Curly hair and Tashes.

The Liverpool Design Symposium 2008? Why the hell not!

Working on the edges of the design industry affords us the luxury of getting to occasionally speed away from the office a few hours early and hit up cool events like these, the last one being a talk by Adrian Shaughnessy in Newcastle organised by the Design Event bods.

I was hoping we could get across in time for a talk by a chap called Dalton Maag, a Massive typography geek who works in London selling fonts to people, but this talk was sold out, so looked like we were all about the Everything...

Universal Everything that is! The main talker of the event [as selected by D+AD President Garrick Hamm] was Matt Pyke of aforementioned agency..but i'm getting ahead of myself - first the beers!

We went across early to see if we could blag into any earlier talks and struck lucky with a short film showing a selection of this years D+AD winners followed by a Q+A session with one of the judges, but as this was a good 30 minutes away the boss treated myself + Msr. Parkinson to a sly shandy at a nearby public house - Doctor Duncan's! When in the'pool you could do a lot worse than drink here, 2 thumbs up from the Character Creative alco's.

The events were all being held in possibly the grandest room I've occupied in my life - the auditorium was circled with about twenty 8-foot statues of writhing women against pillars, the ceiling dominated by a fantastic chandelier and gold gilding across the entirety of the intricate hall decor.
After a quick introduction by one of the event organisers and D+AD judge Stuart Price [of the Manchester agency Thoughtful..pretty certain that was his name] we were away - D+AD 2008 Winners Showcase.
I remember when i was a kid my Mum telling me about an early date with my Dad where he took her to see All Creatures Great + Small in the cinema. She'd been a big fan of the books growing up, and found herself laughing at all of the funny scenes before they got funny for the sake of remembering them from the books..this was me! In particular, these three :

Touch - TBWA


Wind - Nordpol + Hamburg


Viral Train - DDB Oslo


From what I'd not seen before [sorry, another advert!] this was another cool one..kinda rips on Honda's classic Cog advert, but wtf, it works!

Effortless - WCRS


and if you don't smile uncontrollably at the end of this one, then i'm sorry, you're not human!!

Tan Hong Ming - Leo Burnett


The showing started a tad late, so we ducked out during the Q+A to ensure foods were got before Pykes headline act!

Pizza and Peroni later we were back in The Land That Economic Downturn Forgot aka gold-gilded grand hall, and after a brief intro we were being gently guided around Matt Pykes version of reality. Unassuming and modest, young designers could do a lot worse than take heed of his approach and attitude. Although the subject of ethics in design wasn't really touched upon, I got the strong impression that it's a very definite central tenant of his work.

In bringing us up-to-date with what he's got going on at the moment, we first of all went way back to his early college-level artistic endeavours of water-colours and non-Mac technical drawing. Though seemingly incidental in their inclusion, his early understandings of form in design were tied to these and as such it gave a nice insight into the origins of a Designer.
Cutting to the chase [wow, long blog or what?!], after education, some freelance work and an 8 year stint at Designers Republic in Sheffield [loved the story of how he got this job!] he now works from his home, or more accurately a "shed" at the bottom of his garden.
With incredible briefs secured, he then outsources to freelancers across the world to give light to his concepts.
OK, this is most likely over-simplifying his method, but that's the crux. Brilliant!
You've got a website project and an amazing idea for some crazy spiralling and morphing 3D jet of liquid that just Needs to be involved somehow, but you just don't have the rendering skillz. Well then, hire the best 3D guy you can find for the project and Lets Do This!
And that's how he rolls.
After a selection of projects Universal Everything have done in the past and a look at their ADHD-esque website we were treated to a first viewing of a music video he'd directed - directed from his shed in Sheffield via the wonder of the internets whilst the action played out in LA!
I told you that's how he rolls!
I could gush more, an amazingly simple concept for a digital arts festival featuring 20,000 unique creatures on postcards [Love Bytes], contorting the Olympics 2012 concept into something akin to cool [sorry, still traumatised by its initial introduction!], the wind-tunnel + colour explosion of an Audi viral, but think maybe i can cut it short here.

We left the place on a really inspired high and the drive back to Leeds was filled with excited debate between the 3 of us, dissecting each others thoughts and ideals on design practice and the industry.
From the tale-end that we caught, an amazing event, though a shame we weren't able to check out the earlier happenings.
We'll most definitely be back next year, which is already being hyped to shadow this years, and you never know, Character may just throw our hat into the Events arena again after the fun we had with Stopping The Buck - watch this space!