- July 02, 2011
Iaminawe started the year off with a high profile stage design for the 10th Design Indaba conference held in Cape Town. The theme for the conference was “What does an idea look like?” and the very cool identity and advertising campaign was based around the motif of an empty thought bubble.
During the 2 days it took to set up and light the set, we timelapsed the process.
The stage design was commissioned by Interactive Africa and as it was a particularly interesting job, I thought we would share the process we went through. The timeframe was about 3 weeks from approval of the design to the launch of the conference so the concept needed to be simple enough to execute in such short time yet still create a memorable visual environment to frame the array of design supergurus that would be speaking at the event.
Design Indaba won the EIBTM Best Conference in the World award in 2005 and with this years event marking the 10th anniversary of the conference, Ravi and his team were looking to make it a special one. Wicked Pixels created some beautiful motion graphics that played out on the matrix of LCD monitors and projected screen and the overall effect was awesome.
Over the duration of the 3 day conference, it was an absolute honour to hear some of these visionary minds speaking passionately about design as a solution to many of the pressing issues the world is faced with today.
Particularly memorable was seeing graphic design legend Milton Glaser give his talk via live video conference floating amongst the clouds on stage. What an inspiring and humble guy and his theory that “drawing is thinking and it is our greatest instrument” was proven as he paged through his latest book of artwork exploring the theme of “ambiguity”.
With an outstanding line-up of quality speakers, the indaba was a curious mixture of passionate, intelligent, witty, creative and compassionate commentary on a wide manner of topics ranging from open source architecture, to mobile fabrication labs, to 3D motion capture furniture design, to worldchanging manuals and graffiti inspired bathrooms.
The list of speakers was a long (and respected) one and there has been some great followup articles written over at Pingmag.jp, Dezeen and an excellent local perspective over at the Liquid Fridge and Cherryflava. They have done an awesome job of mentioning the highlights of the conference and providing all the relevant link love so please visit them for more on the conference.
