London Design Festival 24 Hour Challenge

This weekend I took part in the London Design Festival's Goldsmiths-spawned 24 hour Design Challenge, based in Deptford on the site of a new development beside the high street. Teams were originally allocated by discipline, but the thirty or so designers organically re-shuffled as new projects emerged. Interdisciplinarianism, eh?

It was an experiment to see what such an intensive experience could produce, with the aim of the exhibition being to showcase the pieces that emerge from it and also the process of designing itself. The site was open to visitors throughout, but a low level of awareness with the non-design industry public outside caused a number of us to seek out ways in which we could engage with the local community.


We were keen to avoid a behind-the-scenes 'designers doing some wacky shit then having an exclusive party that is an essentially intimidating environment for locals' and leaving having kept the neighbours up and a mess behind.

Our first task was to use £10 in the local (excellent, amazing and project-saving on several occasions) flea market to bring back objects that interested us and then create devices that helped tell their story. Ours was a beautiful, hand-written title deed to a field in Kent form 1853. Over a couple of thousand words were used to explicitly explain the extent of the estate, without any diagrams, maps, co-ordinates or tables of measurements. It was almost indecipherable.

We did however try to re-interpret it and visualise it in our own ways, which led us to our first design - a table which people from the local community and visitors to the exhibition could use to map the are in their own way. The docking station consisted of a compass made from a clock with the minute hand saying 'north'. This constantly changing north would give us a random sample and spread of the area, with participants heading in 100m (as they estimated) before recording what they could see, who they have spoken to there or are with, what they think of that place, what colours, textures they could see. These 'x' shaped pieces of paper would then be collated, computed and exhibited as a very human, abstract map of the area.


This initial design was a step in the right direction, but our group (installation) merged with product to see how we could develop something that asked less of the participants and offered more interaction and reward. What we came up with was two projects commencing around 10pm - 'Polenta Politics' - a sophisticated voting system involving a catapult, some issues on a board and some messy painted polenta balls and 'Deptford Cares' - some items made to help the community care for its public spaces and express what they like and dislike about them.

At the heart of these projects was the potential for a much larger project, should we choose to undertake it - how to engage a local community to communicate its feelings about where they live in innovative new ways and to provide the tools to co-design, improve and sustain public spaces. Hmmm.


Target practice gathers an audience in the wee hours...

the future of design education...

Computer Arts magazine invited me to a 'round table to discuss the future of UK design education', which can be found published in this month's edition. It drew an interesting and prominent crowd who were passionate about the state of education in the UK and offered some great insights into their experiences of design students, internships and also some shared their knowledge of being tutors at various universities.

The debate was interesting, but was not the heavier discussion into the future of design education I had expected, and the resultant article was so truncated, misquoted and condensed so as to offer little in the way of advice for the industry. It did however reveal some valuable lessons and things to bear in mind for students and recent graduates trying to establish their work, skills and thinking in the design industry.


Elspeth Belden wrote a similar article for Neoco, the studio she works at, commenting on the mis-quoting and even derogatory way she was represented. Myself, I just thought I was made to sound like a bit of a prat trying to sell out the UK's world-leading creative educational system to corporations. Eesh.

process not product!

This is a long term gripe of mine, finally given some air at a new project space in collaboration with Jo Harrington, Silke Eiselt and Roma Levin - we're designing a design manifeso to provoke future major design festivals. see ld-if.org for more...
Design is a process not a product. It unnerves me to see the Heat magazine style hype of the modern superstar designer. Not that I'm jealous. Or snobbish for that matter. I feel like the commercialisation of design and the mystification of the designer into a unfathomable abstract genius who performs such magic to be entirely detremental to what design and designers are capable of. It alienates it from people (all people) who have so much insight to offer about how their world can be improved. Frankly it fuels my fire.

A designer said; "It may be the designer's duty to suppress any desire for self-expression" and so I ask you; is it the duty of a designer to be a conduit for people's needs and to take responsibility to ensure you are not corrupted into compromising people's needs into desires imposed and persuaded to by your ego or other, larger influences?