Published May 5, 2009 by

AGIdeas 2009

As of today (and the next 2) I am at AGIdeas a mega design conference held in Melbourne annually.

I’ll keep it brief as I’m slightly exhausted as they really do pack in one keynote after the next and my brain is kinda fried. We started at 9:30 (very respectable) and ran over the 5:30 finish, I left the building around 6:30 a bit before the last guy finished.

Highlights are many, but I particularly enjoyed:

Stefan Sagmeister (and hey the guy is famous at my uni and okay, pretty much everywhere in the world of design) – he spoke on Design and Happiness which is interesting in relation to some of my own ideas, much of it was about how design factored into his experiences of happiness but not in a freaky commercial way.

Shannon Bennett a young innovative restaurateur based in Melbourne (see Vue De Monde), completely delightfully creative in his field

Alexia Sinclaire mostly for her work, digital art, it was pretty inspiring

Detective Sergent Adrian Patterson (Retired) who was the criminal identification bureau and has helped revolutionise the use of computer graphics in a very practical cop-sense. Great presenter, and bought a good perspective personally about thinking about design outside the usual sphere of ‘where you do design’

Etiene Mineur can’t help but love the French, but facinating stuff with graphic design and the web and some pretty amazing interactive stuff

John Marsden scares me that the writer was probably my favourite presenter, he talked about finding your voice and the value of status (also not in a freaky commerical way) but in the sense of adapting language to fit situations and characters. Loved it.

Also worth a note here is Chris Bosse who designed the Bejing Olympics swimming arena (that square thing that looks like it’s made of bubbles), Bart Willoughby who is an Aboriginal Aussie musician and Michael Pearson who talked about Swedish design.

I am very impressed… except for one who was pretty much a write off in any sense of the word useful (He was also remarkably boring).

And…

We get a sweet book to keep about all the presenters and various design stuff etc. Free lunch on two days (and yes it was good!) And hey 😛 I could win an Iphone.

Design Life Sustainable Technology Uni

AGIdeas design conference sagmeister

Published April 24, 2008 by

Focus, focus

From a bleary-eyed perspective, does someone want to tell me how to get motivated for a uni subject I really don’t like, because no one likes it and there isn’t really any of that class-mate bolster you up business happening? We’re simply groaning from week to week and feeling elated that our tutor is off to a Design Conference (Which they tell us to go to – but most of us can’t afford) next week and we don’t have to show.

I will go to AGIdeas next year. They plug it so much, it’s like the Prahran campus comes to this grinding halt. Tutors waste portions of class plugging the thing and they extend the early-bird price way out to get as many along as possible. Third year and possibly my final year probably deserves it.

I have this brilliant tutor who yesterday took it into her head to set a timed task for us. It was a fantastic way to use class time and get the little bludgy students working, also clever in a simulating a deadline, she makes me feel as if I’m earning my degree. We had an hour and fifteen minutes to set up this 20 page document (You didn’t have to fill all the pages) with this set text. So, establish your grids, create your stylesheets, proof read and what not. It was oddly exhilarating, except that I concentrated too hard on the computer screen and so got sore eyes (Does that sound pathetic?). Attack of the INTJ. Focus, focus. Forget reality, right now it’s the task and the rest fades into oblivion.

Why doesn’t that translate into this other class… I’d then be this gungho homework machine and have it completed!

…I finished with 10 mins to spare and was happy.

Design Uni

AGIdeas homework motivation