 2003 to the Shipworks Group. He is still the Master Builder for Dave Warren Australia. The companies ship yard is located in Brisbane. Dave was the speaker that I was most looking forward to at the conference (I have a strong interest in Yacht Design) and unfortunately the biggest disappointment. I had hoped that he would give some decent insight into the industry and the way it worked as well as ways into the industry. But his talk was boring, sloppy and all over the place. I was very disheartened. His boats however are amazing and beautiful.
Bart Willoughby, an Indigenous Australian musician was to be the closing act but performed early. He is an interesting and unique one man.
The last speaker of the day (Garson Yu) I unfortunately missed (although I was told he wasn’t particularly good – a lot of ums, over 97 is three minutes apparently), as I headed off to Charlwood Design (a Melbourne Industrial Design studio) for the AGideas studio access. AGideas studio access is a great idea that they have for the conference where you can head off to one of several studios around Melbourne to check out who they are and what they do. The evening was interesting, although for me was not so informative as I already knew about the studio and as a professional knew of the processes and techniques they use. I would have chosen another studio to visit but most were booked out when I purchased my tickets.
This article is part one of a three part series. Read Part Two | Read Part Three.
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