Picks of the month: the best design events in May
Design events this month include a book on Isamu Noguchi and his creative relationship with Greece, design and tech festival All Flows, and a talk from Gail Anderson on four-decades in design.
Talk: Hard Work and Dumb Luck: 39 Years of Work and Play with Gail Anderson
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New York-based designer, educator and writer Gail Anderson will be giving a talk via Zoom for the St Bride Foundation on 3 May, from 7:00 – 8:30pm.
A self-professed “type-loving” designer who worked across book covers, magazine and poster for Broadway theatre, Anderson will talk about navigating a design career across multiple decades – and the various challenges and rewards that longevity in an industry entails.
Anderson is currently creative director at Visual Arts Press and chair of BFA Design and BFA Adveritising at the School of Visual Arts, while she has also been a senior art director at Rolling Stone, creative director of design at SPotCo and a designer at The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and Vintage Books.
Hard Work and Dumb Luck will take place on Zoom from 7-8:30pm on 3 May. For tickets and information visit the St Bride Foundation website.
Festival: All Flows, Milton Keynes, 11 & 12 May
All Flows is a new two-day creative, design and tech festival on 11 & 12 May – bookended by warm-up events and activities a day either side – that brings together speakers such as Eva Cremers, Territory Studio and Universal Everything.
Highlights include Stefanie Posavec discussing her playful and accessible design-led approaches to communicating data, and Jennifer Estaris of ustwo games will look at the social impact of games design. On a less serious note is Foxdog Studio’s live interactive comedy show, where audience members help to cook a meal – including firing a sausage from a cannon, for some reason – by controlling a robot on their phones.
Networking events and workshops, as well as a screening of Rams, Gary Hustwit’s documentary of Dieter Rams “and rumination on consumerism, sustainability and the future of design”.
All Flows is at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes on 11 & 12 May, with additional events on 10 & 13 May. For more information visit allflows.live
Festival: London Craft Week, 8 – 14 May
From 8-14 May, the London Craft Week festival will bring together more than 750 established and emerging makers, designers, brands and galleries. Located across London, its outlook is solidly global, spotlighting crafts from different countries – Argentinian craft through the Contemporary Huts showcase, or Constructing Space, which looks at Danish craft and design.
The mix of displays, talks and events all look to celebrate the diverse histories and heritage of craft techniques passed down over the years – but always at risk, as highlighted by the Heritage List’s talk discussing a “red list” of crafts facing extinction. Workshops throughout the week invite visitors to try their hand at particular crafts too – including at sustainable perfume-making, gilding, or a biomaterials workshop with Mills Fabrica. Among the talks is an opportunity to hear from the Royal Mint’s chief engraver Gordon Summers.
London Craft Week takes place from 8 – 14 May in 200 venues across the city. For more information, visit the website.
Book Fair: Offprint London
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The seventh edition of Offprint London returns to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall from 12-14 May.
Set up by the LUMA Foundation, the Zurich-founded non-profit also responsible for the LUMA Arles gallery in France, Offprint focuses on independent experimental and socially engaged publishers in the fields of art, architecture, design, humanities and visual culture.
Exhibitors include Antenne Books, Artists’ Books Cooperative, Ciao Press, Iniva, It’s Freezing in LA!, Onamatopee, Sun New York, Worms and many more.
OffPrint London is at Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, Bankside, London SE1 9TG from 12-14 May 2023. For more information visit the website.
Conference: DesignThinkers Vancouver, 30 & 31 May, (also online)
The 24th edition of Canada’s largest graphic design conference will take place in Vancouver and online on 30-31 May. Run by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD), invited speakers for this year include Tom Hingston of Hingston Studio; author, educator and Design Matters podcast host Debbie Millman; type design studio Dalton Maag creative director Eleni Beveratou, and Cey Adams co-founder of Def Jam Records in-house design department.
Under the theme, Question Tomorrow, conference speakers will look to explore how design is changing, and how designers can continue to adapt. Discussion topics will include the democratisation of design tools, evolving technologies, AI-generated content, and the views of the next generation of designers.
In-person and online tickets are available, and talks will also be recorded to account for time differences.
DesignThinkers takes place on 30 and 31 May 2023 at Vancouver Playhouse and online. For tickets and further information, visit the website.
Book: Noguchi and Greece by Objects of Common Interest
Noguchi and Greece, Greece and Noguchi is a collaborative publication looking at an extensive legacy of Greece-centred works by American-Japanese designer Isamu Noguchi.
Noguchi was inspired by Greek art, design and material culture and creative community – and visited the country regularly over the decades. Picking up on this relationship, the new book is a visual essay composed of letters, photographs, sketches and Noguchi’s own words. New essays meanwhile explore Noguchi’s interdisciplinary collaborations with individuals such as choreographer Martha Graham, and architect Buckminster Fuller.
As an extension of a research and exhibition project initiated with the Noguchi Museum in New York, New York- and Athens-based design studio Objects of Common Interest (OoCI) has responded with texts and new artworks throughout the publication.
Co-published by Atelier Editions and D.A.P. the publication has been designed as a two-volume box set.
Noguchi and Greece, Greece and Noguchi will be published on 9 May 2023 and can be preordered from Atelier Editions.
Festival: Clerkenwell Design Week, London, 23-25 May
Located in an area of London known for design studios and showrooms, Clerkenwell Design Week will open studio doors, showcase new designs and collaborations and host a talk series, Conversations at Clerkenwell throughout the three-day event.
Among the speakers are Morag Myerscough, on her festival installation and wider practice of using community collaboration – and a lot of colour – to transform public space, and Yuri Suzuki on working with sound across installation, interaction and product design.
Product focuses include Yinka Illori’s debut tile collection with Domus; Sebastian Cox’s first lounge chair; Greece-based Keramik’s sustainable clay and 3D printed designs; and Brionvega’s display of the Castiglioni brothers Radiofonografo – a combined radio and record player. Less visible, but still full of impressive tech, is Amina’s carbon fibre “invisible” loudspeaker.
The Next Gen section includes student projects from the London Metropolitan School of Art, Architecture and Design and Scale Rule’s showcase of design work from young Londoners.
Clerkenwell Design Week takes place from 23-25 May in various locations across Clerkenwell, London. For more information visit the website.
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