It’s R7 450 for a Design Indaba 2014 ticket. For a freelancing individual, that’s so laughable that I recall telling the ticket seller I would rather fly to another African country, buy a terrapin, call it Ninja (Ninja turtle, get it?), drink a milkshake and fly back. But, not keen to miss out on the sexiness of Stefan Sagmeister, I opted for the simulcast at UJ to bring you the best and worst that Mr Design Indaba - Ravi Naidoo himself – has to offer. Welcome to three straight days of Design Indaba 2014 from the cheap seats.

Day 1

Memorable Moments

• Experimental Jetset, of Helvetica The Movie fame, taking a modernist Dutch approach to time constraints by alphabetizing their influences and having a timer on each slide.
• Jake Barton’s ridiculously rad interface design for the Gallery One of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
• The unveiling of Thomas Heatherwick’s design for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town.

Moments of Sadness

The Cape Town architect yeti student guy, Stefan van Biljon, actually hurt me with irrelevancy and boredom. No one actually gives a fuck about your 7th slide about the Dutch farm migrations. Not. A. Single. Fuck.

Best Quotes

“Advertising is mostly ugly.” - Chris Gotz

“This is the aerodynamic baby.” – Agatha Haines

“What interests me is not the representation of reality but the reality of representation.” – Jean Luc Goddard

Things To Check Out

• Ushahidi is an incident report service and open source software that uses citizen participation.
• Tom Hulme’s OpenIdeo.com project that crowd sources practical solutions to human rights problems.
• PhoneBloks went pretty viral last year so it was pretty sweet to see Dave Hakkens chat about his very rad idea.
• Joy Mckinney’s creepy touchy project, Touch Me, where she touches people on the face without asking them.
• Everything that Thomas Heatherwick has done. Ever. From The Garden Bridge, the Seed Cathedral to the Olympic Torch. Real tearz.

Video of the Day

Experimental Jetset introducing us to Brazilian late 60′s art movement called Tropicalia. Life changer and much of joy.

Number of Times The Signal Fucked Out

34 (including projector fault and 6.5 minutes of blue screen)

Day 2

 

Memorable Moments

• On a bit of a meh day, the most definitive highlight was Marcello Serpa’s talk. I’m not big on advertising but damnation, that guy is super clever and has some incredible insights into life and creativity. Mostly because Brazilians are awesome and he helped give the world Havianas.
• Oh, and I did enjoy that the Mexican architect, Michel Rojkind, built buildings using roadside car mechanics as contractors? Yes! We should totally get on that shit.

Moments of Sadness

• Athi-Patra Ruga’s ramblings of his fictional land/concept of “Azania” not only made him lose his audience but he sounded like a hardcore art wanker.
• Every time Clive Wilkinson hacked and coughed through his entire speech and no one offered him water.
• When Lauren Beukes showed a picture of Braamfontein and said it was Hillbrow. In general, her over-the-top speech with her naff box (that was a little too reminiscent of J.J Abrams’ TED talk) was so overly dramatic that it actual gave me inner rage. Although mad respect to the actress reenacting a freedom trial testimony, you were the only shining girl.

Best Quotes

“Complicated seems clever to stupid people.” – Dave Trott

“Never work under someone who is not better than you.” - Marcello Serpa

“I want to see the mother and the mother and the baby fighting germs in the household.” – A woman in Zanele Muholi’s film commenting on the need for LGBTI relationships in adverts

Things To Check Out

• Athi-Patra’s tapestries – not that he showed any work while he was rambling.
• DJ Stout’s (Texan guy not a zef Afrikaans DJ) incredible book about Cowboy Poets. Want.
• Scholten & Baijings‘ fucking incredible use of color and their minimal Mini with loads of holes in the body (which would be super unhelpful in this rainy weather we’ve been having.)

Video of the Day

Serpa’s clever use of everyday situations always gets my thumbs up.

Number of Times The Signal Fucked Out

28 (I’m not being melodramatic, I actually counted everyday).

Day 3

Memorable Moments

• The empathy and cheekiness of David Goldblatt was without a doubt the best part of the entire Indaba. It was a beautiful talk that radiated pure humanity. I feel blessed to have “seen” him.
• Everything Sagmeister had to say. Type and creativity on – as Kanye would say – a whole ‘nother level, bitch.

Moments of Sadness

• Dean Poole is an incredibly adept wordsmith and intelligent designer whose work is nothing short of amazing. However, he seems to know exactly how clever he is and thus spends huge chunks of time providing examples of his cleverness. We get how clever you are, seriously we do, but to do the same joke with the same execution for more than 12 minutes of your speech is super unnecessary.

Best Quotes

 “I’m not going to stand up and talk because I really need to pee.” – Henrik Vibskov

“You may laugh…” – Naoto Fukasawa

“I always felt safe ’cause Mandela had my back.” – Jody Brand

“Uselessness is gorgeous.” – Stefan Sagmeister

“Design is what we were doing to understand what design is.” – Rosario Hurtado (El Ultimo Grito)

Things To Check Out

• Henrik Vibskov builds entire worlds to surround his clothing collections each season with results that are as imaginative as they are strange.
• All the kids that spoke on behalf of the 89Plus were great. They were by far the best local speakers of the week (not that there was a lot of competition up until that point).
• El Ultimo Grito’s incredible creature-like sticker installations prove that when simple materials are used in an extraordinary way you can make objects come to life.
• Spend some serious quality time looking at as many Goldblatt photos as possible.
• Everything that Sagmeister has done. I don’t care that I sound like a bit of a fangirl. It’s totally justified. Trust me.

Video of the Day

Just listen to him and be happy.

Number of Times The Signal Fucked Out

44 (including two major signal blackouts; one in the middle of a sing-a-long with Sagmeister, goddamnit!)

 

I’m not sure that the Design Indaba made the most of Cape Town’s Design Capital status, nor have I ever been to an event with such a seesaw of awe inspiring and mediocre moments. I can honestly say that there were speakers that genuinely changed the way I will approach my creative practice, followed up by speakers that made me want to stab myself in the face out of boredom. Most of these stabbing pains were due to (amazing) creatives literally being lost in translation – which is no fault of their own. The Indaba knew their English was broken at best when they booked them, surely a simple Skype conversation beforehand would elude to the fact that they are incredibly hard to listen to.

Luckily for them (and myself) the high notes were high enough to make me feel like I got my money’s worth, but still not enough to convince me to part with R7450 or join an ad agency. So expect to find me, once again, in the cheap seats next year, waiting for the signal to stop fucking out, holding a terrapin and a milkshake.