Hasta La Ideas

Skye’s early mock up of Paper Bliss.

“Not surprising, perhaps, for someone so visually orientated, I started with a visual representation of my idea. I gathered images from the net and from things I’d made over the year and plonked them all in a desktop folder called ‘Paper Book’. I then did a rather bad mock-up I now realise (though I am a designer in many senses of the word, I am no book designer!), scattering a myriad of images that took my fancy around square pages in INDESIGN, which I use despite not really knowing an awful lot about it, technically speaking!

I had this 20-odd page document printed onto lovely heavy-weight paper, spiral bound it and wrote an introduction and a few sample projects, plus a contents page. I pretty much made that up, as I wasn’t sure yet which projects would make the cut or not. The ideas I had for things to make were really rather a ‘wish list’…I’d find out if I could do them afterwards (I’m a cart-before-the-horse kind of person!).”

Next up: Crafter-noons and a suitcase full of paper

While you are waiting for your favourite postal person to deliver issue #13, we thought we would share recent work from one of our previous contributors. Skye Rogers shared stories of her life with paper in issue #12.

Skye has been an illustrator for a good part of her adult life. But the long apprenticeship to her career was her childhood passion: she has been drawing on, cutting up, stamping on and pasting bits of paper together since she was very young.  

Her book, Paper Bliss was released on April 1st.

The renowned graphic designer and captivating emcee sheds light on Cape Town’s Conference on Creativity

As a former speaker in both 2005 and 2010, renowned graphic designer and Pentagram partner Michael Bierut has also served as one of Design Indaba‘s masterful emcees for the past three years. Each day, wearing a shirt and tie matching his cheerful demeanor, he enthusiastically presents the impressive roster of speakers, adding valuable industry insight and witty commentary between presentations. With Cape Town named the World Design Capital for 2014, we checked in with Bierut to hear more about how the Conference On Creativity and the city itself have evolved over the years.

You’ve been a moderator for three years now, how did you initially get involved with Design Indaba?

I was invited several times to present at Design Indaba, but I was never able to go because it almost always conflicted with my daughter Martha’s birthday. Finally, I was able to go in 2005, but I did it as a quick in-and-out. This works for some conferences, but at Indaba, it’s a terrible idea. Everyone, including the speakers, should come early and leave late. Doing it any other way misses the point.

I stayed in touch with organizer Ravi Naidoo after my first visit and I was invited back to speak in 2010. On my second visit, he asked if I could also help out by serving as a co-emcee. I had fun, came early and stayed late, and he’s asked me to come back in the same role in the two years since.

How have you seen the conference grow since then?

Obviously, the attendance at both the conference and the expo have grown dramatically, with simulcast audiences joining in from Johannesburg, Durban, and elsewhere in Cape Town. More importantly it’s grown from being a design conference for insiders to being a galvanizing event for Cape Town and for South Aftrica that’s all about the power of creativity and design.

What are some key moments or speakers that have stood out over the years?

I remember Dieter Rams at the conference in 2005 preaching his less is more aesthetic with precision and passion. Two years ago, I was knocked out by architect Alejandro Aravena: his is the only presentation I’ve ever seen where 15 seconds in I started frantically transcribing what was on every single slide. Last year, Francis Kere from Burkina Faso brought the house down with a presentation that showed how socially responsible practice could support great, beautiful design.

Every year, some of the best presentations are from students. Cape Town fashion designer Laduma Ngxokolo did a line of clothing inspired by African patterns that I still desperately want in my closet. And RCA industrial design student Thomas Thwaites showed a project where he made a toaster by hand from raw materials he found himself. The story was so sharp and funny that I asked for a copy of his thesis presentation and gave it to Kevin Lippert at Princeton Architectural Press. He published it last year, and a month or so ago, Thomas was promoting it on the Colbert Report! It all starts at Design Indaba.

I always come away feeling uniquely inspired after the conference, how do you feel after the entire experience each year?

Indaba is remarkable in that it brings together people from every creative discipline from every part of world to share ideas. People come eager to hear from the superstars, but over and over again, it’s someone you’ve never heard of who blows you away.

What do you think the audience at large takes away from the conference?

I think the conference brings out the best in the speakers. You feel the energy from the audience, and the people on stage really feel an obligation to make a connection. The audience can really sense this, and as a result they come way feeling that they did just sit there and witness it, but they actually participated in it. It’s active, not passive.

Do you feel Design Indaba has had a hand in helping Cape Town become the Design Capital for 2014?

I suspect it may be Cape Town’s best argument as to why it deserves to be the World Design Capital.

How does a conference like Design Indaba foster creativity in the long run?

Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s all about connections. Design Indaba makes connections that last, and those connections have the capacity to change the world.

Chandelier Creative farms branded honey at their Montauk surf retreat

Ideas tend to be fleeting but, as the only food source with no known shelf life, honey quite literally lasts a lifetime. Aiming to combine the two and, in doing so, live up to its name, NYC-based agency Chandelier Creative set up a Montauk retreat to farm fresh honey, and give employees a place to go for rest, relaxation and inspiration. Presenting a new kind of bohemian enclave, Chandelier’s beautifully appointed, multipurpose Surf Shack fosters morale from within, while productively churning out an actual product for a whole new way of marketing itself.

As the son of Australian honey farmers, Chandelier founder Richard Christiansen outfitted his digs with the proper authority, hand-selecting a range of coastal flowers native to Montauk to ensure his bees would produce a special kind of honey. For the Surf Shack he chose an array of black-eyed Susans, honeysuckle and echinacea and, much like he did with the Shack’s carefully decorated interior, Christiansen built and painted a custom hive to befit the Chandelier bees. “Making honey is a true labor of love” he explains. “My family has always said that happy bees make sexy honey. And the same is true for creatives.”

With a keen eye and trained tongue, Christiansen describes the honey as slightly lighter in color than most, due to the native Montauk nectar, with a taste that’s “very soft and gentle,” but “a little salty, too.” Packaged by members of the Chandelier Creative team, the honey is gifted to every weekend visitor, be it boyfriend, girlfriend, client or friend as a sweet reminder to keep creating with the dedication and vigor of a honey bee.

Throughout the 2011 summer the unique blend of flora led the Chandelier bees to produce an end-of-season surplus of 300 jars, of which some 75 are still available. The remaining jars can be purchased exclusively through the Chandelier Creative online shop, along with a rotation of “special collaborations with our favorite people.” Chandelier Creative aims to re-open the Surf Shack in May with the addition of chickens and vegetables, likely to help continue the expansion of the Chandelier brand from the ground up.

Handmade Portraits: Xenobia Bailey from Etsy on Vimeo.

Thank you to Jeremiah Glazer at Etsy for sending me a link to their latest Handmade Portraits video feature about Xenobia Bailey. Jeremiah writes:

“Her work, which has been featured in museums, television (The Cosby Show), and film (Do The Right Thing), is extraordinarily imaginative and diverse — crowns, mandalas, dresses, sculptures, even teas — but they’re all an articulation of what she calls the “aesthetic of funk.” Xenobia says that she learned to “funk it together” by watching the women in her community beautify their environments with limited resources. She has continued to preserve and extend that tradition in her extraordinarily diverse art pieces and clothing.”