Making use of the intermittent wifi on the train back to Glasgow, and in order to avoid this becoming one of those jobs that gets left and left until its so out of date it’s obsolete, thought i’d try to sum up the Critical Tension conference with a single sentence (containing perhaps a thought, an idea, a hyperlink, or some wild conjecture*), per speaker. There will be lengthier reviews and discussions else where on the web, notably the Eye blog. If anyone wants to ask anything about anything, would be only too happy to chat further.
Day 1:
Jonathan Barnbrook
The critical role of typefaces
Typefaces should reflect the tools used to make them, and can embody meaning through their form(s).
Tom Farrand
Are you Good for Nothing?
Tom set up Good for Nothing, and thinks we should be making stuff, not breaking stuff.
Phil Baines
Thinking and making happen in the same place
Illuminating talk on recent tensions at CSM, the relocation of the print workshop, and parallels in the arts and crafts movement, with interesting references from W R Lethaby. (Image below)
Paul Rennie
‘Britain can make it’ (1947) – signposts to the future
Looking back to look forward, what do the great exhibitions and investments of the post war years tell us about the relative roles of design and architecture in Britain, in the 50′s and now, and how Britain presented itself to the rest of the world. (Image below)
Alan Kitching
The Wrington Suite: the show must go on
Warm and humorous talk, reaffirming the role and integrity of making in any type of design practise, with some good jokes, but I can’t remember any of them.
Gerry Leonidas
The emergence of meta-typography
An interesting rangy talk on a number of forward-looking subjects, from micro-payments to the ongoing appreciation of objects, to how we think about and teach typography at art school. (Image below)
Timo Arnall (BERG)
Unfortunately couldn’t make it.
Plenary
moderated by Emily King
There were questions.
Day 2
Vaughan Oliver
Visual Pressures (30 years in 60 minutes)
Informal and informative in equal measure, Vaughan Oliver reviewed the work of his studio and collaborators, which threw up some interesting questions about whether concerns in design today might be considerably more retro / introspective than they were 20 years ago. (Image below)
Derek Yates
Camberwell
An overview of the formative years of a new foundation degree at Camberwell and how this course interacts with ‘industry’.
Lucienne Roberts and Rebecca Wright
GraphicDesign&: Inward / Outward
A talk about creating projects that were united by being about graphic design and another subject, I wondered if this might be a bit laboured (in the sense that isn’t all, or most, graphic design about something other than the subject itself), though the presentation was good, and we found out about the Bliss classification system.
12.30–1.00
Zoë Bather
Studio8
Detailed overview of the design work of Studio8
Educational plenary
moderated by Phil Baines
There were more questions.
Marina Willer and Ije Nwokorie
Wolff Olins
Problematic presentation on the new modus operandi of one of Britain’s most prominent design/brand agencies, which seemed to embody many of the contradictions and problems at the heart of brand and identity design today, i.e: ‘staff are expected to do stuff and then ask forgiveness if it goes wrong, rather than ask permission’ — that kind of thing.
Amelia Gregory
Bringing a magazine to life: tales from the frontline of print and online production
Quickfire presentation from the founder of Amelia’s Magazine, on the role of social media in creating and sustaining a printed publication.
Steven Watson
Is anybody there? The importance of authorship in independent magazines
A jaunty overview of the work of Stack (and partially the Church of London too, who produce Think Quarterly, the highly specced Google journal), and an insight into making a magazine in 48 hours.
Plenary
moderated by Phil Baines
There were even more questions, plus the best question of the day, from Paul Finn; “Art Schools are becoming more like corporations, while corporations are becoming (or want to become) more like Art School. Discuss”
Pub.
That’s where we all went.
Thanks.
To all speakers, organisers, and St Bride’s itself.
* Apologies to anyone who feels misrepresented by this. Will happily receive amendments, and should point out that these are my opinions and might not be shared by others.
** Apologies for the awful pictures, except ***
*** Apologies to Eye for ‘borrowing’ their picture at the start of this article, by way of evidence.
Recent Comments