Portfolio Evening at Thinkpublic

Last Wednesday I was invited along with 10 other young designers at various stages of there career, from recent grads, one year out people (like myself) to current students. It was a chance to present our work to each other, and also to Thinkpublic's design team (Alice Osborne and Ella Britton) and get each others insights into each of our projects and out design processes. It was interesting as it was also varied, with a healthy mix of graphic designers, fine arts, product and finally a couple of interaction designers, one of which is about to embark on a masters in Copenhagen.

The afternoon itself was organised first as a round table Pecha Kucha presentation. We where given the template the Friday before to fill out, 12 slides (not 20!) to present our work. I was trying hard to think what I would present, and in the end went through my final year RCA projects, though it is perhaps the last time I will present them all in isolation (trying to get new work up to showingness readiness). The event was a bit chaotic as they did not leave a gap between presenters so it was guessing when your work would be shown and running around the table (which in truth added to the fun!).

After which we broke into smaller groups to discuss our projects amongst ourselves and with a couple of the ThinkPublic designers. It was interesting discussing my Data Relationships projects (and slightly later and in less detail, Blog Bot Platform, and its expansion as City Sense/Perceptive Cities). I think though that even though it is a very heavy conceptual project, I still came of as 'its too complicated' and I need to focus first of all on explaining the core functions before moving on to the conceptual layers (both the time device and the satellite scanner suffer from this, there workings are simple, establish your micro-local time zone and listen into satellites data streams. The larger concept is linking this to the abstract forms of data and the links between the data enthusiast and data lost). Interesting too was discussing possible expansions, resurrecting the knowledge engine to allow the rest of us access to the enthusiasts secret knowledge, although I was told to keep a laymans point of view. Maybe this is something to discuss with Helen Hamylen Centre in future as before in developing the original project.

Other interesting projects too (too many to mention, just a few struck as interesting to me). Stephanie Andrews Book for dyslexia, which highlights interesting design patterns within the book to make the reader feel dyslexic. This includes altered coloured text and ripped words, making the reader think. Also liked Bio Clinical, felt a (almost) DI project, it involved selling tape worms complete in chic style packaging as a sliming aid. There was also a nice project regarding use of mobile and appropriate technology in Ghana, felt relevant to other projects and clients i'm working with. We spent a good afternoon discussing design with each other and exchanging ideas of where to go next and who to contact. Also a nice debate and discussion in the bar afterwards with Kate, Mayo and Trond. Very good evening all round and look forward to keeping in touch with all the designers I met.

Links to those who participated (to be added as I find them):-
Kate Burn
Mayo Nissen
Trond Andreas Klevgaard (he talked about snow).

Thank you to Thinkpublic for hosting and inviting us all.